Questions come fast and furious –without hesitation for the answer. The customer’s product development, marketing, and executives are all anxious to see your design. Their anticipation and skepticism wear heavy on your nerves. You’re tweaking the last bit of code and reassuring yourself that you’ve done the impossible – created a web game that will rise far above expectations. That’s just part of the fun you’ll have as a web game design intern.

Imagine - for a moment - your students getting to experience the thrill of being the game designer that helps launch a new national product using the latest corporate marketing strategy.

Why Teach Web Game Design
Students are immediately attracted to and engaged by web games featured on websites. The fast-growing segment of e-commerce and website creation is making this skill valuable and necessary to compete in a global economy. As competition increases and budgets shrink, companies are seeking new and innovative ways to attract and retain customers. From art, design, branding, and the skills necessary to bring it all together, your students will be leading the charge on the latest marketing phenomenon – web video games. These skills are in high demand and offer students immediate access to entrepreneurship opportunities.

Some Key Concepts and Outcomes

• Apply the design process to real world problems
• Understand and demonstrate basic programming concepts and functions
• Explain and demonstrate how to create a story for a web game
• Understand and demonstrate how to use object oriented programming
• Explain the basic elements of a well designed video game program

Curriculum Length
The curriculum has been designed for flexibility with two separate projects. The length of the curriculum is dependent on the educator and can run from 20 to 45 hours.

How We Teach
To make the curriculum easy to implement, all the necessary knowledge and skills of programming and creating web video games are delivered through totally interactive software. Through text, pictures, animations, and digital videos, students are led through the exciting world of web game design. Due to the highly interactive and self-directed nature of our curriculum, students are allowed to find their own pace. Regardless of the learner’s motivation or learning style, students will find a new level of success with our curriculum.

This curriculum was designed to support state assessments by addressing national math, language, science, art, and technology standards.

Skills for Life
Good life skills are made relevant through situations that have students examine their actions. Through interactions with their boss, co-workers, and customers, students learn what it takes to be successful in the real world. They discover the long-term benefits of making the choice to take pride in what they do.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Employers want people who solve problems. Our projects lead students through analyzing, brainstorming, and creating solutions using the design process.

Computer Requirements:
For Mac: 600 MHz PowerPC G3 and later; Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4; 256 MB RAM 1024 x 768, thousands of colors display; 2 GB available disk space; headphones

For PC: 800 MHz Intel Pentium III processor (or equivalent) and later; Windows® XP; 256 MB RAM; 1024 x 768, 16-bit display (32-bit recommended); 2 GB available disk space; headphones