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Home ― News ― General Beadle Honors student holds game design seminar for kids

Honors students holds game design seminar for kids

June 28, 2016

Derek Kerner, a senior Computer Game Design student from Fairbury, Neb., is a member of the recently established General Beadle Honors Program at Dakota State University in Madison, S.D. To receive designation from the Honors Program, students are required to complete a service project before graduation. For his project, Kerner chose to set up a short seminar for kids to teach them the basics of game design. After submitting his idea to the Honors Committee and receiving the approval, he proceeded with his project plans.

Brainstorming ideas for the gamesKerner decided the service project should consist of two, two-hour seminars. The students participated in several different activities to simulate the process of developing the games. The first activity involved brainstorming for ideas for a game. Then the groups picked the idea they were most fond of and focused on refining the idea into a specific game concept. From there, they worked on creating paper prototypes for their games. The overall goal was more than just teaching the process of game design, but also strengthening their abilities to work in teams, communicate with others, and test their abilities to create ideas and solve problems.

All together, these groups were able to create 3 different paper prototypes for games based on existing series such as Five Nights at Freddy's, Total Recall and also an original airplane racing game.