Design Video Games Without Learning Code

Video Games in the classroom can be used for/to learn

• Programming
• Animation/Digital Storytelling
• Digital Art
• Project Management
• Storyboarding

(Interested in Gamification? Here's a nice LiveBinder collected by the Level Up Book Club)

Here are my top picks for 2012:

GameMaker 

edit 3/1/2014: now called "GameMaker Studio", check out the official "Learn" page that colleague Steve Isaacs and I are contributing to: yoyogames.com/learn

(This is the one I use most in my classes. drag-n-drop, extensive customization, possible intro to programming concepts. LOTS of video tutorials on schooltube + youtube)

GameStar Mechanic 

(for Elementary to Middle School. Built for the classroom. Plays like an adventure game where you earn new game-building abilities/characters as you play through the storyline.

Kodu 

(3D games, drag-n-drop, games can be played on Xbox 360 or PC)

There are others that are built specifically to learn the concepts of programming while building games at the same time:

Scratch

(build games, animations, etc.)

Alice:

(build animations)

Prezi Sharing

I posted a link on our school server that allows anyone with the link to edit my Prezi. I invited any of the students to make one change to my Prezi to help improve it. Below is the chaotic mess that ensued. Students suggested improvements that could the people at Prezi could make:

• Allow for in-Prezi chat
• Limit the number of people that can come in (1-10)
• Color-Code who made what edits

Evolution or Intelligent Design in Spore Video Game?

I watched this video below about the Video Game "Spore". What stands out to me? Will Wright described the game as a Darwinian experience showing evolution by compressing millions of years into a short time frame. However, wouldn't the very creation of a character and the preexistance of lifeforms at the start of the game also present a second theory on the origin of life, such as "Intelligent Design"?
What do you think?

Reward Schedules in 3D GameLab

I envision 3DGameLab having a probability system similar to World of Warcraft. Students will show increased motivation and perseverance to repeat certain tasks - math problems, identifying predicates, etc. if there is a high chance to earn common rewards, and a small chance to get more prestigious rewards.

A simple interface would be for the quest designer to choose from a menu the "number of sides on dice" option that dictates how often the reward "drops" when successfully completed.

Can’t wait to see a rare drop like an ultra-rare  “Auto A+ Test”. It should be “bind on character”.