Luleå Game Create by Luleå Makerspace

Publication date: October 16, 2019

A workshop series by Luleå Makerspace to learn computer game design and programming.

By Peter Parnes, EU Code Week Teacher in Sweden, founder and creative motor of Luleå Makerspace and Professor of Computer Science at Luleå University of Technology

Luleå Makerspace is a non-profit in the municipality of Luleå in northern Sweden with 78000 inhabitants. We help people of all ages and all backgrounds create using modern tools. Luleå Makerspace was founded in 2013 by Agneta Hedenström, Peter Parnes and Tovah Parnes and we arrange more than 100 events per year (small and big) and reach about 2000-3000 persons each year.

 

 

Luleå Game Create is a learning program for children to learn more about how to create computer games using modern tools. It consists of a series of workshops where children ages 10 – 18 create games together by following the workshop leaders under playful conditions. Here we use the game engine Unity which is a professional game creation engine.

Peter Parnes who leads Luleå Game Create has developed several workshop guides in Swedish that he and others can follow and organize their own workshops around. Based on the feedback from the workshops, the material and the format of the workshops themselves are developed and continuously improved.

 

 

The program runs during the autumn of 2019 with several workshops during EU Code Week. We have had around 15-20 participants in each workshop and the younger participants are usually joined by a parent.

Gender equality is a big part of our work at Luleå Makerspace and it makes us extra happy that we have several mothers joining us as well in the workshops. During the autumn a special session for just adult women (part of our MakeHer program) will be held as adult women are important role models for young girls.

 

 

Besides the workshops, we also have weekly Game Create evenings where anybody interested can come to the maker space and just create. We are also currently planning a full day on computer game development together with Starstable, the company behind the very popular game Star Stable Online where young girls can meet in a horse environment. During this day, they will get to create a horse game in Unity. Another planned workshop related to game creation is creating physical board game avatars using TinkedCad and 3D-printers, paper-based game design as
well as a lecture on how to create computer game music.

Overall Luleå Game Create has been very popular and over just three weeks Luleå Makerspace has gotten 40 new members as a direct result of this program.