It was quite interesting for me to look back from the path I’ve taken all the way from A-level to being involved in the serious games industry. Children have a much wider range of subject material that’s more related to computer games then when I was in school and the college even have software such as 3Ds Max and Adobe After Effects installed for the student to use. It is very impressive to think that when they coming out of the college and into university, they will be more than ready for the steep learning curve ahead. I wish I had 3Ds Max when I was in school. 

During the workshops we introduced the group to the games industry, some of the games we have made, and gave them a general insight in to how we, and the games industry work. The pupils were then introduced to the Microsoft platform PopFly, which is a great interface to learn the basic logic and behaviors simple games have. After playing some of the games and ripping them apart, the pupils then looked at planning and creating their own game using the platform.

The final session was spent polishing the game, and talking about how publishing and marketing works in the industry with some real life examples of our games. The pupils seemed to really enjoyed the sessions and the school plans to introduce similar workshops to more pupils in the future.