The year was 1988. I was in 4th grade, and I designed a video game all on my own called Freedom Fighters, complete with character designs, item inventories, and levels drawn out on graph paper (inspired by Nintendo Power maps like the one below)
I mailed it in to Sega of America, and I waited 6-8 weeks for a response. As a young person I understood that this was how long it took for mail snails to transport important items through commercial channels at the time, and though it always felt like an eternity, I was patient.
No response came.
My foray into video game design wasn't to arrive until a few years later, and it wasn't a parcel on my doorstep. In 1994 the beginnings of the Internet were taking shape, and an online community formed around creating "mods". Independent programmers created utilities that dissected certain popular computer games and offered vast creative freedom to modify the original content into completely new stories and worlds.
Flash forward 20 years, and there are a vast array of apps targeting every niche of the gaming world to create exactly the kind of game you want, without even needing to know more than a few lines of code. Some tools, like Scratch, use their own drag-and-drop language.
It's important to set novice programmers up for success. They'll be more inclined to go deeper next time. As rapidly as online environments are gaining mainstream influence, the relevance of computer programming in grade school education increases.
I'm shocked at the ingenuity that my students have exhibited in game design! No matter how drag-and-drop simple the code is, it's consistently been some of the most intense problem-solving I've ever seen a middle-schooler tackle.
The future of storytelling in my classroom belongs in part to video game design, and my 4th grade self couldn't be happier.
PS - The game design software I wish I'd had back in 1988: Pixel Press Floors. Designing on graph paper!
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