Fábricas de Cultura
Fabricas de Cultura (Culture Factory, in a rough translation) is a project from brazilian organization POIESIS.
They build structures on vulnerable communities to empower them with access to culture and skills.
They have a wide variety of subjects to teach: from music and theatre to game development.
I taught in some units (Jardim São Luís, Brasilandia, Vila Nova Cachoeirinha, Diadema) and worked closely with the amazing people who keep this project working even if they have
to juggle chainsaws (metaphorically. Only sometimes it's literally.) and the incredible, incredible students who go there even on saturday mornings, no skipping,
and are always eager to bring new things from their repertories and build new things with what they know.
Every workshop lasts 6 months, and happens once a week.
How the class are conducted:
Analog Game and Design Thinking
In the first few classes, we do some sessions of Game Design Theory, with a lot of practical exercises.Students are incentivized to see how their work improves with iteration and theory, and how their games actually become better as they have a broader game Design vocabulary, Design Thinking techniques, and respond to playtest.
GDevelop and other engines
Usually after 3 classes and a lot of post-it notes thrown out, we start on GDevelop.I found this to be very useful, as the browser based, and no-coding system teaches a lot about programming logic without the actual syntax.
Here we produce a 2D platformer game with a checklist of mechanics, but in every class students are encouraged to experiment with what they know, and the individual end results always diverge a lot and become very novel.
Unity
After the 2D game is finished, we start experimenting with an industry-standard engine and we create a 3D game.They feel how it is to play on the interface, make simple projects with Unity Primitives, then go to a 1st person project.
Each 2 students create their own ‘survival island’, also with a checklist of mechanics.
By this point on the workshop, students are also understanding what they are individually good at, so they start putting their their creations on each other’s projects. It’s not uncommon for a student to create a song, a 3D model, or a specific script for example, to another of their peer’s projects.
Online Groups
I keep some online groups to keep class notes.They do become hubs of technobabble and game development shitposting for students at some point,
but students eventually turn to organize participation on game jams, share their code, designs and arts.
(The memes are pretty good tho)
Personal Journey
Each student selects, in the few first classes, a “Personal Journey”. This is a specific area of game development they’d like to understand more.I then bring material every week that friends from the industry point me towards.
They progress on their free times, and some cool stuff already happened with Personal Journeys:
- Personal projects
- Game Jam participation
- Cross-projects between students or other courses
Thunder Challenge
In this system, every student chooses a class (Warrior, Healer, Mage) with specific skills they can use on themselves or each other."Skills" are things like: leaving the classroom, using Google or getting clues on their Class Challenges.
They get their XP points and level up for doing things like:
- Answering correctly my questions, helping someone on their answer - or asking their own questions
- Helping their fellow students with Skills or on their projects
- Delivering cool projects, designs or implementations
- Correcting mistakes from my lectures
- Engaging on a Personal Journey, and advancing n their Personal Journey
I borrowed the name from my university professor Ricardo Troula, who had a similar system on our classes. Thanks, Troula!