Scotland in Focus: The kids are alright

It's nice to bring Scotland in Focus back after its brief sojourn with an article about introducing young people into the world of games design.

On Thursday 15th April 2010 I was invited to Stevenson College in Edinburgh to see what was happening at a Videogames Workshop in the Edinburgh Science Festival. These workshops, each lasting 2 days, were directed towards 12 to 16 year olds on their school holidays. The event was fully booked, in fact when I walked into the room the buzz was palpable.

The workshops were the brainchild of the team behind Dare to be Digital from Abertay University and students from Dundee had given up four days of their valuable time, with project deadlines looming, to come and mentor the children. Let's remember that these children were on their holidays but nothing was distracting them from the task at hand; creating a great product to be viewed by their parents, arriving at the end of the events, and judged by the ubiquitous Brian Baglow and myself.

Games were of two types with templates for a 2D shooter and platformer available but the design, feel and subject of the game was up to the teams. One team had boldly decided to combine both and when I arrived they were desperately trying to get the two parts to gel whilst those around them seemed to have working games which needed some work. One game really stood out but we'll get to that later.

There's always a technical side to this type of event and Brian discusses more technical details in his article at Scottish Games Net. For SquareGo I was potentially seeing the next generation of game designers working hard. Working as teams, having pride in their project and proving that they could do it for themselves, their parents and the watching media with BBC Radio 4 arriving to cover the event.

As deadlines fell the work became more feverish and when the bell tolled all involved were pleased to see that every game worked and I moved around between the teams to see what they had achieved. With many teams there was a lot to look at but the quality of each game shone through. Here we had heroic monsters fighting evil knights, games involving colouring blocks, hamsters fighting for freedom and much, much more. Even fat children farting to kill off healthy food and... erm... cars.

There was something of my childhood here too as I looked at games that reminded me of classics like Manic Miner or a learning curve equal to its stable mate Jet Set Willy.

It would have been hard to judge a winner if one game hadn't really stood out and I was pleased that there were no runners up prizes as the competition between the other games was tight and would have been hard to judge. As we crowded into the auditorium the children's parents joined us to see what they had done.

One game, the shooter Paper Cuts, beggared belief. A paper plane was guided by the player across a mountainous backdrop with the texture of cardboard. You had to shoot away pencils and scissors that came at you at a dizzying rate. This side scroller was tough but looked gorgeous, handled well and had added gravity. It wouldn't be an exageration to say it was one step from publication.

I hope that many of the games I saw at the workshop will make it to various formats and if you see Paper Cuts on XNA or any other format and you hanker for a 2D shooter it's worthy of your time.

SquareGo can only hope that the event is repeated next year as the buzz it created, the enjoyment it brought and the skills on offer from such a young crowd were incredible to see. It shows that there is a future in the videogames industry and a strong one at that.

The event will feature in BBC Radio 4's Click On which will be broadcast at 16:30 on Monday 26th April GMT.