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A few months ago, Microsoft launched the Kodu Cup, a competition for kids ages 9 to 17 to design games using Microsoft's Kodu game development platform for Windows. It's a smart and simple environment that gives game designers the ability to create games in a 3D world, populated by objects and non-player characters that react to what you do. All of the objects are programmed with rules that govern how they react to certain conditions, such as moving towards you and shooting when you come in range or turning around if it bumps into a wall While this may sound simple, the games the winners created are far from it.
The three winners, Hannah Wyman (Grand Prize, 9-12 year old category), Jacen Sherman (First Prize, 13-17 year old category) and David Gardiner (First Prize, 9-12 year old category) all have a common thread: they focus on story first and game play second. Their worlds are inventive, tell a great story or aim to educate. In the videos below, each winner introduces and demonstrates their game in their own voice.
Hannah's game, Toxic, has the player working to plant trees to combat a growing toxic environment, engaging the denizens of her world to help. The author says, "My game is about how the environment is getting polluted, and we need to help shut the factories down and cause less pollution."
Jacen's game, Vortex, is probably the most complex. Following a nuclear holocaust, survivors upload their consciousness to avatars to live out their existence into a virtual world being launched into space. Unable to make it in time, one of the world's creators instead unleashed a virus into the world. The player battles the virus in a series of mini games, in a similar vein to Tron.
David's game, Alien Attack, is fairly simplistic. However, 9-year-old David is the youngest winner. In a game full of NPCs, you must survive a world under attack and locate a hidden exit.
I respect what Microsoft is doing here with the Kudo development environment. Wrapping programming concepts around a game design platform makes programming accessible to kids.
While they might not be writing code, these kids are developing programming logic. Pair these concepts with great stories and the cute characters and bright environment begin to have weight. The winners here have certainly grasped that concept, and in only a few months. I look forward to seeing how both the platform and the games kids create with it matures.
