In this online session Mick Chesterman will outline his work and research on collaborative game making with mixed age and ability groups. The workshop will include a hands-on session in which participants alter an arcade game template via a playful set of challenges (no coding experience necessary).

This activity explores the integration of playful and ‘gameful’ techniques designed to overcome participants' fear of code and will be useful to anyone with an interest in how to communicate game making concepts to non-specialist audiences and others with a focus on how to teach computing concepts in an accessible way.

In the final section of the talk, Mick will outline some of the thinking that's come out of his work with families which builds on their experience of arcade games. This includes a taxonomy of game-makers to mirror Bartle's player types, and the use of choice based documentation and 'open world' learning designs to support our game making learning environment.