Making a Game, Step by Step: teacher key

How Video Games Are Made, grade 10 edition, written for 10th grade. Teams of artists, designers, programmers and testers build games with engines and prototypes. Games go back from today's phones to early computer games like Spacewar!.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What is a prototype?
   • A simple early version used to see if an idea works (answer)
   • A finished game sold in stores
   • A list of bugs
2. What does a localization specialist do?
   • Draws the characters
   • Adapts a game so it works for players from different backgrounds (answer)
   • Looks after player events and newsletters
3. After developers mark a bug as fixed, what does the QA tester do?
   • Closes the report without checking
   • Starts a new game
   • Repeats the same steps to make sure the problem is gone (answer)
4. What did Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney do because the computers that could run Spacewar! cost over $100,000?
   • They made cheaper custom hardware running a simpler version (answer)
   • They gave up on arcade games
   • They built a PDP-1
5. Which came before arcade Pong?
   • Home Pong
   • Tennis for Two and Spacewar! (answer)
   • The Atari 2600
6. What does "assets" mean in: assets such as objects and sounds are made in specialized outside programs?
   • Parts of a game, such as objects and sounds (answer)
   • Rules of a game
   • Players of a game

Words

• prototype: early version
• engine: building platform
• assets: objects and sounds
• localization: adapting games