The Invention of Good Games: GameMaker

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. And it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves. – Carl Gustav Jung

Interested in learning how to make your own computer games? Want to have your students learn through building games? Then this workshop is for you. Come and have some hard fun! It is possible to explore game design and to build interesting games without having to learn to program, and GameMaker is an ideal tool for it. Game Maker allows you to make exciting computer games without the need to write a single line of code. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games in very little time. Thanks to the work of Seymour Papert and others, we also know there are significant benefits to helping our students learn through building games (1980, 1998). GameMaker has a strong user base and community support around the world that can help you help learners build games for themselves. Part one will introduce participants to GameMaker, a freely available application for building games that requires no programming. Part two will offer participants a hands-on opportunity to their design and build own game.

Participants will come away from this tutorial:

• With a working knowledge of how to create games using GameMaker.
• With first hand experience designing and building a mini-game.
• Understanding where to find additional resources.

Participants will have an opportunity to:

• Step through the typical design process for a simple game.
• Build their own game.