'The Game Maker's Apprentice' Book Announced

Mark Overmars has teamed up with educator Jacob Habgood to put together the forthcoming book The Game Maker's Apprentice, a complete guide for using the educational game development tool Game Maker, due to release June 26 through Apress. Game Maker has been used in numerous technology summer camps, elementary schools, highschools, and even universities as a tool for game development education. Game Maker allows the creation of PC games in a simple drag-and-drop system that makes learning to program much easier than traditional programming languages. Informal teaching materials and resources are available from various educators online, but now a complete guide will be available from Game Maker’s creator Mark Overmars and a professional game developer, Jacob Habgood. Mark Overmars is a full professor in Computer Science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he heads the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation. He is one of the founders of the Utrecht Platform for Game Education and Research and teaches courses on computer game design at Utrecht University. Jacob Habgood worked in the UK games industry for seven years, writing console games for Gremlin Interactive and Infogrames/Atari. Habgood is now a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, researching the educational potential of computer games. As part of this research, Jacob runs clubs and workshops teaching children and teenagers how to make their own computer games. The Game Maker’s Apprentice, coming out June 26 through Apress, walks readers through the creation process for nine different games using the Game Maker game creation tool. The book covers a range of genres, including action, adventure, and puzzle games—complete with professional-quality sound effects and visuals. It discusses game design theory and features practical examples of how this theory can be applied to making games that are more fun to play. The book also includes a CD containing Game Maker software and all of the game projects that are created in the book—plus a host of professional-quality graphics and sound effects available for use. Authors Jacob Habgood and Mark Overmars are aiming to pass on their expertise on both the theory and practicalities of creating engaging and entertaining games.