 Welcome, and thank you for coming to our second Cold Games Challenge webinar. My name is Monica Rose at Surprise Connect, and we are creating a better world with some really, really great opportunities for you guys. We're going to start with our Cold Games Challenges, really calls on young innovators ages 10 to 18 across the globe to create new, fun games that envision and ultimately help build a better future for everyone. By incorporating inspiration and creativity into the next generation, these new games will allow young creators to hone critical skills in coding and game design and shape technology and your world rather than being shaped by it. So please join and create fun and immersive video games that entertain and dare to imagine creative solutions to some of the biggest global challenges. Go to coldgameschallenge.org to sign up. We would love to have you. And once again, thank you for coming, and now we're going to get into more information about the wonderful speaker we have today, who will be teaching you more about how to take your idea to a game concept. So today's speaker will be Shereen Laura Salimia. She is founder and CEO of Playworks in WizGirls Academy. Playworks is an interactive media company that creates multi-platform immersive experiences. At WizGirls Academy, students can engage in project-based learning with tech literacy while acquiring holding skills and entrepreneurial tools and building confidence as members of their communities. Using gamification with the healthy balanced lifestyle is the slam. As a thought leader and tech pioneer, she's created programs for the White House Council on Women and Girls and collaborated with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, at the Reach Higher Education Summit at the White House. She also hosted the first hackathon for Women and Girls at the White House. In 2014, she hosted Kids Hack for LA in collaboration with Mayor Garcetti, the White House and Will I Am's I Am Angel Foundation. Shereen is also a TEDx speaker and she has esteemed panelists from the Millican Institute Global Conference. She's been honored with exemplary distinctions in the LA County Pioneer Women of the Year Award, the IJWO Women of the Year Award, and in 2015, she was honored as a Tribeca Disruptor Innovation Fellow. She's currently advisor to the Pixel Exchange and on the Executive Committee for the Television Academy's Interactive Media Peer Group. Please join me in welcoming Shereen Lauer-Ras, Selenia. Monica, thank you for that introduction. Welcome everyone. This is the schedule of what we're doing today. So I'm going to tell you who I am. We're going to talk about how do we create a game from an idea. We're going to talk about a game design document. So what are you supposed to include? The development and process of games and wireframes and storyboards. I'm going to get into a deep discussion about that. We're going to do a paper wireframe. So I hope you have your paper and pencil handy. And I'm going to give you a list of resources and then we're going to answer your questions. So I hope you're ready. OK, so I grew up as a gamer. Anybody recognize these? So I was obsessed with Atari 2600, as you can see, and Nintendo. And I'm the champion for Miss Pac-Man. And of course, you can see Super Mario Brothers. Did you know that gaming is STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math? So when I was little, I saw this movie. It was a long time ago in the 80s because I'm a child of the 80s with Tom Hanks. And that's what I wanted to do. So I used to test toys. So dream big, but be careful what you wish for because I used to do that, like I said. So started out working on Barbie in market research and then went to work at MGA, started the research department, and then was the brand manager for Bratz. I did that for a really long time. And then I had an existential crisis, which led me to my journey, which I now call on the Tech Yellowbrick Road. As you can see, this is the Yellowbrick Road. And it's a journey, not a destination. So first, we're going to talk about what do you need for your first game? First, you need a proof of concept and a first step prototype. Then you're going to learn about the elements and the mechanics of the game, what you need for the game and the rules. And you got to keep in mind, writing a journal and writing your game design experience down every day helps you think outside the box. And you got to start with why. So when I met Simon Sinek, he asked me what my purpose was and why. So I want to ask you, why do you want to make a game? And what's the purpose of the game? So think about that. And that should be your first journal in your game journal. Here's a little chart. So there's a couple of different things that you need. So step one is the high concept. Step two is the pitch. And if anybody's seen Shark Tank, you know what a pitch is. That's very similar, except this is game focused. Step three is the concept. Step four is the game design document. Step five is the prototype. So this could be starting with a paper prototype and then an actual digital prototype. And then step six is the production. OK, so what does your game need? Exactly. Well, like I said, starting with paper and pencil is super important. A whiteboard is always amazing. We'll write, once said, and we'll write as the creator of The Sims. A game design doc is a living memory of a document. So it's really important to have one. Start with an idea and a high concept, a brief description, the theme of the game and what the story is, the objectives and the goals, the victory conditions, how they're going to win or not lose, but come back and win again, the mechanics of the game, physical actions the player can take, the rules of the game are super important, and what kind of conflict does the player get into? What gets in the way? And most importantly, this is the most important part. How do you get hooked onto the game? So think about, how do you want your player to get hooked onto the game? And this is a great chart for that. So there's the player, the characters, the hook, the story, the larger story, the theme, the mood, and the motives. All right, so here's a couple of types of games. I'm sure you guys can tell on the top, there's the 2D versus 3D games. There's puzzle games, which I grew up with with Tetris and I literally would go to my Game Boy all day long. There's the RPG games, which are role-playing games that are Zelda and then platformer, which is Super Mario, one of my favorites. Okay, so another big thing that I'm really telling you guys to focus on, especially because I come from a research background, is doing research. So research helps with everything when you're starting to make a game and like you can just watch a movie or a cartoon or a magazine, like read a magazine, get some books and just turn on some music. That's a good place to start. Then when you get the magazine, maybe you want to cut out some pictures and kind of make a vision board and like this is what the game feels like to you. It's like a storyboard in a sense. This is where you need to be super creative, draw out your vision. You can even use pencils and colored pencils and markers. There's literally inspiration everywhere and the most important thing that Yoda says always, and I have a bracelet to remind me of that every day, is do or do not, there is no try. Okay, here's a great example of a game document, game design. So there's the title and the name, the theme and the log line, the goal of the gameplay, the mechanics, the rules, the victory conditions, think of design and map out tech, the use of programming, the art, the sound and the production and how much fun is it? Like on a scale of one to 10, like test it with your friends and see what they think. Here's a little bit more deep into the development process. So there's pre-production, which is planning and brainstorming for ideas. Like I mentioned, you're doing the vision board and you're cutting out magazines and stuff. Then you think about what are the characters in the story that will take place in your game? Then there's production when you have an idea of what your game is going to be about and then you're going to start creating it from scratch. And then there's research and testing, which we also have used quality assurance to get out bugs. So teams will play test games to find bugs and then bugs are usually accidental errors, but I think research as in market and consumer research, like getting five of your 10 of your friends together to test the game and see what they think in terms of like how many bugs does it have, but also is it fun and what do they think we should add or not add? Listen carefully. And then publishing nowadays it's really easy because you can publish in the Apple store, on Android, Steam or even Roblox. I heard a lot of people are doing stuff on Roblox and you just got to create buzz around your game. So think about how can you make it go viral? All right, so then you're going to create. So this is where writing comes in and like I said, writing and having a journal is amazing. So what's the journey the hero or the heroine is going to go on? Does the world have a history? What kind of art do you want to include? Are you going to draw a sketch of the characters and a world to start out with? And then maybe you're going to work with a designer. Then what kind of skills or powers are the characters going to have? What's the player using to overcome abilities and the enemies? What kind of programming are you going to include? And writing the rules of the game in a clear fashion is important. And then also the music and the sound is really cool. Like you can even record sound effects on your phone or with your voice. Like you can do anything now. There's so many opportunities. Okay, here's some example of some wireframes. If anybody guessed, this is YouTube, yes. So the X in the box is where the logo or the picture goes and then the lines are where the writing goes. And then here's a couple of examples of wireframes and prototypes. But designers use wireframes and prototypes all the time to make websites easy and fun before the coding even happens. And especially for games, it's a really good place to start. Okay, so here's an example of a wireframe that I made. Anybody want to guess what that is? All right, I think you might have guessed it right. That's Google. And it was very simple. I just took a piece of paper and I put an X in a box and that's where the Google logo goes. And then the search bar is where the search bar is and then the rest of the lines are just words. Now, I think you should definitely start maybe with like taking a wireframe and making an example for yourself with a pencil and paper, but also storyboards and prototypes. So these are some examples of storyboards and prototypes. And the biggest thing I found is starting out, even taking a piece of paper like this, if you guys can see what I did, I took a piece of paper and I kept folding it into halves and halves and halves and I got this. And so when I opened it, I can see like the storyboard. So like each of these will be a box for the storyboard similar to what you see here. And this is your paper and pencil storyboard to start out with for your game. All right, well, it's not always a straight line to the finish line. As you can see, I've been on the yellow brick road on the left and the red brick road, which kind of is like the hamster wheel. So you just got to keep moving forward. I have the opportunity to meet with Jordan Metchner. He's the creator of Prince of Persia, the games. And I asked him, what do you recommend when you are starting on a new game? And he asked me if I was a gardener and I said, really, okay, no, but okay. So he said, you got to plant the seeds, water them, give them sunlight, let them grow organically. And like I said, you got to move forward no matter what. There's always detours, there's always changes ahead, but you got to follow your path and never give up because you're closer than you think. Now I ask you, what do you want to do? But here's some advice. So follow your intuition is the biggest one. Do research, I still go to the library. It's the best resource. Google is literally at your fingertips on your phone, on your iPads, on your laptops. Don't be afraid to ask questions and this could be from anyone. Be curious, take chances, keep learning new coding languages, I'm still learning new coding languages even though I learned my first code which was Fortran back in the 80s. Play all kinds of games, social games, fun games, educational games, may the force be with you and be the change you want to see in the world. All right, so here's a list of resources. There's stencil.com, which you can make games without code. There's flowlab.io, which is a visual game creator again without code. So you don't need to know coding and be a pro yet. You can learn how to code and do this at the same time. There's twinary.org, which is an open source tool for writing interactive games and fiction, which is actually really cool and you can follow the paths that they lead. There's Discord, which is a platform designed for creating communities ranging from gamers to education and businesses. Discord specializes in text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. There's Slack, which is really good for team communication. And actually Slack started as a game initially but then turned into Slack because they pivoted. There's Google Docs, which is really good to post ideas with your team. And the biggest thing I found recently is Microsoft Teams has something very similar to Slack but it's got the phone and the video chat and the whiteboard, which is really cool. You can draw on it and it's all in one place. You don't need to go anywhere else. Okay, so I can't stress this enough. When you finish your game, so let's see. Now you have a white piece of paper prototype. You have a storyboard prototype like we did here. You have everything, all of the elements that are coming together, the visuals, the design, all of the creative stuff. You think about who you wanna work with on this project and then you gotta test it with your friends and family maybe even to see what they think, how they're doing with the game. And I would say at least play tests with 30 people. I think that's a good amount of numbers to see how they do and keep testing it. Like just because you tested it once doesn't mean it's gonna be done. Like it's super important to keep testing and follow up. So following up leads to being a great success. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my game development tools with you and good luck. And I hope that you guys do really well and don't forget to sign up for the Code Games Challenge. Thank you Sherry. Thank you so much. Thank you again for having me. This is really fun. And I know we put in the chat, if you have questions, put it in the chat, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube. And we did receive some questions before. So give me a second and I will get there. When it comes to beginning the design of your game, what are like, put it in a certain order, what's the first thing to do? Think the first thing to do would be research. Like I said, like watching movies and animated series or like music or cutting out like for the story board or the visualization board, like all of the boards that I talked about. I think that's the first thing cause you kind of want to get the feel for what your game is first before you start, before you start with the paper and pencil. Next question is, I'm new to this. But I kind of want to, they want to make a game like something that they play. They mentioned Fortnite. Is this something feasible for somebody who's new? You know, that's a great question. I think Fortnite is a little bit more of a complicated game. But I think you could start with the best place to start with something like Fortnite is this storyboard and putting all of the different things So storyboards are kind of like wireframes in a sense where every single box has the different like click that you go on. So the different game, when it moves to the next area, the next area, those are all different storyboards and different wireframes. So I think starting with that would be a good place to start because the big games like Fortnite, they are super advanced and you got to start like really small on those. The next question is kind of about wanting to create a whole video game. Should you create, try to create a whole video game or should you try to make something that's quick and easy to play? You know, that's a great question. Well, I learned after Angry Birds came out how they went through like, I think 500 different versions of that game and it was super hard and like they play tested it and didn't work out and they went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And so they finally made it work and I guess they researched it with enough people where they were like, okay, when they throw the rock at the birds, that's what worked. That's what's the hook of the game. So I think it's really important to have the research part of it down packed and when you get to that game and if you're new to something like this, it's like, you got to take it one step at a time. That's why I'm like really pushing the wireframes on the storyboard and literally every box is like one step at a time. Like don't overwhelm yourself thinking, oh my God, I need to make this big game and it's gonna be massively huge. And it's awesome, which is great. But I think literally like Rome wasn't built in a day. Like they build like one brick at a time, one step at a time. So start with that. It's super important. Okay. Thank you. And we have another question. Which coding languages do you think are important or relevant for a new younger coder? Like middle school, high school age? All right. So like I said, I was in third grade and I learned Fortran because I had a female computer science teacher here in LA, L-A-U-S-D. But now that's a little outdated. So I start and at Whiskills Academy, we teach HTML and CSS and then JavaScript. So those are the three I would do in that order because HTML is the text and CSS is the design and JavaScript adds interactivity. And once you're done learning those three languages, you can learn so much more like HTML5, adds more interactivity and then there's Python and Perl, there's so many different languages. But then when you know those, you can easily learn Unity, which works very closely with all of them as well, which is the game engine. Thank you. Thank you. You mentioned Unity. Is that something that we can make our games in for the Code Games Challenge? You can. So there's actually two game engines right now. There's Unity and Unreal. Unity is a little bit more, I think, better for younger and new people to game design. Unreal is a little bit more advanced. So it just depends on like if you put a team together and what are the experiences that your team has had, but I would start with, and I know you guys have a list of other potential resources that they can use to make games. So I'd say I like Unity, but I would say also look at that list because there may be others that you wanna refer to. Let's see. I know you shared the wireframe. Is there a place where they can go to get a template or to download the wireframe or the storyboard? So it's literally like what I showed you. I mean, it's a little bit tricky. I mean, you could Google a wireframe and see what comes up, but just literally just take a piece of paper and I don't know maybe if we can go back to that slide. I can show you like it's really easy. It's like it's the X in the box, which is the logo and then there's the lines which are the words and that's like a wireframe. But then the storyboard is a little bit more advanced because it's literally frame by frame and all of the pictures have very specific things of what the game does. It's like the path of what the game does. So I would start number one with the wireframe and then get to the storyboard and then you can get to the prototype after that. Okay, but if you Google it, you'd be able to find a template of a wireframe or a template with storyboard. You might, I'm not sure. I mean, this is what we use in our curriculum. So I haven't actually done that, but you never know. Like I said, Google is your friend at this point. Like anything you're not sure of, use Google or you can reach out to me. Like I said, my info is up on here. I'm happy to help. I really like games that are about like space or exploring new worlds. Is that a game as a newcomer that's easy to create? That's a great question. Well, there's all kinds of games. That would technically be an adventure game I think unless you wanna add something else. Like what are they doing in space? Are you exploring? Think about it. Is it a role-playing game? Are there characters in space? Like think about all the different ways that you can spin the space game. There's a really interesting company that did a couple of games that were all about like art and exploration. So it wasn't really a game with a character. It was just kind of flowing through art. And it was actually called Flow. One of my friends started that company and they were partnering with Sony for a while. So you might wanna check out Flow, the game and see what you find. Because it's not a typical game. So there's so many different genres of games obviously. Like we went through some of them. But like right now, eSports is really big. Obviously Fortnite and all the stuff that's happening with Epic right now is really big. League of Legends has been big for a while. There's so many different genres of games. I mean, for a while, Farmville was really big. And then there was the other farm game which is not coming to my mind right now that Nintendo does. There's so many different types of games. So don't limit yourself to something. So like the space one sounds really, really cool. And I would say, think about like how you wanna make that game. Is it just an exploration or is it more? Like is there adventure? Are they going into different planets from space? Like what's happening? Think about that. And research again, all that stuff. Cause again, Google is your friend. There's a ton of books I'm sure on space and Express has done a lot of stuff with space as well. So it's a good place to start. We have another question. I'm in high school and looking at gaming as a career. What's the difference between a game developer and a game designer? So the developer starts everything from scratch and actually develops the game. Like I showed you, like the prototype and all that stuff. The designer adds the elements of design. So there's the art, there's so many different things that comes with design. So each one has their own separate career, but there's also so many more careers in gaming that you never thought of. There's like the Q and A, there's like the coders, there's the engineers, there's the graphic designers, there's like, there's so many lists of games. If you just Google like game design or game development careers or careers in the gaming industry, you'll see so many different careers in the gaming industry. The next one is about just testing. Once you have started designing, you have to gather, it moves for a little bit. What is there, what do you do to test it or like to find bugs so you can correct it? So I recommend, like I said, starting with the research, market research testing and consumer testing and seeing how they do and then looking for bugs in the middle of it and seeing if there's any issues that come up in the game, like maybe one character freezes or like the music doesn't go together with it. There's so many different bugs that could be, there's bugs that could be in the code, there's bugs, there's so many different bugs that could be in a game, you never know. So when we actually first tested our first like alpha version of mind games that we're creating at Playworks, we had an issue of download time. So that was a big issue and technically a bug. So there's so many different bugs that you can find when you're testing your games. So make sure, because when you want to launch it on the Apple store or on Roblox or wherever, you got to make sure the game is fully working in 100% capacity because that's how you make it work. This one is from a young lady. She's interested in gaming coding but she finds that she's one of the only, one of two in the classes of the programs. As a woman, do you have advice for her as she's not finding representation in her classes or programs? This is a great question, I get it all the time. So interestingly enough, when I grew up here, I had a female computer science teacher, like I said, and she always said, we're all doing this together, there was nothing about girls or boys, we all did it and we all did it equally and that's why I push equality a lot. But I can see that, like I can see going to Game Developers Conference initially when I first started back in the day, there was not that much women in the industry, but the fact that you're really interested is really important. So I think keep going and don't get discouraged because there's not a lot of women. I think once you see that this is your passion and this is something you're really interested in, you can get other friends to get into it as well. But because I think part of the issue is nobody's ever thought that it was like really cool or nobody even knew that game design was a career, right? And especially as women, like for me, I was wanting to be like Tom Hanks in the movie big and that was a guy, but I didn't really look at him and the gender didn't really care, I didn't care for that, like it didn't matter to me. It was like, I want to be a toy tester, right? And then now when I kind of had my reinvention, but went back to my roots because I grew up as a gamer, it was, well, I don't care that there's not a lot of women in the gaming industry, although when I started there was way less. Now there's way more. So like I said, just keep moving forward and don't get discouraged and you can get your friends interested as well. Just make it fun. And I think that's part of the thing. Like it's so much fun. Like I go back to my gaming roots and the thing is like I'm an 80-style gamer, so it's a little bit different, but I think it's, I go back to, it's like a nostalgic thing for me. And I always look for that. So I think keep moving forward and reach out to me if you have any questions and I'm happy to help. Okay, this one's kind of similar to that question. It's like, where do I meet more girl gamers? So I know there's a lot of meetups for older people. It depends on your age range, but there's a lot, there's like girl gamer groups, there's I'm sure like on a different social media, like between Instagram and Facebook. There's a lot of groups. There's even a meetup which I'm aware of, which is girl gamer. It just depends like, are you in high school? Maybe at your high school, you wanna start a girl gamer group? Like I know whenever I started something and there wasn't something, I would just start it. Like there's nothing wrong with that. Take initiative. Like I said, you can attract more of your friends into it and make it fun and make it like, I mean now that we're in this kind of new age, like make it like a Zoom like meetup where everybody kind of brings their favorite like drink or like favorite lemonade or whatever, whatever you wanna do to like have like a hangout like via Zoom or whatever online. Make it just a fun experience and I think you'll attract more people. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, this next question is kind of general about the Code Games Challenge. They were wanting just pretty much to know, this is cool, how do I take the first step of like getting involved? And I can kind of help with that question, Cherine. Thank you for being interested in getting involved. You can go to codegameschallenge.org. That's where you can register. Please know you'll need, if you're under the age of 18, you'll need a parent or guardian to be able to register for you and get you plugged in. We are just under a month away from the deadline to submit your game. That deadline is October the 14th. We're looking for youth across the globe, ages 10 to 18 to create video games and it can be about anything you'd like. You only have to make five minutes of a playable game and we even have a written game track. So if you don't have access to consistent internet or a bit overwhelmed by the task of being a novice and learning from scratch, how to create the five minute playable video game, you can turn in a written game design. And the wireframe and the storyboard that Cherine showed is a really great part of what you can put together in the written portion. You can type up things. You can include graphics, drawings that illustrate what someone would have to do in your video game. So I think it's a very important thing to note. There's really great cash prizes. There's about 30 prizes that range from $1,000 to $2,000 USD. So that's really exciting. Another reason for if you are under the age of 18 to get your parent or guardian involved because when you win, they'll need to be the one to receive that money on your behalf. We're really excited for the opportunity to have you have an opportunity during this weird time of COVID-19 to learn a new scale, to do something really fun. You can do it individually or you can also create a team of up to four people. So it can be you and your siblings or classmates or people that you're in programs with or even people you don't know. You can come together to create a team and create a game because like Sherene said, there's lots of opportunities when it comes to creating a video game and you don't have to know how to do everything. Maybe you're really good at the storyboarding and the story and maybe someone else is really good at the coding. Maybe someone else thinks they love music so they think of all the sound effects or all those things that you can put into a game. It takes a lot of people to create those big games like Fortnite and Minecraft. So you can create your own team of four or less people who have really great skills in different areas who can create a really, really great video game. So once again, the website is codegameschallenge.org. You can go there, sign up and getting them running to be a part of this challenge because it's really great. We have some great resources on our website but we also are having webinars. We had one back in July, this is our second one. Another will be coming up in October. So it's a really great way that we're able to kind of move you through the process to get into a place where you know, you come up with a new skill this summer and you can say one thing I did during COVID-19 is I designed a video game. I stepped out of my comfort zone. I decided to learn a new skill and this is new skill that can be a new career path for you. Who knows, you can make the next Fortnite. So I think it's very exciting. So once again, the website is codegameschallenge.org and the submission deadline is October 14th. So let me double check if there's any other questions. Yeah, it looks like that's it for the questions. So thank you so much, so much. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for joining. We appreciate you. If you have questions about the competition in general, you can contact us at XPConnect at XPrize.org. If you are in the Code Games website and you're in there doing your submission and you may be having questions or needing answers, you can actually contact our support. The support email is support at codegameschallenge.org. So just giving you a little note there and that is it for us from the team from XPrize and Eli Media in regards to the Code Games Challenge. Thank you guys so much for coming to our second webinar. Stay tuned for details on our next one coming up in October. Thank you so much, guys. Be safe and have a good day. Bye-bye. Thank you all. Good luck.