The Media Instituut ‘Beeld & Geluid’ hosted a Retrogames festival, and we were invited to do a Retro Game Design Workshop to a class of children at the age of 12 years old, including teachers and parents to co-create games.
They team-played pacman with makey-makey, learned about game design, experimented with gamemaker and programming games, created props and characters in clay and lego and did amazing presentations. One team included their teacher as a character in their game, including the class (choas) dynamics problems as a challenge inside their game. The team which made a analog board game combined with a digital game and presented this in a theatrical playful way and were strong winners. But the talent made a huge impression on me (I worry about my future as a game designer ; )
“I had no idea there is so much behind a game!”
After giving the workshop Game design for a class of 12 years olds last month in Sound and Vision (museum), we were invited back there for a “walk-in workshop/expo” in the main hall for all visitors (mainly children with their parents or grandparents) to get a sniff of designing + play. They created characters, build their own version of pacman, designed great game concepts, ran around, hit on fruit with makey makey and developed innovation with little bits and offcourse played games.
Most remarkable quotes: “I had no idea there is so much behind a game!” or the grandfather telling me his grandson’s concept is so promising, that he expects me to get rich soon ; )
or this story of two brothers about implementing their characters in Pacman (only one good and three bad characters can play a role): “I do not want to be a bad person!” (about to cry) his older brother thinks and then says (cleverly): “Do you not want to eat me and defeat me then?” and the younger brother instantly is very exhited about being the bad guy and can’t wait to see his brother being killed ;P
