VIDEO games: almost everybody knows them and loves them but not many people know how to make them. There are classes where students can learn the main steps to making a small and simple game, and Granger is lucky to have one of those classes.

Mr. McCarl is the teacher for this class, and he covers the history of videogames, 3D animating, and a lot more things in the category. This classroom has many “beefy” computers with double monitors and not all the seats are taken. All around the room are posters from different video games, with a few inspirational quotes. The class has a great ambience for creative Lancers to work in, ideas always circle around that room.

“The main goal of this class is that by the time these students are seniors, they will make commercial games” Mr. McCarl said. About $100k was spent on this classroom, which is a problem, because there are not many students in the class yet.

There are many students that don’t even know that there is a game development class.  “I think more people should go into game development because it’s interesting and fun,” Hailey Piper (11) said. “Granger has so many amazingly artistic Lancers.”

For those Lancers who are creative but can’t find some way to show it, then there is game development. One great example is Calvin Nguyen, he couldn’t find a way to express his huge creativity, he tried many things, but the one open door he went through was game development. Not everyone can really express creativity with a camera or pencil and paper.

“Game development is an open door for those who need to express creativity” Calvin Nguyen (11) said, some kids say it’s fun class for them to be in. These kids in gamedev work really put lots of creativity and work into the small short games.

They start off by building an endless runner game where each student makes a 3D model for the character that is running and other models are made for the obstacles and background.

Another game they make are a click game where the player types in a phrase, hit the enter key and begin to click on the letters of the word to reach the goal. The longer the word, more points scored.

The programs they use are Blender, Unity, and other programs to make these small games. Some kids want to try to make a video game, but they can’t without access to a computer at home.