This past week President Obama announced the STEM Video Game Challenge to encourage students to pursue math and science through engaging activities. The contest will be accepting submissions from October 12 to January 5. The entries can either be a game design on paper or a playable game. There is a $50,000 prize pool for students and it provides some great opportunities for careers in video game design.
Future Professionals, this is what we’re going to tackle first. Check out Scratch from MIT. It’s like an intro program to Flash and actually has some pretty decent scripting. (It’s free, too, which is always nice.)
Here’s how the judges will be determining the winners:
Submissions will be judged on a combination of fun and balanced gameplay, creative vision and incorporation of Science TEchnology and Math (STEM) concepts in game design and play experience.
Click here for a game that took me ten minutes to create. In no way does it meet the STEM requirements but it does illustrate a tiny bit of what Scratch does (that would take me much longer to do in Flash ActionScript.)
Try and get the face to the flower. Click on the green flag to get the party started. Arrow keys move the smiley.
