Hundreds of kids hit Monash for video game boot camp

When we were first asked to speak at the Monash Computer Games Boot Camp we had no idea how big an event it would be. We expected maybe 50 kids sitting in a classroom for a few hours a day, maybe for a few days. So, when we arrived and had to fight our way through a throng of hundreds of eager young adults, we knew we were in for something special!

It turns out that the boot camp, which runs annually for year 10, 11 and 12 students, this year goes for seven full days and had over 600 attendees! The days were packed full of speakers from vendors such as Microsoft and Adobe, from games publishers and studios and sound designers. There were FPS competitions, game design workshops, Guitar Hero championships and prizes galore.

We had agreed to speak months before and, as these things go we’d only realized the night before that we needed to speak early the next day. Late into the night at our studio, with the help of our good friend Andre Spierings (the Bunni Bunni guy), we decided upon giving the students some tools to use to analyze games. What are the component parts you can strip a game down to? How can we work out what makes them fun? And after much disagreement we came up with this list: Core Mechanic, Risk / Reward, Learning Patterns and Theme.

Getting the students involved in analyzing some of their favorite online games had them jumping out of their seats to grab a mic, and we managed to keep them entertained for almost an hour — quite an accomplishment being their last of the seven days.

Our talk and most others were filmed by the crew from Level 3 and streamed live to the world. They were archived using the UStream video service. And if you’re interested in being involved in inspiring the next generation of game creators, get in contact with the Computer Boot Camp organizers.