[game_edu] GameMaker vs. Scratch

[Ian Schreiber]

To expand the original question: why only compare these two? Why not also compare with Alice 3D (which I understand is harder to use for games, but easier for animations)? Or Game Salad? Stencyl? Others?

If the goal is to teach programming, why not skip all of these and jump straight to C/C++ and teach them "real" programming already, essentially like teaching them to drive a stick shift so that learning an automatic later is easier? Or if the goal is to give them something that does games out of the box, why not Flash/ActionScript or Python/PyGame or BlitzBasic or Dark Basic?

Or I suppose, another option would be to make ALL of these available and have the students themselves choose one or more to evaluate - which would teach not only the STEM stuff, but also critical thinking and comparative thinking skills. Most of the beginner-level tools come with tutorials so the students should be able to teach themselves (at least in groups), depending on age.

I suppose it all depends on the educational goals and students' current level: getting students comfortable with fundamental programming concepts vs. game design concepts, or just making sure the students make something sufficiently impressive and/or have a fun time so as to generate further interest in the field. All of these are tradeoffs, so I don't think there's necessarily a "right" answer here, just different answers with different strengths/weaknesses.

Another likely consideration though is what tools the teacher is familiar with. GameMaker has been around awhile so it probably has the widest distribution of its peers. Using what you already know is just easier than learning and evaluating something new (which from a teacher's perspective, requires a fair amount of work: you need to be proficient enough to troubleshoot student projects effectively, so there's a bit of inertia to overcome when switching).

- Ian




________________________________
 From: Corvus Elrod <corvus.elrod at zakelro.com>
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:03 AM
Subject: [game_edu] GameMaker vs. Scratch
 

Are you ready to rumble? GameMaker vs. Scratch in the classroom. GO!

As I'm becoming more deeply involved with local education-focused groups (notably: http://ogpc.info and http://chicktech.org), I'm noticing a lot of high school and middle school educators are using GameMaker to teach introductory game design concepts as part of initiatives to get kids (particularly those under-represented in the STEM fields) interested in technology/programming. And while I wouldn't argue that GameMaker is a decent choice for people looking to prototype or rapid-develop games they intend to release, I wonder if it's actually the best choice for educational purposes.

Wouldn't Scratch make more sense? Doesn't Scratch more immediately and directly teach universal programming concepts that can be applied to much more than games? GameMaker, it seems to me, teaches you a lot of game-stuff before you ever get to the foundational logic structures of programming-think.

Maybe that's okay? Maybe that's ultimately counter-productive?

Has anyone else grappled with this? Taught both and have thoughts about the differences? I'm particularly interested in hearing stories about student engagement, successful completion of projects, and (if you have it) success rates of students who go on to major in STEM-related fields in college.

--Corvus

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