Genre(s): Weird/unclassified (game development)
Credits: Ryan Bubinski & Zach Sims, 2011
It's time for Game Dev December!--a very special "mini-issue," if you will, of transcending pixels where every week's new game of interest will come from the area of game design and development. In the same way that we write books on how to write books, some people have designed games or gamification methods that provide instructions on using a game designer's toolbox.
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| My personal profile, showing my achievements and progress in the courses I 'm taking. |
The superheroic origin story of Codecademy simply involves two guys who, drawing from their own experiences as newbie programmers, imagined a tears-and-stress-free way of learning coding and wanted to share it with the world. It seems like that's about how most brilliant companies get started anyway, and although Codecademy is still just an infant a few months old, it's received quite the financial and educational support it needs to gain a very promising presence in the interest of aspiring programmers.
And although its name gives away its purpose as a tool for teaching programming, Codecademy's beautiful brilliancy is only truly revealed when you dare to try it out on the homepage. You're immediately presented with a terminal box welcoming you and inviting you to type in your name and get comfortable with a sort of "hello world" program in disguise. Seamlessly, you're advanced into the first lesson of the main Javascript beginners' course; and when each lesson consists of a minimalist, approachable terminal box and only a few sentences of gentle tutorial guidance, you can't help but continue onward. Perhaps if you're already a multi-lingual expert you'll find this introduction painfully obvious, but for beginners like myself and even complete non-programmers, Codecademy not only makes basic programming easy to learn, but strangely, addictively rewarding. How is this accomplished?
Duh. Gamification.
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| An example of an exercise within a lesson. |
For a refresher definition, "gamification" simply means the process of combining traditional educational methods with reward systems common in video games. Typical applications include point rankings and unlocking "achievements" or goodies. Currently, interaction with other players/students doesn't seem to be available (and I'm not entirely sure whether there are definite plans to include it) but at the very least, unlockable achievements such as course completions and level rankings for number of exercises completed provide an oddly entertaining system of self-motivation for the individual student.
Codecademy's still in a sort of unofficial beta stage and will be for a while; they're looking for instructors willing to design courses in any language, and some of the exercises are not without their odd flaws (I got stuck on a few and wished there was some direct solution/answer key available to aid my complete clueless state). But is it still a valuable resource option for future programmers? Undoubtedly. Whether you're interested in game design, software development, or simply looking to understand the kind of work that makes computers tick, give Codecademy a try--I guarantee you'll find it just as addicting as any Kongregate game you've ever played.
Tune in next week for Game Dev December #2 for learning game design through games! So incredibly meta!
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