Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.31.06 | Why is the MacArthur foundation funding a program for junior high school and high school students that lets them create games? Because playing, understanding, and designing games is itself an important form of literacy.

The Game Designer Project is a software application that teaches the fundamentals of game design as players create and modify simple games. Rather than an open-ended prototyping tool, Game Designer is a highly scaffolded experience in which game design concepts are intertwined with the experience of altering and designing games. (Expected release in 2008.)

Game design is not game programming nor is it visual design. Game design is the creation of the rules of a game - the game’s logic and interactivity. Gamelab and the GAPPS group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe that game design embodies an emerging form of literacy that incorporates design, systems analysis, complex information management, aesthetics, social network interaction, as well as earlier forms of literacy.

By teaching the principles of game design, the Game Designer project will prepare players for an increasingly wired world, where this new form of literacy - we call it gaming literacy - is a necessary mode of thinking. Game Designer also addresses an unmet need for young students to be able to create, modify, and share their own game creations. Here’s to game designers everywhere and the future of game design!