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Teaching Game Development To Fine Arts Students?

Posted by timothy on from the I-see-you've-all-brought-your-apples dept.

jkavalier writes "I've been asked to prepare a short course (50 hours) of video game development to Fine Arts students. That means people with little-to-no technical skills, and hopefully, highly creative individuals. By the end of it, I would like to have finished 1-3 very basic minigames. I'm considering Unity 3D, Processing, and even Scratch. How would you approach teaching such a course? What do you think is the best tool/engine/environment for such a task?"

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. How about "Alice"? by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alice is a pretty simple way to introduce newbies to game/3D-environment development. I used to use it in an introductory programming class and the kids loved it. Gives you a real sense for how game development and programming work without being heavy-handed about it (or requiring students to jump right into hand-coding, without so much as flowers and dinner first). Here is the text I used for the course.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:How about "Alice"? by samkass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd also check out GameSalad, which offers a GUI for attaching artwork to objects, then setting properties/events across objects to build a game out of it. It's really easy to create a basic platformer or simple touch game mechanics, and you can focus on how the artwork contributes to the game.

      You can also generate web, Mac, PC, and iOS output (the latter which can be submitted to the App Store, which might be a fun reward for your students.)

      --
      E pluribus unum
  2. Re:Fine-arts + programming = ? by asdbffg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I took a game design/development course as a student at CalArts. Many of the students were from the film program, but we also had some musicians, sound designers, and theater kids. Many of the students came into the course with a basic knowledge of programming. Out of that class I saw games developed and completed in Processing, Flash, and Torque.

    Another game design class that worked with created two games based on Arduino hardware and Max/MSP. One game incorporated RFID scanners and custom built MP3 players to take players on an audio scavenger hunt. That game received funding from the city arts council and was installed in local mall and again later as part of a city-wide arts festival, the other used video tracking to track players in a physical game arena and has been shown at several Maker Faires and art exhibitions here in LA and Europe.

    Many artists I've met are more than capable programmers, and many of them make their art exclusively in coding environments. I would assume that artists taking a game development class would at least be technically minded. The point is that it's probably a mistake to assume that "fine arts" students can't or shouldn't handle more technical work.