You severely underestimate just how difficult it is to make games. With 2 hours per week, and a team with zero experience, you won't finish much - if anything at all. You don't have to worry about signing NDAs or making money. You won't.
What you will do is have fun while learning some stuff, and more importantly create some good friends. My advice is: Worry more about the social element, that's what it is after all - social club. Temper your expectations about finishing a bunch of games for your portfolio.
Yeah, my notes here kinda skipped that. I had a bigger document that talks about that. I've been making games for around 10 years now and usually I work with professionals so I think I take a lot for granted.
Students shouldn't be underestimated though. This year I participated in a local gamejam with 3 other students that were on their first or second one and we got second place against 17 other schools. This was to me the proof of concept that a club could be possible and that they learn fast. I didn't do much either, I mostly got the project started and helped when there were issues.
2 hours per week is for meeting in person, but people can do more. At the same time everyone is at school full time so I'm not yet sure how much time everyone will have.
The social element is definitely my weakest point though as I usually only have to think about the tech.
I would recommend maybe treating the club as a more long-lived "game jam", and potentially look up structures for how those are typically run and how groups in those are organized.
I would expect any game created from the club to end up at "game jam" levels of quality (note: this is not a bad thing. Quite a few well-received and highly popular indie games such as Celeste, Superhot, and Baba Is You started from games developed for a game jam).
Would be so cool if the club grew to where we could have multiple teams and compare what each one comes up with based on a theme and set of limitations.
While doing a "proper" videogame is hard and timeconsuming, people do bang them out on the regular over a weekend or a couple of weeks at gamejams as you mentioned. I think this sounds fun, and as long as you set the bar appropriately I bet you could do something fun. My recommendations is to try and do smaller things, basically gamejam-sized things to start with, and then once you know how that's done you can potentially build something bigger. I wouldn't worry about money, and I would not try to make money selling your games, it's really hard and probably also counterproductive to your main goal - the portfolio. If you're doing this for the portfolio, it's great if anyone can just pick them up and try them out. I wouldn't worry too much about filling roles for the projects you do. As long as you've got someone that can code, you can create a game. And depending on how you feel about agentic coding that could be almost anyone. I recommend using an engine, that's going to be helpful in many ways, but also writing your own thing from scratch is a great learning experience. Once you know what you're doing the engines mostly help with polish stuff.
I think meeting up regularly sounds great, that way you can help each other out and share ideas. Not to mention that networking might be one of the most important things when building a career.
I think I should also mention that the video games industry is in a great turmoil, and nobody really knows where it will end up. Even with a great cv/portfolio it can be hard to get a job today, and things are changing rapidly. I'm working as a programmer at a gamedev company, and I don't know if my skills will still be valuable within just a couple of years.
I'm really happy that everyone here agrees about game jams being awesome!
For AI, I think it would be interesting, at least to see how it can be applied in a school context. I work a lot with it, but I see it as an amplifier tool. In some cases, it's at odds with learning since it removes a lot of the friction. (Also they cost money so unless I have a budget, everyone would have to get their own. We get a bit of free tokens with GitHub Students though.)
I'm not yet too scared about being replaced by AIs. It feels like they always need to be guided to do the right thing. I tested even the best models and they are only good up to a point. And for bigger projects, I needed to be around doing "real work" for so many hours. The AI is doing the coding but I still need to be around at least for QA tests and keep it on track to make sure it's not missing anything. What I like though is that I can go through my ideas so much faster. In my own projects, I'd usually be happy to work on one personal project per day, but now I can take on projects one after another.
I hope you're right about AI, I'm not worried about being replaced right now, it's just that it's hard to see what they'll be in the future. But I guess that's about the same for all professions right now, at least the ones where you sit behind a desk to do your work.
echoing sunset's point about just how hard it is to make a game. but theres totally a way to make it a fun experience and still wind up with something for ur portfolio maybe, its just got to be a bit smaller scale.
the main advice i give to people is that nobody has a good radar for how doable a project is at first. things sound simple at first theres a bajillion different things to learn and each new "thing" will feel like a roadblock
im a big advocate for playing flash games / mobile games you grew up on and try to make some basic recreations of them. its going to look rough, and be buggy, but i think smaller projects are going to be overall more fun and a better learning experience than being stuck on the same thing for weeks.
it could take the form of there just being a general vibe of using tetris as a vehicle to explore things like how to handle pauses, different menus, settings, save files, what adding sound effects to things are like, how would you theme the UI to make it stylized, those kinds of things
because there are a lotttt of small details and workflows that aren't technically difficult to learn, doing it for the first time on an ambitious project in a constrained timeframe is just more headaches and not as fun. and i think if you guys do get on a roll with a project, its way easier to capitalize on it and polish a small idea up for the portfolio
Yeah that's smart. For me, a lot of great game ideas came from the StarCraft: Brood War custom maps scene (one of my friends made this site https://scmscx.com/ which is so awesome!).
I should set up a shared folder for the club where people can drop references to what inspires them like art, games, music.
Small ideas is where I'm leaning, even in big projects, the structure tends to be figured out early and then doesn't change too much. So in smaller projects you can learn the same as big projects without as much of the grind. (Edit: shameless plug but I wrote about this in the past in Weekend projects.)
I really want to recruit people from different domains so that we can juice up the games.
Agree with sunset's comment. Though a game jam seems like a realistic target to aim for I think. Being able to complete a jam is already a pretty significant achievement as complete beginners.
Yeah that's true. Especially if you can combine your work to other people's. It feels so good to see it come together. And you can have people test the game and give feedback so you get better and better.
I think the game jam idea makes a bit more sense. I used to be the undergrad teaching assistant for a software development lab course at my university where students proposed a project they wanted to work on for the semester and I essentially just checked in on their progress weekly and graded them on the quality of their outputs. Most students progressed more slowly than they’d expected so I think it’s reasonable expect something similar with your students.
sunset | 11 hours ago
You severely underestimate just how difficult it is to make games. With 2 hours per week, and a team with zero experience, you won't finish much - if anything at all. You don't have to worry about signing NDAs or making money. You won't.
What you will do is have fun while learning some stuff, and more importantly create some good friends. My advice is: Worry more about the social element, that's what it is after all - social club. Temper your expectations about finishing a bunch of games for your portfolio.
[OP] Apos | 10 hours ago
Yeah, my notes here kinda skipped that. I had a bigger document that talks about that. I've been making games for around 10 years now and usually I work with professionals so I think I take a lot for granted.
Students shouldn't be underestimated though. This year I participated in a local gamejam with 3 other students that were on their first or second one and we got second place against 17 other schools. This was to me the proof of concept that a club could be possible and that they learn fast. I didn't do much either, I mostly got the project started and helped when there were issues.
2 hours per week is for meeting in person, but people can do more. At the same time everyone is at school full time so I'm not yet sure how much time everyone will have.
The social element is definitely my weakest point though as I usually only have to think about the tech.
Zorind | 10 hours ago
I would recommend maybe treating the club as a more long-lived "game jam", and potentially look up structures for how those are typically run and how groups in those are organized.
I would expect any game created from the club to end up at "game jam" levels of quality (note: this is not a bad thing. Quite a few well-received and highly popular indie games such as Celeste, Superhot, and Baba Is You started from games developed for a game jam).
[OP] Apos | 10 hours ago
Would be so cool if the club grew to where we could have multiple teams and compare what each one comes up with based on a theme and set of limitations.
Bwerf | 10 hours ago
While doing a "proper" videogame is hard and timeconsuming, people do bang them out on the regular over a weekend or a couple of weeks at gamejams as you mentioned. I think this sounds fun, and as long as you set the bar appropriately I bet you could do something fun. My recommendations is to try and do smaller things, basically gamejam-sized things to start with, and then once you know how that's done you can potentially build something bigger. I wouldn't worry about money, and I would not try to make money selling your games, it's really hard and probably also counterproductive to your main goal - the portfolio. If you're doing this for the portfolio, it's great if anyone can just pick them up and try them out. I wouldn't worry too much about filling roles for the projects you do. As long as you've got someone that can code, you can create a game. And depending on how you feel about agentic coding that could be almost anyone. I recommend using an engine, that's going to be helpful in many ways, but also writing your own thing from scratch is a great learning experience. Once you know what you're doing the engines mostly help with polish stuff.
I think meeting up regularly sounds great, that way you can help each other out and share ideas. Not to mention that networking might be one of the most important things when building a career.
I think I should also mention that the video games industry is in a great turmoil, and nobody really knows where it will end up. Even with a great cv/portfolio it can be hard to get a job today, and things are changing rapidly. I'm working as a programmer at a gamedev company, and I don't know if my skills will still be valuable within just a couple of years.
[OP] Apos | 10 hours ago
I'm really happy that everyone here agrees about game jams being awesome!
For AI, I think it would be interesting, at least to see how it can be applied in a school context. I work a lot with it, but I see it as an amplifier tool. In some cases, it's at odds with learning since it removes a lot of the friction. (Also they cost money so unless I have a budget, everyone would have to get their own. We get a bit of free tokens with GitHub Students though.)
I'm not yet too scared about being replaced by AIs. It feels like they always need to be guided to do the right thing. I tested even the best models and they are only good up to a point. And for bigger projects, I needed to be around doing "real work" for so many hours. The AI is doing the coding but I still need to be around at least for QA tests and keep it on track to make sure it's not missing anything. What I like though is that I can go through my ideas so much faster. In my own projects, I'd usually be happy to work on one personal project per day, but now I can take on projects one after another.
Bwerf | 2 hours ago
I hope you're right about AI, I'm not worried about being replaced right now, it's just that it's hard to see what they'll be in the future. But I guess that's about the same for all professions right now, at least the ones where you sit behind a desk to do your work.
ruspaceni | 10 hours ago
echoing sunset's point about just how hard it is to make a game. but theres totally a way to make it a fun experience and still wind up with something for ur portfolio maybe, its just got to be a bit smaller scale.
the main advice i give to people is that nobody has a good radar for how doable a project is at first. things sound simple at first theres a bajillion different things to learn and each new "thing" will feel like a roadblock
im a big advocate for playing flash games / mobile games you grew up on and try to make some basic recreations of them. its going to look rough, and be buggy, but i think smaller projects are going to be overall more fun and a better learning experience than being stuck on the same thing for weeks.
it could take the form of there just being a general vibe of using tetris as a vehicle to explore things like how to handle pauses, different menus, settings, save files, what adding sound effects to things are like, how would you theme the UI to make it stylized, those kinds of things
because there are a lotttt of small details and workflows that aren't technically difficult to learn, doing it for the first time on an ambitious project in a constrained timeframe is just more headaches and not as fun. and i think if you guys do get on a roll with a project, its way easier to capitalize on it and polish a small idea up for the portfolio
[OP] Apos | 10 hours ago
Yeah that's smart. For me, a lot of great game ideas came from the StarCraft: Brood War custom maps scene (one of my friends made this site https://scmscx.com/ which is so awesome!).
I should set up a shared folder for the club where people can drop references to what inspires them like art, games, music.
Small ideas is where I'm leaning, even in big projects, the structure tends to be figured out early and then doesn't change too much. So in smaller projects you can learn the same as big projects without as much of the grind. (Edit: shameless plug but I wrote about this in the past in Weekend projects.)
I really want to recruit people from different domains so that we can juice up the games.
uaeaaie | 10 hours ago
Agree with sunset's comment. Though a game jam seems like a realistic target to aim for I think. Being able to complete a jam is already a pretty significant achievement as complete beginners.
[OP] Apos | 10 hours ago
Yeah that's true. Especially if you can combine your work to other people's. It feels so good to see it come together. And you can have people test the game and give feedback so you get better and better.
artvandelay | 9 hours ago
I think the game jam idea makes a bit more sense. I used to be the undergrad teaching assistant for a software development lab course at my university where students proposed a project they wanted to work on for the semester and I essentially just checked in on their progress weekly and graded them on the quality of their outputs. Most students progressed more slowly than they’d expected so I think it’s reasonable expect something similar with your students.