Fun and games
<p>SHAWN GUST/Press Lake City High School freshman Cole Johnson reacts during an example of a game is shown Tuesday in Scott Jacobson's game design class.</p>
<p>SHAWN GUST/Press Scott Jacobson describes what students can expect from his game design class, including the opportunity to help design his Wolf Pup program aimed at helping freshmen deal with the challenges of adapting to high school life.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - Students studying web game design this year at Lake City High School will spend the next few weeks thinking about the challenges facing incoming freshmen. Teacher Scott Jacobson calls it the "Wolf Pup Project." It is a class assignment that tasks students with creating a web browser adventure game that targets eighth-graders making the transition to high school. The game's objective, Jacobson said, is to help make the switch less traumatic.
"It's going to be kind of a Mario style game," Jacobson told students.
But the students won't be developing characters that jump and climb over obstacles to collect coins like the iconic Nintendo video game character. Wolf Pup Project characters will be gathering items and making moves aimed at getting them successfully through the school day.
Each game design student will create a character and a series of levels for that character to move through. There are objectives that must be completed before a character can move to the game's next level.
Jacobson gave the students some suggested levels - wake up and eat breakfast; get schedule and find classes; deal with bullies; make friends and join clubs.
Cole Johnson, a ninth-grade student in Jacobson's class, said his first day of school has been relatively stress-free.
"Finding all the classes is the biggest thing," Johnson said.
Developing the game also challenges students to think about the consequences of their behaviors.
"Deal with bullies. Are you going to reason with them? Are you going to take a punch and get them suspended?" Jacobson asked. "Are you going to punch them and get suspended yourself? There are a lot of options." The class, called Career Tech: Game Design, has been offered at Lake City for about six years, but Jacobson began offering game design years earlier as an independent study. That was back in the days when everything had to be coded, he said, and high school students that could keep up were few and far between.
Through the years, the skills taught in the class have become increasingly relevant. Jacobson said web-based tools have eliminated the need for coding, making game design basic skills more accessible to more students.
And that could motivate a student to take it farther after high school.
Jacobson pointed to one of his former charges, 2000 Lake City graduate Joshua Haberman, now a software development engineer for Google.
The only games students are playing in the class, Jacobson said, are the ones they've designed themselves.
In about nine weeks, his kids should have their Wolf Pup Project games completed, and hopefully, they should be fun to play, he said.
"I'm going to recruit as many freshmen as possible ... We're going to have them beta test all the games, and rank them," Jacobson said.