Game Maker from YoYo Games

As readers know, I’m interested in educational video game research, thus the creation of this blog. However, I’m compelled to point out a neat product for video game creation that I’ve had some good experience with lately.

I agree with the line of reasoning that teaching a child programming skills develops cognition and provides building blocks for analytical reasoning. The foundations for this line of thinking goes back to Seymour Papert and the Logo programming language. When I taught an educational technology course at UNT last summer for future teachers, Theresa Overall came in and presented the portion of the course dealing with Logo. Theresa is now at the University of Maine at Farmington. Her story surrounding Papert and Logo fascinated my students. Part of the course involved programming in Logo, and it ranked among the more popular of our activities.

With that in mind, I have introduced my children to programming over the years by introducing them to level editors for popular computer games and trying out shareware programs that purport to allow game creation of some kind. The shareware programs were not very useful to date, and the level editors have so far proved too tedious.

So this summer, when the idea of video game creation was broached by the kids again, I did some searching and found Game Maker from YoYo Games. The company advertised the program as being easy to use so I downloaded the free version, installed it on one of our computers, and stepped out of the picture in a constructivist way. My 12 year old, an ardent video game player and guild founder, enthusiastically set out to create a game using the software.

Now, my kids are used to the latest in video games. They play on all three major consoles, MMORPGs, and some of the latest computer games. The level of sophistication they are used to is pretty high. These are fully three-dimensional environments representing thousands of programming hours with multi-million dollar development budgets. I wondered if creating simpler games would hold their attention level.

Two weeks later, I know the answer. Admittedly, the Game Maker games are much more arcade in nature than virtual world-like. The levels created so far remind me of PacMan, with the player manipulating a circular avatar to avoid “bad guys” in a maze. But, my kids don’t seem to mind. They are too busy building the next level.

So, on behalf of my kids, I heartily recommend Game Maker for introductory programming. The sophistication will be low, but the kids don’t seem to mind. I’m hoping it is a good introduction and stepping stone to more difficult programming that can be tackled when they are older.