Idea to Game: teacher key

How Video Games Are Made, grade 3 edition, written for 3rd grade. Teams of designers, programmers and artists build games. You will read how a team tests an idea, and how Pong began.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What is a prototype?
   • A simple early version of a game (answer)
   • A loud sound
   • A game store
2. What do animators do?
   • Plan the story
   • Make characters and objects move (answer)
   • Check for bugs
3. Who built Pong at Atari?
   • A boss named Sears
   • An engineer named Allan Alcorn (answer)
   • A tester named Odyssey
4. Why did the first Pong machine stop working?
   • The screen broke
   • It was too cold
   • It was full of quarters (answer)
5. What is a game engine?
   • A kind of car
   • Tools a team uses to build a game (answer)
   • A game for two
6. Why would a team build a prototype first?
   • To see if an idea works (answer)
   • To sell it at once
   • To name the game

Words

• prototype: early version
• engine: building tools
• animators: movement makers
• testers: game checkers