CLASS
FAQ

This is wholly dependent on the type of class. For Explorer level classes, it's all about the foundation, critical analysis, and the basics. There is no cumulative nature to learning the skills, so more or less students can start any time and end any time, or until they graduate to the next level. For Adventurer level classes, you can picture the calendar in divided two month blocks of time. Each learning block lasts for that entire amount of time, which is approximately 10 session weeks (approximately 20 hours). Each block is a mini-course, so it is important for students to start together and learn together. These 2 month courses also flow well right into one another and are complementary, but are not prerequisites of each other. New students at this level should begin at the start of any new block to get the foundational knowledge required for the whole project two month project. The Knight level classes are long form classes like dance or music lessons. They are intended to last the majority of the year for a single, professional level project, which is intended to culminate with a release event and official publishing.

I recommend you take a look at the description of the different class types. In the description of each, there should be plenty of information that can help you guide this decision, with suggested age ranges and prerequisite skill sets (the latter being far more important than the former). If there are questions, I am always only an email away!

The block schedule is very intentional. Every single month has black out dates and holidays peppered throughout, and I know that everyone has the unexpected that might interfere with class time. I have scheduled it so that every month has multiple opportunities for make up sessions, where every student can get the receive the same amount of instruction. Also, since each session has some level of autonomous time where each student is taking skills they've learned and applying them personally to their own projects, there are often periods for me to personally help those who are falling a bit behind or have missed important concepts. There will also be open lab sessions students can attend for this or come in to work on their projects. I'm still working on the best method of signups and station reservation for these, but either way, I'm happy to work with students with whatever makes the most sense.

While this may differ from class to class, or block to block, or even week to week due to the wide array of learners, the goal is to help registered students get from their current state of knowledge to the next level of knowledge. Every class will learn overarching basics of what it's like to professional develop games; from analyzing to grayboxing to properly conceptualizing to testing, and some even thinking forward to marketing and advertising. Every class will learn how to work inside of a new development environment, and get some experience with every part of the development pipeline - art, narrative, music, level design, coding, etc.

Great question! Not at all! However, for right now, most classes will be set up around this. A good follow up is...why? And there are many good answers, that I go over with students the first day of class.

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• First, it's always good to know your roots, as they say, and working with legacy consoles such as the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System is a way to teach game history right alongside teaching game design and development
   

• Not only that, retro is very popular. An extremely high percentage of independent game studios are creating retro game throwbacks, and Nintendo is still doing very well with it's retro intellectual properties. Exploring why is a fantastic exercise!
   

• There are practical reasons - today, modern games are made by thousands of high level professional developers in dozens of disciplines who work every day for 8+ hours per day for years on what we end up playing. I only have students, young learners at that, for a few hours a week. NES games were mostly developed my very small teams in tighter windows, and the games themselves were very forgiving in terms of graphics or sound so long as the mechanics and gameplay were good. Working in that medium allows us to create cool games even if a student is not a stellar artist or virtuoso musician. We focus on gameplay first as a strategy, and retro is great for that!
   

• Just like vinyl before it, there is something magical about having a game you can hold in your hand rather than just existing in the ether. It gives the experience a tactile take away that students can own forever rather than some fleeting thing that ends up on the cloud or some website that may or may not be around forever. 

I am currently investigating how to structure hybrid and online courses. While I don't have that model set up, I should have offerings in the near future. Please make sure you're on the mailing list for this information.