Learning elsewhere: tales from an extracurricular game development competition

In response to students' overwhelming interest in game development and a cumbersome curriculum change process, we hosted at our large university a year-long extracurricular competition in which students designed and implemented video games. Monetary prizes were made possible by a private grant. Our goals were to give students a chance to learn outside of the classroom and to break down institutional barriers that pigeonhole students into compartmentalized skill sets. We believe the competition is worth repeating at our university and elsewhere, but several issues should be addressed first. In this experience report, we share our model for the competition and critique it based on student feedback.