Teaching games with Pygame

I’m ambivalent about the place of games in programming/computer science courses.  Some research claims it increases interest and retention, other claims it alienates non-gaming students.  I personally would have avoided an introductory course centered on game programming and I worry that women are disproportionately turned off by games.  That being said, I’m willing to concede that the number of students hooked by games may outweigh those it alienates…

Even then, though, I worry about the educational content.  There are a lot of very interesting problems in game AI or graphics, but that’s far from introductory material.  Even basic games require complicated ideas including game loops (yes, that’s hard for intro students), interrupts and graphics in order to be compelling, especially for kids who were born into fancy 3D games.

When trying to teach games, especially when attempting to cater to the gamer types who like fancy things right away, I think it’s easy to slip into “tutorial-mode.”  Tutorials are great for learning some quick skills, but I don’t believe they can convey the intellectual content an introductory programming course should provide.  It’s too easy for students to start simply pattern-matching without really understanding what they’re doing.  With this kind of approach, it’s unclear to me how students will be able to turn around and then build non-game programs.  Truly understanding the abstractions programming languages make takes incremental steps, time and practice.

Here’s the reality: a number of students in the Python class I work with had been asking how to build games and it seemed like a reasonable way to end the year.  By now, they have a reasonable grasp of basic programming constructs and are comfortable in Python so pygame seemed like a good fit.

I’m not sure I quite avoided the tutorial trap, but I think that given their existing understanding, that’s probably ok.  The real value to having them work with pygame, I think, is that they have an opportunity to gain experience referring to documentation and sample code in order to work in an existing programming environment.  For example, they (should) understand classes and objects, so it’s a good opportunity to practice using those concepts.

The slides I “lectured” from — we went through each concept and practiced together (stolen/adapted from ones I used at UW):

HeleneMartin-Python-Pygame-Intro.ppt
HeleneMartin-Python-Pygame-Intro.pdf

The files I created with them in class:

template.py
class_example.py
beach_ball.png