There are many parents out there who might lament the hours their child spends planted in front of the television or computer, playing their favorite video game. And considering the negative health impacts of sedentary hobbies, they aren’t entirely wrong to worry.

But at the May 25 Sumner School Board meeting, directors were introduced to a textbook to be used for a full Mountain View Middle School course on video game design.

Here’s why parents should be excited:

It’s a sneaky way to get kids interested in STEM fields

It’s no secret that the United States has fallen behind the curve in math and science performance. Too many entering college students are selecting fields in the humanities, at the expense of interest in STEM fields. That’s STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – and it represents the skills that make the world go ‘round. Yet many students don’t pursue them because of a perception that they’re uninteresting, difficult, or not suited to them because they’re a right-brained person (I’ve written this before, but I should reiterate that I think the idea people are preternaturally suited to either math and science or English, art and social studies—left-brained vs. right-brained—is total bull; the patterns of mathematics are almost inseparable from well-constructed language and art).

In fact, the data in one study of cross-cultural math education published in 2008 suggested that American education may unconsciously foster lesser mathematical performance in certain groups, notably girls, based on institutionalized stereotypes.

Some people might also point to home behaviors such as, again, excessive video game playing. After all, how can little Tommy do his best in algebra when he spends all his free time battling the formidable Locust hordes in Gears of War, instead of solving quadratic formulas?

Here’s the thing, though: on the other side of the screen, video games are all math.

If your child is an avid video game player, you can bet dollars to donuts that they have at least thought about what their dream video game would be like.

With a class on video game design, that child can learn what math it takes to bring the idea to fruition. Which brings us to:

Video game design teaches students about the applied uses of what they learn in school

When I mentioned Mountain View’s video game design course to Brian Beckley, he was skeptical.

“It seems like if they want to use kids interest in video games to get them to be interested in math, they should have an actual math class instead.”

Fair enough, I said, but my perspective was that if every aspiring video game designer felt they had to focus all their energy on mastering functions and algorithms before they even touched a computer, we simply wouldn’t have video games.

Mathematics study isn’t an end in itself, it is a means to an end that isn’t always clear to students. Of course, math is a vital foundation for such varied careers as engineer, accountant, physicist and financial analyst. But simply mentioning the myriad potential math careers to students and expecting them to take the hint is a fool’s game—after all, the concept of the future might as well be an alien language to adolescents.

By putting them up close and personal with the design process for a video game, they suddenly have context. You want your hero to be able to fire a realistic rocket from his RPG? Okay, how would that rocket act in the real world? And what’s the formula to make it act that way? The students who desperately want to make their ideas a playable reality will stumble over themselves to learn the dry math to do it; more importantly, it will be interesting to them.

That’s not just true for math; even decidedly low-tech modern games can incorporate art, sound effects, music, story, and even rudimentary building architecture, all working toward a singular product.

Teamwork

The lone wolf programmer who designs a commercial game from the comfort of his garage may have been the norm in the computer entertainment industry of the 1980s, but today he is the exception to the rule.

As mentioned above, many disciplines are incorporated into today’s games. An adolescent who is interested in the field has two choices: become a jack-of-all-trades in all the necessary skills to make a single game (spreading himself thin and potentially causing him to prematurely lose interest), or try to find peers who share his interest, whom may or may not exist in proximity (and even if they do, their desired specialties might not align; five cooks and no waitstaff makes for a lousy restaurant).

Collecting child video game designers in a single classroom solves the peer problem and directly confronts students with the realities of teamwork. What design can we all agree on? How can we compromise to make it agreeable? Who will fulfill what specialty? And what will we do if someone falls behind?

Unlike a group poster or presentation, a lagging design team member with a specialized task can’t easily be covered for, creating more incentive not to become dead weight in a group project.

It provides firsthand knowledge of how “sausage” is made

If I may fulfill the role of armchair psychiatrist for a moment, I believe that, because their entire life experience has heretofore been short, young brains tend to see the world in a “fixed” way. Things are because they are, because they always have been and (for all they know) always will be.

Take movies, for example: even if an adolescent logically knows that “Pirates of the Caribbean” was a result of the combined efforts of a director, actors, camera and crew, all they see is the final blockbuster product, making the process from Point A to Point B seem akin to voodoo.

Even if she takes steps to begin learning the process on her own time, God help her if she shares her new interest with friends, peers and sometimes even family. Eventually some variation of the same suggestions will always rear it’s ugly head: filmmakers are preternaturally talented, anything less than the blockbuster standard suggests a lack of talent, it will take years of X, Y, and Z before she can even begin to break in on the process, blah blah blah.

It’s not that the naysayers are going out of their way to be cruel (though they can be exceptionally cruel), it’s the fact that while trends in music and fashion change, ignorance is always in season.

Some may remember “Solanum,” the 2007 zombie movie shot in Sumner by a small group of local high school students… oh, and close to a hundred volunteers. Teenagers took to the production like ducks to water because the process was in front of them, revealed to be both possible and <italicsplease>fun.</italics>

The remedy to ignorance is firsthand knowledge, and it’s what I suspect students of Mountain View’s video game program will be exposed to in spades.

The thing about learning the process for one trade is that it makes others seem more accessible. Even if a child eventually decides not to pursue game design as a career, he is equipped with the skills to tackle other trades with confidence.

And that should give parents reason enough to be excited.

To comment on this story, view it online at www.blscourierherald.com. Reach Daniel Nash at dnash@courierherald.com or 360-825-2555 ext. 5060.