Thursday, March 17, 2016
By: Matthew Doucette
Allow me to introduce xona.com/learn, the Xona Games Learning Center and Knowledge Base.
Long story short, it offers tutorials, lessons, and articles on how to make games and more. This is closely connected to Kids Make Games.
As you may know, I am a huge fan of education -- not necessarily a fan of our school system as it currently exists, but a fan of actual education itself and a fan of helping improve our schools. I have pushed out Frank Smith's Insult to Intelligence many times and have been glad to see Sir Ken Robinson taking over his work in the current age. I am working closely with Brilliant Labs, a not-profit organization founded by successful technology entrepreneurs in the Atlantic provinces, who have the same aspirations as I do. Specifically, I am working on a new project, Kids Make Games, with Brilliant Labs to help teach both game design and game programming directly in our Nova Scotian (Canadian) schools. This project is currently underway and I hope to share some results with you soon.
For now, this is just a tiny intro into what lead me to create xona.com/learn. There is much more. Along side this new movement to improve and reform our schools to start teaching technology and focusing more on project-based learning, I am contributing the best that I can.
While much of the coding taught in schools is focused on Scratch and Code.org (of Hour of Code fame) -- both great projects -- at xona.com/learn I am trying to teach the exact technologies that I use at Xona Games to create our Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One games. I am trying to connect the knowledge of coding to accomplishing something (the most) meaningful. Releasing a game on a gaming console has been a childhood dream to me, and I assume it is an aspiration to many others gaming enthusiasts.
That is all.
About the Author: I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning indie game studio that I founded with my twin brother. We make intensified arcade-style retro games. Our business, our games, our technology, and we as competitive gamers have won prestigious awards and received worldwide press. Our business has won $190,000 in contests. Our games have ranked from #1 in Canada to #1 in Japan, have become #1 best sellers in multiple countries, have won game contests, and have held 3 of the top 5 rated spots in Japan of all Xbox LIVE indie games. Our game engines have been awarded for technical excellence. And we, the developers, have placed #1 in competitive gaming competitions -- relating to the games we make. Read about our story, our awards, our games, and view our blog.