Introduction

This unit of work is not spilt into distinct lessons. Instead we have called them 'parts' as this is intended to be a open-ended project where the students work more independently to plan, design, code and test their own video game, using Kodu Game Lab. Spread it out however works best for the time you have, although we'd suggest that the student get at least three full lessons to work on the building and coding parts of the project.

It assumes that the students already have some familiarity with Kodu Game Lab, and have completed some previous learning with this software, such as our Getting Started with Kodu unit of work. If they have not, we suggest going back to this unit first as it teaches the basics of coding and creating with the software in a more structured way.

 

Research

To begin this project and to get their creative thoughts flowing, we are going to look at video games genres more widely, online safety issues to consider around gaming, and then refresh our memories of what we know already and what new things are possible with Kodu Game Lab.

 

Start by asking the students to discuss the different genres that they know about and to make a list of them. For each one they should try to provide one example of that style of game.

 

Collect their ideas and build a class list. Some may have different terms for the same styles, and some of the genres definitely overlap, so try and combine and group together where possible. They may come up with some of these:

• Platform games, e.g Super Mario Bros
• Sports games, e.g. FIFA
• Puzzle games, e.g. Tetris
• Racing games, e.g. Super Mario Kart
• First-person shooters, e.g. Call of Duty
• Battle Royales, e.g. Fortnite
• Adventure games, e.g. Zelda
• Role-playing games, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons
• Fighting games, e.g. Streetfighter
• Simulation games, e.g. Sim City

 

As the discussion flows, this is an excellent time to get a picture of your students' gaming habits and consider some important online safety points around gaming.

Ask the class what are the main dangers for us when gaming?  Collect their ideas.

We can divide most issues into one of four categories:

• Content - What is in the games, governed by age ratings
• Contact - Who we connect with and talk to online when we game, what people are saying or sending to us.
• Commerce - The money we spend online with games, especially through in-game purchases and loot boxes (buying mystery digital content)
• Addiction - How much time we spend gaming and how it affects our mental and physical health.

 

Our lesson slides cover more detailed content to discuss with the students in each of these areas, starting with content and the age rating systems that govern games in the UK.

 

Content

Apple have their own ratings system for games in their app store, but most other companies use the PEGI age ratings, which are similar to film certificate ratings.

 

 

The descriptors for each age rating are included in the teacher slides, discuss these with the class and point out the sort of content that is in each and why these are inappropriate for underage users. Reinforce that age ratings are there to protect us from content that might shock, scare or upset us. Key messages are:

• Don’t play games if you are younger than the age rating.
• Don’t ask your family to buy these games for you.
• Leave the room if other people in your family are playing these games.
• Tell a trusted adult if you are worried about a friend playing these games.
• It's okay to say no if someone invites you to play these games.

 

Contact

Ask the class, who plays games online with other people? Do you know if you have privacy settings on your device? These are just as important on a gaming device as on social media and they let us have a level of control over who connects and talks with us while we game online.

Internetmatters.org is a fantastic resource site for parents, with lots of great advice and guidance. In particular, they've pulled together step-by-step guides for setting up parental and privacy settings on a huge range of different devices and apps, including gaming consoles. We've created this handy guide for you to send home to parents to accompany this lesson.

 

 

Ask the students to think about:

• Who are you talking to?
• What are they saying?
• Are you sharing personal information with people?
• What should you do if something happens to make you feel worried, angry or upset?

 

Give out the help guides for them to take home at the end of the lesson, and encourage them to discuss this issue with their families so all their devices are safer for them to use.

 

Commerce

Check that the students are familiar with the term commerce and that it covers buying, selling and making money.

The way that gaming companies make money has changed massively in recent years. Many games are now free to download, but they make all their money through in-game advertising or by selling content to users in the game. They have effectively become shop windows for gamers. Some of that content is very obvious what you are buying and how much money it costs, in other cases it is less obvious.

Virtual currencies, like 'gold coins', tokens, v-bucks, or FIFA points hide the real value of in-game content. Loot boxes are when a user can spend money to open a virtual box, without knowing what reward will be inside. it might be the best item or character in the whole game, or it could be a useless item or character they already own.

There are many links between loot boxes and gambling-like behaviour as players chase losses and keep spending in the hope they will win something great eventually. They can encourage addictive behaviours and can cause emotional and financial harm to young people and their families. Sadly, they are not, at present classified and regulated under gambling laws, and so it is really important that we make children and their families aware of the dangers of this type of online content.

 

Addiction

Finally, ask the class:

• What is an addiction?
  
• Why are they unhealthy?
  
• Why can games be addictive?

Discuss that enjoying games does not mean that you are addicted, but if you struggle to stop and spend all your free time gaming then you may need some help. Games are made to be addictive so we keep playing, and in many cases, keep spending money within the games. It's in the interests of the game-makers to make us want to keep coming back for more.

Reinforce that we should have a balance of activities in our leisure time, including being active and away from screens for much of it.

 

Introduce the project

Introduce the project they will be working on. They will work on their own (or with a partner if you prefer) to create a new game using Kodu Game Lab. They should consider the gaming genres we have discussed and think about the style of game they would like to make.

They can make any style of game they like (to your approval) and add any features that are possible in Kodu, but everything they add must be for a reason. Everything must have a purpose and code should make it all work. 

But before they start to plan their games, let's refresh our knowledge of Kodu and introduce them to the resources they'll have to support them.

 

Starter tasks 1

These first tasks are all things the students should have done before in Kodu (presuming they have completed our 'Getting Started with Kodu' unit of work). They should try and complete these starter tasks independently to refresh their memory of some Kodu basics, but they can ask a friend if they get stuck. Emphasise to them that they are not building a game here, just demonstrating that they can do each of these things on their own.

1. Start a new empty Kodu project.

2. Add a Kodu robot to your world.

a) Change its colour.

b) Program it to move when you press the arrow keys.

3. Add a coin.

a) Make the coin bigger.

b) Make the coin disappear when Kodu bumps it.

4. Test it all works.

5. Save your work as ‘Your name task 1’

 

Demonstrate the solutions to these tasks to the students, or use our walk-through video if needed:

 

 

Starter tasks 2

Sometimes it's hard to come up with big ideas when you don't know what's possible, so to help them through the whole project, we've created a handy Kodu help guide. The students can access it at any time while they are working on the project for ideas and inspiration and should have it open in a browser at all times while they work on their games.

Get to it by typing: tinyurl.com/koduguide into the address bar on any internet browser, then pressing ENTER.

 

 

You can use the links on the front page to jump to any section or just use the left/right arrow keys to browse through the pages. Take a look at an example page with the whole class, 'Scoring to collect' is one they should have seen before. Without any guidance, ask them, Read this code - what would it do? It contains movement controls for a character using the arrow keys, and it makes a character eat apples when it bumps into them. It also awards one red point when a character bumps into the apples.

 

 

What could we change in this code to adjust how it works? 

• Which keys are used for movement - WASD is another common option.
• The item that the character bumps into - instead of apples we could use coins, hearts, stars etc.
• The colour of the apple (this would need an extra code block after 'apple') - different colours of apple could do different things.
• How many points we get for each apple
• If we get or lose points for collecting the item.
• We could swap points for character health (gain or lose),
• Other things could happen when you collect an item - your character could grow, shrink, speed up, slow down, blow up!

 

So encourage them to look at each page and the code in the guide as just examples. Read all the guidance on the pages to get ideas for how they can adapt things but also don't be scared to explore categories in Kodu to see what's possible for each character.

 

To get them used to using the resource, and to hopefully pick up some ideas for their games, introduce them to the second set of starter tasks. Again, emphasise that they are just trying to complete the specific tasks listed in isolation. They are not actually creating a game at this point.

1. Start a new empty Kodu project.

2. Add a Kodu robot to your world and add movement keys again.

3. Program it to:

a) jump when you press the spacebar.

b) do something else when you press A 

4. Turn on the health bar for your character

a) Make bumping an object hurt your character

b) Add a heart and make it heal your character when bumped.

5. Add a small patch of new land to your world that is a different colour - Make the sky change colour when your character moves on to the other colour of land.

 

Review the tasks with the class. Demonstrate the solutions to the tasks to the students, or use our walk-through video if needed:

 

 

Ask them to discuss with a partner:

• What other options did you see for when a key is pressed?
• What else could happen when you move onto different types of land (or water)?

 

Then collect ideas from the class.

Ask the students to spend some time reading through the other pages with a partner and note down any ideas it gives them for their own game on paper. They should take time to read the code in some of the examples and to try and make sense of what it means, how it might work and what they could adapt it to do. Remind them that they will be able to come back to this resource later and so they don't need to write any code down.

 

World design

The other major skill in Kodu is designing your world. There are a range of tools to help you do that, and getting to know them and practicing different techniques can really improve your games and make the worlds you design more interesting.

The student help guide contains some images of different worlds for a variety of different styles of games built in Kodu Game Lab. These will hopefully inspire some ideas.

We also have two world-building videos you can show your students to give them ideas.

 

World-building tools - part 1

This video covers what each of the world-building tools are and examples of how to use them:

• Adding and removing land with brushes - size, shape, colours
• Up/down tool to create hills, valleys, lakes, rivers, volcanos
• Spikey ground
• Flatten and smooth
• Adding liquid - water, lava etc
• Adding objects for decoration

 

 

World-building tools - part 2

This second video covers some extra world-building and game features :

• Using paths in different ways
  • Invisible paths for characters to follow
  • Visible paths for roads and actual paths
  • Paths for bridges
  • Paths for walls and fences
• Creating walls with land types
• Camera position options - follow, fixed offset, fixed, first-person point of view
• Up/down tool for platform games
• Character speech and interactions
• Grabbing/giving objects

 

 

 

Plenary

Finish off this part of the process by asking students which ideas have stood out to you? Which ones would you like to try and use in your game? Have they given you any other new ideas?

Give out the parental settings help sheets for students to take home.