In the past, we would fly five teams out to the Bay Area to be finalists in a nationwide competition. This year we decided to do things a bit differently with the Grand Prize, too. Play the GMG Virtual finalist entries here. But that’s what makes their accomplishments even more impressive! All the games represent incredible work by these young developers, and we’re so proud of each and every one of them. This year’s projects were a unique challenge as our campers took on the task of creating a game entirely by themselves. Individual campers created everything from a game about a cow trying to escape a farm because his best friend was turned into a hamburger, to a white shark that wants to teach you about the environment! We met wizard lizards, amnesiac ghosts, and Yellowleg birds. The variety of the protagonists in the demos was astounding, especially since we didn’t implement our traditional team format. I’m always blown away by the creativity of our campers and this year was no exception. We also picked a more accessible game engine called “Construct 3” which works in web browsers so that campers who only had access to Chromebooks or smartphones could still be able to join us. We decided to split camp up by age groups – creating ‘GMG Virtual’ for ages 13-18 and a new free, experimental program called ‘GMG Junior’ for girls ages 8-12. We ran focus groups and tested two main elements of our curriculum – community building and game development.īased on feedback from the focus groups, we reviewed our curriculum and approached it from the lens of accessibility and simplicity. When it became clear that we needed to move the GMG Summer Camp online this year, we recognized that we had limited experience with remote learning. In the following post, co-Founder and CEO of GMG, Laila Shabir, shares how GMG Summer Camp shifted to a virtual format and highlights this year’s Demo Day finalists. This is the fourth year that PlayStation has sponsored GMG’s summer program.
Girls Make Games (GMG) is a series of summer camps and workshops designed to address the gender gap in the games industry and inspire the next generation of designers, creators, and engineers.