By Mariah Gonzalez Vega

The students of McFarland High School Early College should have more opportunities for video game development. There aren’t enough classes that teach students about future careers that they would want to pursue, video game development being one of them.  

Regina Cardoso, McFarland High School’s counselor, was able to consider ideas for those who are interested in game development since there isn’t exactly a pathway or class for game development. 

“As far as game development, I don’t think there are any classes that directly support that career. The closest we would have would be the media arts and the business. Only because in media arts you’re working on a lot of the programs that might pertain to gaming and also in the business pathway you’re doing a lot of computer programs but we don’t have anything specific to the gaming,” Cardoso said. 

Students who want a future career as a Video game developer don’t have any related classes, or programs on the school campus. 

Benjamin Taylor, who is McFarland High School Early College’s assistant principal of academics, was able to talk about current, and future opportunities for game development here at McFarland High School Early College. 

Taylor states there was a talk about a program dedicated to game development and was asked if there would be more classes in the future.

“So the assistant superintendent, Brian Bell, and the school administrators have talked about Esports development. Esports is more like a sports program, but it’s for video games, and so we have talked about that,” Taylor commented.  “We also have a couple of teachers on our school campus that have programming backgrounds, and were looking at how to utilize them not only for video game development, but for app development, website development, and things like that but it would be great to engage students with video game development as well.” 

This program the McFarland High School Early College is considering can be hugely beneficial for those who intend on going towards the path of becoming a video game developer. This program won’t just help with game development but will help other students who want to be in a career that is somewhat similar to video game development. 

The program can also inspire students to consider careers like video game development, app development, software development, website development, etc. Taylor would like the course to help students not just with game development, but other careers they would want to consider for the future. 

“I think as long as it’s part of a coding program or an app development program. I don’t necessarily want a specifically have a whole course for video game development, but video game development within a coding course, and a computer science course I think would be phenomenal, and my whole goal as an assistant principal is to make sure the classes and the lessons and the activities are engaging and I think video game development is naturally engaging like the students want to be there every single day and working,” Taylor stated.