As most games students come into a games program excited to make games as soon as possible, I designed an introductory class to game development. The class uses Game Maker Studio and its goal is to get students of any level to copy three influential 2D games. In its current iteration, the course has students recreate Pokemon, Street Fighter II and Plants vs. Zombies. The skills that are taught in all three modules provides them a basic understanding of programming and 2D art so that they can reinforce what they have learned through a personal end-of-semester game in a genre of their choice.

To ensure that a student with any background can take the course (regardless of whether she has a degree in computer science or she has never programmed before), the course is highly goals-oriented so that the course can customize itself in correspondence to the student's skill level. The course uses a hybrid format in which students follow along with interactive videos so that each student can advance at her own pace.