Young Game Designers Inspire In XPRIZE Game Design Competition
Last month, XPRIZE Connect announced the winners of XPRIZE Connect Code Games: A Global Game-Making Challenge supported by Endless Network, a game design challenge that aimed to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of young people across the globe . The world’s first international youth game design challenge, Code Games inspired young people to dream up a game and code it into reality.
David Turner, 17, of Brooklyn, New York won Best In Class -- Playable Game, The Endless Mission for his game C#
The challenge captured the imagination of young innovators ages 10-18 around the globe: the competition garnered 800 entries of fun new games that envision and create a new future for everyone. The games were built with commonly used, open access tools like GameStar Mechanic, Scratch, Endless Mission and Unity.
The entries were focused on three impact themes: equity, exploration, and environment. With topics ranging from pollution to spreading hope in dark times, the young game makers took on the challenge to envision bold new futures and bring about a better world.
By incorporating inspiration and creativity from the next generation, these new games will allow young creators to hone critical skills in coding and game design to shape the technology in their world rather than be shaped by it.
The competition awarded multiple $1,000 USD cash prizes to winners who designed and developed an original video game with a variety of freely available creation tools, as well as written game designs. Additional grand prizes of $2,000 USD were awarded to the best games in the topic areas. A total of $25,000 USD was distributed amongst the 16 winners at the virtual Code Games Challenge Winners Celebration.
The competition highlighted that designing and developing a video game carries with it significant benefits for the creator, including:
introducing computer science and giving students a chance to engage with computational thinking and coding,
encouraging design and systems based thinking,
creating opportunities to make something with an audience and a purpose in mind,
encouraging innovation and creative problem solving,
exposing young designers to the design process and the development and game creation processes more broadly
The games were judged in two phases by game industry veterans, educators, and other subject matter experts representing five different countries who played and reviewed every game and written game design. They were scored on creative vision, engaging game play, balance and technical execution. XPRIZE chose the 16 winners from seven countries, dividing the winning games by which best acknowledged the exploration, environment and human equity areas.
Many of the kids described how they learned game design techniques: from Youtube tutorials to reading books on coding, overwhelmingly, the designers taught themselves and practiced through trial and error. Others were inspired by their computer science teachers to enter the competition. Either way, it’s clear this generation of coders is passionate about creating games that encourage users to think critically about building a better future. You can see all the winners here.
A few highlights:
Flash Trash - Alyssa And Kayla Villanueva De Raeve, of Mexico City, Mexico: Best in Class - Open Platform Teams. Users learn to separate different kinds of trash and recycling “Our mission is to encourage and teach people to separate and recycle trash to decrease the pollution of our planet”
How to Fall - Dominic Darby of St. Catherine, Jamaica: Best in Class - Scratch. Darby had experience with game mechanics but had never created a game before submitting this platformer experience.
Whisperer of the Past - John Xu, of Los Angeles, USA: Best in Class - Unity; Best in Class - Playable Game, Exploration Theme. The game’s mission is to spread hope in the midst of so many negative things going on.
C# - David Turner, of New York, USA: Best In Class -- Playable Game, The Endless Mission. The game’s goal is to escape after waking up on a mysterious planet. Turner used the Endless Mission to create this immersive experience.
Revive - Felicia Yan of North Carolina, USA: Best In Class -- Playable Game, Environment Theme. Yan taught herself how to play with YouTube videos, the internet, and Unity tutorials and was excited to transfer her art skills into making games. In the platformer she created, the player learns about environmental issues like pollution, climate change, and deforestation.
PLANT - Noah Do Rego, of Ontario, Canada: Best In Class -- Playable Game, Unity. Do Rego created this 3D adventure to incorporate a deeper message about what our human nature will result in in the future. Alongside the game design, he also created the music and graphics.