World Building Curriculum
World building is a fundamental and intense part of video game design. Simple puzzle games like Candy Crush or Solitaire will always be around. Yet increasingly, dynamic games like Ori and the Blind Forest, or Assassin’s Creed, are akin to a living book. These role-playing games tell stories that ground the characters, complete with backstories, and humanizing the surroundings providing so much more than higher score. Now more than ever, video games that tell stories, intrigue and grip us, move us to tears or inspiration, are here to stay.
Our goal at South Bend Code School has always been teaching kids about the practical applications of technology. Our video game designing courses are incredibly popular. Instead of just jumping into a pre-made game world, downloaded over an app store, students have the power to use Unity, our game creation software of choice, to develop their own worlds. We’ve noticed, in our coding program, that teens are incredibly successful at world building due to their innate sense of curiosity. The amount of variety in a group of Unity students and their games is tied to to their sense of imagination and creativity. While one student may be working on a running game, another is on a medieval adventure, and a third is on a fruit acquisition adventure. All the while, our students are working together, using the same coding skills to build prizes, characters, and terrain. Though, sometimes, the game gets lost in translation from the student’s mind to the game engine. For all their coding, hard word, and world building, the story could fall flat. For all purposes, the game play works, but doesn’t make sense, and that’s because it’s missing something.
So, what’s the next step? How can unity developers, and our students, effectively tell a story in a video game? Animation.
Some of the most successful games build stories out, creating cities, roads, and characters that breathe life into an adventure akin to a living book, but in all effect has no grounding without animation as a plot device. Game companies solve this problem by creating a story that resonates with the viewer, that’s just interactive enough, but has cut scenes to watch. After all, a player will care and be more passionate about why the bad guys are bad, why the good guys are good, and if the battle is worth fighting if there are reasons and stories behind them.
While the idea of using animation as a story builder, creator, and conveyor is a useful tool, it can be a difficult concept to grasp in practice.
There are several types of animation:
- Traditional Animation is in 2D and hand drawn on a cel.
- 2D Animation, which is vector-based, drawn digitally.
- 3D Animation, also created digitally through CGI.
- Motion Graphics, focusing on Typography/Animated Logos.
- Stop Motion, use of clay through claymation, or cut-outs.
Be it from big productions of Pixar through 3D animation, or the stop animation of Saturday morning cartoons, using animation as a plot device allows for dynamic stories to spring forth, bringing a game together.
Using Unity as our animator as well as our video game creator, allows for students to world build and convey a more complex story while still being in the software they know and love. With our software, we are able to teach our students 2D & 3D Animation through their own created images, or via the free asset store provided through Unity. Lessons include how to navigate movement of the animations via keyframes, how to add sound, title sequences, and many more. One of our most interesting lessons we teach is an animation that runs autonomously during game play. A real world example of this lesson is a player that can run through a space ship, but look outside the glass windows to see moons revolve around an alien planet while galaxies spin in the distance. The possibilities are endless.
I am excited to introduce our new learning track, Animation. I can’t wait to see the stories, characters, and worlds our South Bend Code School students will create.
In our classes, students choose the projects they want to work on and learn at their own pace. Students are in classes with their age group (7–12 and 13–18) where they learn many skills anywhere from beginner intro coding games to coding & programming languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Python.
Learn more on southbendcodeschool.com.
