Video Game Design Reaches New Heights in “Skyscaper Games”

Students from across the country will get a chance to design their own version of the skyscraper-size video games that have become the calling card of Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio and Westphal College of Media Arts & Design Professor Frank Lee. PhD. Through a collaboration with professor Erin Truesdell at New Jersey Institute of Technology— dubbed “Skyscraper Games” — the studio will engage K-12 students in learning computing concepts through digital game developments and creative expression as they design games on a virtual model of Brandywine Realty Trust’s 29-story Cira Centre office building in Philadelphia.

The project is part of the “Here Comes the Fun Challenge” — an effort by the nonprofit Young Futures, supported by the software company Niantic and in partnership with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, to use digital play to empower teens, support mental wellbeing and foster genuine connection.

With support from a Young Futures Innovators grant, Skyscraper Games will see students program their games using the block-based software Python IDE, or integrated development environment. This drag-and-drop process of virtual game design simplifies the coding process, making it easier for young designers to learn and understand design concepts. The games that are selected for play on the skyscraper will be available to be played on the digital twin of the Cira Centre. According to Lee, the accessibility of the digital platform will empower young people through game design, development and foster community building through public play.

“By developing and integrating a block-based front end to our integrated development environment, it will be more familiar and accessible to young people across the nation,” said Lee. “It will also be easier for their teachers to understand and explain.”

Lee and his NJIT collaborator, Erin Truesdell, PhD, an assistant professor and Drexel graduate, teamed up to create the initial iteration of Skyscraper Games in 2016. The project brought students from the Philadelphia area to learn how to code and create games for the Cira Centre. But their vision for this project is to make the game design process more intuitive and accessible for students without training in coding or game design.

“This new phase of the Skyscraper Games project will make game creator tools accessible to kids with no prior programming experience,” said Truesdell. “It will also bring the spectacle of games on a skyscraper to the metaverse platform where teens and tweens spend their time.”

The block-based interface will be an addition to the project. The idea is to allow students to make the transition into Python right in the IDE, supporting learners in making that step to text-based coding. This can lay a foundation for further learning. It will also ensure access to all students, even those with limited formal computing education opportunities.

In addition to designing the design environment and digital twin of the Cira Centre — alongside a student advisory group — Lee and Truesdell will provide five game design workshops for participants. And from these workshops, five games will be selected for a public showcase at the end of the project.

The long-term vision of the project is to create an annual, nationwide contest where students use the web-based design environment to design and submit their own games each year.

“We look forward to bringing the spectacle of games on a skyscraper to a broader audience, engaging youth all around the country in collaborative play, creativity and community,” said Truesdell.

Lee and his team have been creating games for play on the LED array of the Cira Centre, a 29-story glass office building at 30th and Market streets in Philadelphia, in partnership with its owner Brandywine Realty Trust, for more than a decade. His team set the Guinness World Record for “World’s Largest Architectural Video Game Display” in 2013 and then broke it the next year with game displays totaling 119,600 square feet.

For more information about the Young Futures “Here Comes the Fun Challenge,” visit: https://www.youngfutures.org/funding-challenge