From Concept to Creation: Students Collaborate to Develop Unique Game Designs
At the beginning of June, our Pre-A level Programme students participated in a two-day long workshop on designing and developing games as part of our STEM Communication Programme. The programme was brilliantly led by Rich Hancock, who has an extensive background leading teams in game design and development.
As part of the workshop, students learnt some fundamental principles of game design, including for example, techniques that can be used to make a game more engaging and ways to make use of psychology to guide the player.
Over the course of the event, students worked in small teams to develop their own games in less than two days. Despite its difficulty, all teams were up for the challenge and the second day finished with presentations of their work.
The workshop allowed the students to learn about how fascinating game design is and also enabled them to improve their planning and time management skills.
“I developed my communication, computer science and design skills. I have never done anything like game design before, so it was very exciting to see how ideas from my head appear as a real game after just a couple of days of work. In our team, I came up with the main idea of the game and my teammate, Ash, did the most work on programming and realisation of this idea. Lisa created the character’s design and colours of the game. We received lots of help and support from the organiser, he kindly answered all our questions and brainstormed ideas on how to realise what we had in our minds. As a result, we created a real game with its own plot and tasks to complete, which received nice feedback from our players”.
Vavara, Pre A level Student
“We learnt the importance of researching beforehand. Our team’s topic was
‘ocean pollution and threats to marine life’ and after gathering information, we began working on the game.
A great deal was learnt about teamworking skills as we split into teams for the artistic aspect and the game mechanics aspect. The importance of communication was also realised, as some file formats the art team used were not compatible with the game design software.
It was a very educational experience overall and the end result was worth every second, not to mention the skill of working together as a team cohesively which is sure to be beneficial later on in life”.
Mathew, Pre A level Student
Find out more about studying Computer Science with us in our Podcast with Head of Computing, Martyn Colliver.
