I have been talking with other teachers and they are telling me something very different- namely that all the stuff I want to do is very workable. For example, these Unity tutorials are apparently picked up by kids relatively easily:

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

Then they can model in 3d and get assets making a game like this:

It seems these are the things I have been asking about. So what's the problem?

My concern is that some kids will learn too fast for you to keep up. When kids *really* want to learn, it's terrifying how quickly they can. You don't want the overachievers to get bored waiting for you to get to something else. You don't want the underachievers to feel left behind or get too distracted from their own work.

In 5th grade, while most of my classmates were learning how to type, I was busy programming simple things like moving a pixel around with arrow keys. The others who saw what I was doing quickly got distracted, the course went off the rails and the teacher didn't really know how to handle the situation.

In high school, a friend and I were using our self-taught knowledge to wire up a Nintendo Power Glove to a PC using a printer port, do wireframe 3D software rendering in assembly language, and control the hand-shaped line graphics using the glove. The rest of the kids in that class at that time were being taught the most basic "hello, world" type stuff in C, and what we were doing was heavily distracting to them.

Having a robust plan in place to deal with anomalies like my friend and I would be good. I've seen from the inside what can happen when the course plan doesn't account for this.

I suppose as long as everyone's motivated, even if people are distracted, it can't be TOO bad.

I have been talking with other teachers and they are telling me something very different- namely that all the stuff I want to do is very workable. For example, these Unity tutorials are apparently picked up by kids relatively easily:

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

I'd say the problem with those tutorials in your case is that they require programming and some (not much) programming experience, plus some math that isn't usually taught in high school until 11th to 12th grade, if at all. You seem pretty adamant that you don't want to touch programming and that these kids will be starting from scratch in that regard. That's not to say that kids can't pick up programming or the math involved - they probably can. But you specifically excluded significant amounts of programming in your list of requirements. ;)

Apparently they don't need programming for those Unity tutorials. The other teacher has told me they just have kids cut and paste code, which is provided for this purpose with the tutorials. I'm not sure if this means kids are stuck having to create duplicates of the tutorials or if they can change variables and make variations on the tutorials. Anyone have any idea what one could do with this approach?

EDIT: I was too slow!

I have been talking with other teachers and they are telling me something very different- namely that all the stuff I want to do is very workable. For example, these Unity tutorials are apparently picked up by kids relatively easily:

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

Then they can model in 3d and get assets making a game like this:

[Embedded video link]

It seems these are the things I have been asking about. So what's the problem?

If these other teachers have not actually taught a class like the one you're describing, then it would be wise to view what they have to say with some skepticism. As I described earlier, people tend to underestimate what it takes to make a game unless they have some solid experience. If they have taught such a class, could you share with us their specific suggestions and responses to your questions, particularly in cases where their advice differs from what you've gotten here? And not just "use Unity, it's powerful and easy and well documented", but information on what their students have created and how, specifically, their courses have been structured so that students can be successful in learning and in producing games in the allotted time.

This sort of information would be helpful in refining the advice you are getting from this board. It is unlikely that everyone here is ignorant of something that both exists and would satisfy all of the ambitions expressed on page 1. The assumptions implicit in letting conversations with others, of unknown (to us) skill and experience, overshadow the thoughtful advice you have been receiving here are unflattering. It does come off as dismissive even though I don't think that you meant it to be. Specific questions about why something has been or has not been recommended are valuable, important, and always welcome. But when phrasing those questions please bear in mind that reasons for our suggestions do exist and are generally based on the requirements you have laid out across the thread.

I'll caution you about relying on online tutorials to form much of your course. Unity's tutorials are great (though they age quickly, and it takes some effort to troubleshoot the aspects that become outdated), and following tutorials does allow for more complex projects. But the cost of the extra complexity is often a combination of less creativity and poorer understanding of the material. Ambitious students may be able to make some interesting modifications, but without knowing how to code most of that will be beyond even them.

Changing code taken from a tutorial for a complete project will probably limit your students to changing the values of some variables (imagine reducing gravity, for example) or breaking important systems. It will still be a fun and interesting experience for some students (I would like it!), but not all, and I think it would detract from the aspects you want to emphasize. Copied and pasted code might still work in a class where you want to cut coding out as much as possible; it apparently works for your contact. How do the other elements you are envisioning for your course fit in with your contact's course?

I have been talking with other teachers and they are telling me something very different- namely that all the stuff I want to do is very workable. For example, these Unity tutorials are apparently picked up by kids relatively easily:

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials

I'd say the problem with those tutorials in your case is that they require programming and some (not much) programming experience, plus some math that isn't usually taught in high school until 11th to 12th grade, if at all. You seem pretty adamant that you don't want to touch programming and that these kids will be starting from scratch in that regard. That's not to say that kids can't pick up programming or the math involved - they probably can. But you specifically excluded significant amounts of programming in your list of requirements. ;)

Apparently they don't need programming for those Unity tutorials. The other teacher has told me they just have kids cut and paste code, which is provided for this purpose with the tutorials. I'm not sure if this means kids are stuck having to create duplicates of the tutorials or if they can change variables and make variations on the tutorials. Anyone have any idea what one could do with this approach?

I took a glance at the tutorials and there is programming even in the most beginner of them. ;)

I'm not sure if this means kids are stuck having to create duplicates of the tutorials or if they can change variables and make variations on the tutorials.

Largely the former, barring rearrangements of the content. Any changes to the scripts would require some programming knowledge, whether that's picked up on the fly or otherwise. Of course, if they can edit the scripts there isn't anything stopping them from making their own changes except their own knowledge level.

Apparently they don't need programming for those Unity tutorials. The other teacher has told me they just have kids cut and paste code, which is provided for this purpose with the tutorials. I'm not sure if this means kids are stuck having to create duplicates of the tutorials or if they can change variables and make variations on the tutorials. Anyone have any idea what one could do with this approach?

Man, this is how people are teaching programming these days? Copy and paste code. Charge students $20K for 3 months courses, promise them +$100K job at the end of the course, so the $20K cost is a justified investment for their education. I know software engineering is hip right now, but dang, no wonder fresh graduates are still crap.

You should never teach programming by copy and pasting, because then your students would never learn how to improvise. They'd never think like an engineer. They'd think like a consumer. An engineer's job is to solve problems, not resolving problems.

Copy pasting code is like buying coffee at a coffee shop, and claim that you know coffee because you drink every coffee they brew. But you never know how to brew. You are not a coffee expert if you never brew coffee, you are just a coffee junkie.

EDIT: Not trying to put the burden on you, gameteacher, to be a programmer in addition to becoming a teacher. I know it seems like the advice given here is like you need to become a programmer/artist/musician/designer before you are even qualified to teach anyone. Just understand the scope of each, and you are really showing your students game development process, not necessarily turning them an expert in each field. Understand that you have merely touched the tips of the icebergs.

Man, this is how people are teaching programming these days? Copy and paste code. Charge students $20K for 3 months courses, promise them +$100K job at the end of the course, so the $20K cost is a justified investment for their education. I know software engineering is hip right now, but dang, no wonder fresh graduates are still crap.

It's not how they are being taught in computer science classes. I am not a computer teacher. I am an art teacher INTRODUCING high school students to the field of video game development. If they want to learn programming and coding, they take other courses outside of school or once in college.

I think my course would be best planned as an introduction to the video game industry. Students will get a little bit of many things: game design, character design and video game creation. By getting an introduction to each area each student will learn about possible points in the industry that they could enter into given their particular interests and abilities.

This approach makes more sense to me than diving in on day one to learning software and then having students come in every day, sit at a computer and do nothing but work on making games. That would be strictly vocational and I have no interest in that.

Does anyone know if it's better to get PC laptops for my course over MacBooks? I recently found out that Game Maker only runs on PCs.

You seem to have a surprisingly well-funded school.

GameMaker:Studio is a Windows program. If you intend to teach it on those systems, they'll need to be running Windows either directly or inside a virtual machine.

Based only on statistics, your typical high school student is going to have a Windows machine at home, and if your school provides them, the students will be most familiar with that environment over MacBooks. If your school is atypical, perhaps a specialized art school, since art folks tend to prefer macs it may be different and you might prefer MacBooks.

Thanks. That's a good point. The students will mostly have Windows. But it does seem like getting PCs would ensure that any program I want to use could be run. Also, is it workable to add more memory to PC laptops down the road? I know you can't do that with Macs.

I am trying to think of how to integrate character design (again, some art emphasis) and I was wondering, if students draw model sheets for characters of their own invention, what's the easiest way to get those drawings into a game? It looks like GM has ready made sprites, and they seem to be simple 2d graphics. Can characters be created from scratch relatively easily in GM? What if we scanned the drawings? Could they be miniaturized and turned into files within GM? For example, a character to run through a maze. It would be great if students could use their own character. I assume it wouldn't animate in any way and wouldn't have to.

Or what about recreating their characters in Blender?

Uhm... I worry about the direction and priorities a course like this would take. If you're trying to teach game design, then the right course of action is to have kids design games. I think there's a bit of a misconception between your idea of what game design means and what we in the industry call game design. So, I'll try to define it briefly and we can start working from the same understanding of the term:

Game design is the process of planning out the game rules and mechanics of how a game is played. (others here can feel free to agree/disagree/amend)

This is not to be confused with the production of the game assets, such as modelling characters or drawing artwork, which I suspect may be how you define it.

A game designer will often do what's called "grey boxing", where they spend zero effort making art. Everything is just a gray rectangle. The rules of the game are put into place, and then the game is played to see if it is actually fun. The game "fun" should stand on the merits of its design, not on the quality of its artwork. The risk is that you'd put in a lot of unnecessary time and effort into creating something that sucks because the concept doesn't work. (ie, let's make a game where you squirt mustard at a wall and then spend 5 days designing the mustard bottle and splatter effects.)

I'll tell you a short story of a game I designed and built half way. About two years back, I decided I would build a game about wizards leading massive armies on a battlefield and casting spells in conjunction with commanding the units. Think, total war meets magic the gathering. I wrote up a 30 page game design document which detailed many of the game systems and the rules which governed them. Even at 30 pages, it seemed like it wasn't even close to detailed enough. I played through my game in my head over and over, trying to imagine how each system should work. Once I had everything written down to a 'good enough' level, I started programming the game to satisfy the design I had come up with. This is wrong. I thought the fastest way to test my design would be to quickly whip up a grey boxed prototype of the game. It wouldn't take more than a week to implement. It actually took 2-3 months of full time work. It was going too slow. And I just wanted to test whether the rules worked and were fun. It then occurred to me that there was a faster and easier way to test my game and iterate on the design: I should make a physical simulation of the game by using scraps of paper and coloring crayons. I created a battlefield on a table top, invented some spells of various types, and started playing the game as spelled out in my game design doc. The problem is, the design doc is 30 pages long and I needed another player to play with me, and I couldn't ask them to read 30 pages of rules. So, I had to write an abridged version of the rules and explain it to the other player. Then we started playing the game by taking turns and moving scraps of paper around. The game was meant to be a real time strategy game, so we tried our best to simulate real time by making the turns very short when the combat action got intense. It kind of worked. It took about 30 minutes to play through a battle, and 4-6 hours to play through a campaign. I learned that some of my mechanics were broken, too over powered, or too under powered. Some of my rules just didn't get the desired effect I was aiming for. So, I changed them by changing one or two sentences in the rulebook. 30 seconds, done. Guess how much work that would take to implement if I was writing code? 30 minutes to several hours. This is the right way to design a game. You want to avoid wasting time by iterating quickly to find what doesn't work. If you spend 30-90 minutes writing code each time a rule changes, you're gonna take forever to design a game.

So, if I was in your position as a teacher trying to teach game design, I would forget about the digital side all together and focus on the design of the rule set. The technical stuff just gets in the way. I used to invent games and play them in my sandbox with my brother during the summer and all we needed were sticks, sand and our imaginations. It worked and it was fun, though tedious. Teach your kids the theory of game design, let them invent some games, then let them play those games with each other, figure out what works and what doesn't work, iterate on the rule set, and keep trying. Some of them will make games which turn out to not be fun at all, and that's okay! They thought it would be, but it wasn't. Learning just happened. Now they can try again and invent a different game. The whole time, they're not just learning game design, but also learning the process of game design. I would expect that this would take several months of school time (considering you may have an hour a day at most). If this is truly a class focused on design, then any time spent doing digital stuff would be kind of a waste of time (in my humble opinion). And if you have to make a convincing argument to justify the artistic merit of this whole thing, it is all inherently a very creative process with tangible results! You may not have something visual to look at like a painting, but you do have a designed game system which used much of the same processes other forms of art take. How you would grade this stuff... participation? Personally, this is tough to measure by any metric. Instead of using grades as an incentive for performance, I'd put together a competition where students can win prizes for designing a game which is the best in a specific category (oh hey, that's a game itself!).