Game Maker Academy

Welcome to the online home of Game Maker Academy, the program that teaches you how to make your very own video games, simulations, animations, and digital stories. Game Maker Academy offers informal instruction in game design through a network of after-school programs and libraries in the Chicago area. These pages are maintained and updated by members of the Game Design Club, a community of young designer-programmers who meet at the Howard Area Community Center's Computer Clubhouse in Chicago, Illinois. Visit these pages often to find out when the next series of classes will be offered near you.

Read more about the Game Design Club.

2011 Summer Space Shooter Challenge Announced: This year's summer game design contest will award two $100 prizes to the best space shooter designs in two categories. For a complete description of the summer design contest, its rules and deadlines, visit the Summer Game Design Contest web page.

March 2011: Are you a driver or a passenger? Here's Dale Dougherty giving a TED Talk about DIY/Hacker culture from January 2011. He presents footage from the 2010 Maker Faire at the Henry Ford Stadium in Detroit, a celebration of innovation in a region that is brimming with grassroots doers, thinkers and makers. Highlights include electric muffins, "Swinging in the Rain," the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir, Kid Robot, DIY satellites and drones. "We've gotta get this into schools and communities . . . the ability to tinker and shape and reshape the world around us." Watch here.

March 2011: The Game Design Club has scheduled Robocode tournaments for June 18 and July 30 at the Howard Area Computer Clubhouse, with free Robocode beginner's workshops to be held in advance of both events. We're also making plans for free web design workshops, and for the Chicago area's biggest Scratch Day celebration on May 21. For more information, contact us.

February 2011: Game Maker Academy and the Game Design Club are mentioned in the article The Role of Free and Open Source Software in Digital Literacy Education by Phillip George (Missouri State University). In Computers and Composition: An International Journal: Fall 2010-Spring 2011.

January 2011: From the SXSW 2010 conference, Douglas Rushkoff discusses the central ideas from his new book "Program or be Programmed" (OR Books www.orbooks.com). From the promo copy: "In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age -- and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message." Watch here.

In the book's appendix, Rushkoff provides a list of essential books, documentaries and web sites to learn programming. He provides a copy of that list on his website.

January 2011: Video from our January Robocode workshops and tournament posted at http://www.gamemakeracademy.org/robocode.html

In this video John Seely Brown states the case for the establishment of playful, affinity-based learning environments, arguing that formal authority-based pedagogical structures are incapable of providing the best context for learning in a culture of ongoing change. Brown is the co-author (with Douglas Thomas) of A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.

From the book's web site: "By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, the authors create a vision of learning for the future that is achievable, scalable and one that grows along with the technology that fosters it and the people who engage with it. The result is a new form of culture in which knowledge is seen as fluid and evolving, the personal is both enhanced and refined in relation to the collective, and the ability to manage, negotiate and participate in the world is governed by the play of the imagination."

Join us on May 21, 2011 for International Scratch Day Chicago! Scratch Day is a worldwide network of gatherings, where people come together to meet other Scratchers, share projects and experiences, and learn more about Scratch. Scratch Day Chicago will be the largest Scratch Day event in the Midwest Region. Stay tuned for more details.

While in New York last June I had the opportunity to check out Quest to Learn, the MacArthur-funded public school that opened its doors in 2009. Watch a recent video about the school's innovative approach to G6-12 education. Katie Salen, Professor at Parsons The New School for Design and Founder of the Institute of Play, describes the importance of designing games as a way to engage students in the exploration of systems.

November 2010: Join us at the Skokie Public Library for a 3-day Game Maker Academy series of workshops to mark ALA's 2010 National Gaming Day @ Your Library. The workshops will be held November 11 - 13. Registration for the workshops begins on November 1st. For more information on National Gaming Day, visit the ALA web site.

October 2010: In November, we'll be joined by special guest T.J. Leone, educator and software designer, who will talk about his work with Logo and his educational philosophy (date TBA).

August 2010: Ricarose Roque, a friend and supporter of Game Maker Academy and the Game Design Club, was recently credited in Dr. Dobb's Journal for her research which formed the basis, in part, for the new Google App Inventor coding blocks paradigm.

August 2010: Pictured here are Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab (left) and Jeff Sweeton of the Intel Computer Clubhouse in Rogers Park. Jeff was one among dozens of Clubhouse Coordinators to help facilitate the Computer Clubhouse Network's 2010 Teen Summit in Cambridge, MA. The Intel Computer Clubhouse Network is an international community of 100 Computer Clubhouses located in 20 different countries around the world. This year, the Network celebrates 17 years since the establishment of the first Clubhouse in 1993 at The Computer Museum (now part of the Museum of Science, Boston) in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab.

Watch the video produced by participants in this year's Summit.

July 2010: Make Magazine's editor Dale Dougherty interviews Steven Levy about the 25th anniversary edition of his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Watch the interview.

June 2010: Lance Fortnow is a faculty member at Northwestern's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he focuses upon computational complexity among other disciplines. We recently came upon this blog post in which he describes his youthful fascination with gaming and game design. Read "The Story of Ribbit."

April 2010: The club celebrated its 3rd birthday by hosting an exciting, fun-filled retro gaming tournament in the Wilmette Public Library auditorium. Over 30 participants (including dads and moms) played Atari, SNES, and N64 games on the original vintage consoles. In addition, we held a computer game trivia contest and served all-you-can-eat pizza to the hungry gamers. To top it all off, we served a delicious birthday cake baked for us by our friends at TAG's Bakery in Evanston, IL. Winners of the bracketed N64 tournaments and trivia contest took home $25 gift cards from Game Stop and Borders Bookstore. Thanks to everyone for a memorable night of gaming, learning, and celebration! For more info about the event, visit our Competitions page.

April 2010: Read the inspiring article Are You Ready for the Renaissance? by Jeffrey Popyack (PDF file).

March 2009: Game Design Club featured in the March 2009 issue of Computers in Libraries. Read the article.

March 2009: Game Maker Academy featured as a model program in the American Library Association's Librarian's Guide to Gaming.

May 2008: Scratch and Game Maker programs featured in the May 2008 issue of American Libraries. Read the article.

January 2008: Programming: the new literacy?. Read the article.

Summer 2007: Game Design Club participates in a panel at the ALA Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. Listen to the panel presentation hosted by Jenny Levine and Steve Abram.