The Game Development Club encourages students to spark an interest in game development so students can experience different types of character design or computer programming.

The club meets on Tuesdays at 3:30 in technology teacher Avery Travis’ Zoom meeting room. “Whether it’s character design or computer programming, we want to allow students to experience various means of Game Development,” Officer Samuel Li said.

So far the club has not had any specific topics for their games but they are planning to cater to the seasons ahead. “As the holidays roll around, we are planning to start some sort of holiday-themed game,” President Christopher Li said.

The club is using the more laid-back learning schedule this year to spread out activities throughout the virtual semester. The club is being more flexible with their projects this year as well because they are aware that people might have issues with internet connection. “We’ll try our best to plan out events for everyone, but ultimately this year will be flexible and we want to adapt to what everyone feels like doing,” Christopher Li said.

The Game Development club is starting off by using Scratch, which is a simpler game development program. They plan to move on to more complex programs when the members are ready for a challenge. “We are starting off by using Scratch until everyone’s ready to move on to a more advanced game engine,” Christopher Li said.

The club hopes to participate in online jams, which are similar to hackathons but more specific to game development. However, they are being more flexible with the timing and dates because of the circumstances this year. “We will be hosting many activities throughout the year and we will have a lot of fun together,” Samuel Li said.

The club accepts new members and welcomes anyone who wants to join, due to the members’ passion for teaching others about game development. “Our goal for the club is to encourage students to develop an interest in the game development field,” Christopher Li said.

Christopher Li created the club with Michael Li because they shared a similar passion for game development. Also they wanted to implement their programming knowledge into creating some of the games they grew up playing. “We wanted to promote something tech-related outside of what is taught in the tech classes at Wootton,” Christopher Li said.

The club is using learning from home to implement and utilize softwares that would be difficult to use if they were in school. “The virtual semester is helping us implement software that would be near impossible to use at Wootton after school,” Christopher Li said.