Video game
Campbell Dixon
St Patrick's College, Wellington
Year 11 Technology, three-term project
Teacher: John Davidson
Asked to design a recreational activity for Year 11 boys, Campbell decided to design and program an arcade-style video game.
He began his project by having to convince his teacher that he was actually capable of doing it. His teacher freely admitted the intended project was outside his expertise and insisted on establishing clear, obtainable goals for the work.
With these in mind and well aware of the time required to complete such a project and the limitations of the computers available to him at school, Campbell carefully planned the use of his time and resources. He organised a dedicated laptop for programming, which he brought to school. At the conclusion of his programming, Campbell used his home computer to compile the code into the game.
Stakeholder feedback was an important part of the development process. Campbell presented possible enemy and player icons to his stakeholders and recorded their responses and opinions in his visual diary. After settling on his final enemy and player icons, he modified the enemy icon to show a 'hit'.
Campbell faced some serious challenges during the development of his game including a serious hardware malfunction of the "Sorry Sir, I blew up my computer" variety. This incident necessitated the complete rebuilding of Campbell's home PC 
at a crucial stage of the project. Campbell's teacher agreed to renegotiate the project's hand-in deadline.
Teacher comment
"I don't understand a word of the code but I can get to level seven in the game. This is very cool."
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