In Richard Benavides’s Game Development class at Pasadena High School, students lived out their dreams of designing their own video games. Using Super Mario Maker 2 on the Nintendo Switch 2, students took the first steps in discovering the language of game design and developmental logic through creating their own Mario levels.
Benavides has found that Super Mario Maker 2’s software helps make beginner game design incredibly approachable and intuitive due to its preprogrammed assets that students can use like virtual building blocks. Without needing to focus on asset creation, students could focus on using iterative development to build their levels in a similar way to how it’s done in the professional game industry. Before building anything, students sketched their level layouts and player goals through storyboards, the way a professional designer would. To jump from the page to the screen, they then applied game design principles like pacing, challenge, player motivation, and feedback loops to craft a playable and engaging level.
In order to polish up a game, these game designers needed their playtesters. For that, Benavides created the Gaming Lunch Club. At the club, students from all across campus would playtest the levels created by the Game Development students and share their feedback. Important playtesting notes included whether a gameplay mechanic worked, what confused players, and where the pacing dragged. That feedback then went directly into revisions for the next playable version of the level. The Game Development students would then repeat these steps, creating new iterations of their levels until they felt their level was ready for the next and final step, The Gaming Lunch Club Playtest.
The Gaming Lunch Club Playtest was an event where students from across campus were invited to play and review the “finished” Mario levels. Students rated each level and provided additional feedback on how these levels could be fine-tuned further. The student who designed the highest-rated level received their own copy of Super Mario Maker 2 to take home. Benavides was proud of how enthusiastic his students were in embracing this project. With this project being a mirror of the industry, they were eager to develop their eye for design and computational logic in a way that feels applicable to potential future careers.
