SACRAMENTO, Calif. — “Doing anything by all means necessary, even if it means falling off a cliff and using all three of your triple jumps!”
That’s 12-year-old Raiden Pisano’s motto for the 2D game he's developing. He enters a world of his making after school instead of going home.
He participates in LVL UP, a crash course introducing video game design to fourth grade to high school students throughout the city of Sacramento.
The after-school program is run by Square Root Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to educating underrepresented youth on the fundamentals of S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). LVL UP serves Title I funded schools, a federal grant program serving students from low-income backgrounds.
GET MORE RACE & CULTURE FROM ABC10:
►Explore the Race & Culture home page
►Watch Race & Culture videos on YouTube
►Subscribe to the Race and Culture newsletter
Creativity and coding are just some of the reasons why Pisano gravitated toward the course.
“I actually really like world building because I have a big imagination,” said Pisano. “The fact that [the video game] can be anything you want it to be.”
His teacher, Jamel Winder, is helping Pisano channel his ideas into a classic left-to-right, jump game popularized by some of his favorite Nintendo games like Super Mario and Kirby.
“This program gives them a little taste of what that would be,” said Winder.
Pisano’s game has seven levels and even Winder admits he had a hard time completing it.
“The [students] like to make them a challenge and it's really fun to see what they make,” said Winder.
Animation, coding and character development are part of the curriculum at LVL UP. Winder not only teaches the classes, but he developed the course too. As a game developer himself, he knows firsthand how important a program like this is.
While the video game industry is a billion-dollar business employing hundreds to thousands of people, there’s still a long way to go on diversity and inclusion. Only 5% of game developers are Black, 10% are Hispanic and close to 80% are white, according to a 2021 survey from the International Game Developers' Association.
Winder, a Black solo indie game developer, hopes the program empowers a new generation of diverse game developers.
“As a kid, I really underestimated myself and I think with this program we can show kids how smart they actually are, and how much information they can actually get with the right help,” said Winder. "That's mainly what we want to do.”
Pisano is almost done developing his game, but once the course ends, he plans to keep going. He's downloaded GameMaker, a free platform for developing 2D games.
“For the past year and a half I've been working on the lore of a game, not the actual code, through a 4,000+ Word document,” said Pisano.
The biggest advice Winder has for young people interested in game development is to first and foremost find a community to help grow your skillset.
He believes LVL UP is one of those spaces for Sacramento-area youth interested in video game design.
To enroll for upcoming summer courses, visit Square Root Academy’s website HERE.
LVL UP is a free program for all students within the city of Sacramento.
Watch more Race and Culture stories: Celebrating National Arab American Heritage Month
