Design, Code and Create your very own game!
The Game Development Challenge Junior (GDC Jr) initiative is a course designed to give young students a taste of what it means to become a game developer.
The current Maltese curriculum does not offer young students the opportunity to learn how to create games at secondary level, therefore we are taking the initiative to introduce this topic to young eager minds.
This course is Malta’s first summer school dedicated to game development for teenage students.
GDC Jr is targeted for students aged 13 to 15. In this age group, students would be preparing themselves for their O Level examinations and possibly their lives in post secondary and tertiary education.
This course is designed to help students appreciate more how the different subjects that they might have learnt in school, would apply in the realm of game development. It is important to note that topics such as Mathematics, Physics, Art, Graphical Communication and Computing are all very important topics in this area.
This course is designed to run over 6 weeks with lessons being held twice a week from 9am to 2pm at Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education (SMI), Hamrun. A detailed schedule can be viewed in the Events section of this page.
Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education (SMI), has been hosting a Game Development Competition (GDC) every year since 2009. This competition was designed in order to simulate the experience of the game development life cycle. It is fair to say that there has been a yearly progress in the quality of the games being developed for each competition, so much so that we at SMI have managed to make and retain a number of close contacts within Malta’s ever growing Game Development Industry.
Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education had also collaborated with St. Michael’s School in Hal-Qormi via the Kreattiv initiative. In this workshop, some lectures from SMI went to St. Michael’s School in order to teach their students how to create a Space Invaders game. The students involved were all in Form 3, and after the lessons were delivered, the students participated in a 48 hour Game Jam at Dar il-Hanin Samaritan where they were split up into groups and put the learned skills into practice by developing a game within the time allotted.
As of 2016, Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education, has been providing students with the opportunity to further their studies in Game Development through the NCFHE certified courses being the:
Diploma in Computing with Games Design and Development
BSc (Hons) Degree in Computing with Games Design and Development
Thus SMI is best placed in providing a game development course not only through its years of experience running such a course at higher levels, but also because it can follow up that knowledge with an academic degree of high quality in the area of Games Design and Development.
The long term aspirations of this summer course is to give students their first taste of what it means to be a game developer so as to fuel their passion in the subject. Hopefully it would inspire them to further their quest for knowledge in this area by participating in the GDC and also furthering their studies with one of the programmes provided by Saint Martin’s Institute of Higher Education.
We know that not everyone knows how to create a game. For some, this competition will be their first taste at what goes on in game development.
At Saint Martin's we feel that one should be given the opportunity to understand and learn new skills. We therefore provide a set of short courses, which are required to create games.
