Are you passionate about video games, whether it’s playing them or learning how they’re made? The Game Development Club at El Camino College can be the place for you to enhance your passion and interest in the field.

The club provides opportunities for students to learn about the technical side of game development in a beginner-friendly environment, geared toward destigmatizing the process of creating games.

The club welcomes students of all experience levels to come socialize and learn the fundamentals of game development, as well as several other related topics.

The only prerequisite for joining the club is an interest in games.

Club president Ri’chard McCray, 20, computer science major and vice president Sebastian Retana, a 20-year-old welding major, strive to introduce newcomers with no prior background in coding to the art of game design.

“Naturally, as the president, I want to facilitate opportunities for people to come expand their knowledge and involvement in game development, either as a profession or as a hobby,” McCray said.

Club participants will develop skills including basic programming, conceptual game design and game engine exploration.

The current engine the club uses is Godot 4, a major release of a free, open-source, cross-platform 2D and 3D game engine according to Godot Engine, among other tools.

“Every Tuesday, they’re meeting in Library 17 to do basic game development; coding,” digital art and design technology professor Arnold Martin said. “[They’re] mostly learning how to make things move and interact in Godot.”

Martin, the club’s adviser, emphasized the club’s accessibility to all students.

“It’s open to anybody. Ri’chard and Sebastian have reiterated that you don’t need any existing skill in any of these things,” Martin said. “It’s really just, ‘Are you interested in how to make games?'”

While art design is currently not a primary focus, club leaders have expressed interest in incorporating it into future programming.

“I want to be people’s inspiration or example for what you can do in the field,” McCray said.

Among other extracurricular activities, internship opportunities for positions at studios such as Riot Games, Blizzard and Activision are offered by the club through co-adviser Iman Fayek.

“Having the groundwork for the foundations of opportunities, such as building something from zero, for example,” Inter-Club Council representative and computer science major Devin Wilford, 20, said. “You would get to present that toward scholarship opportunities or whatever internship opportunities.”

The club meets every Tuesday throughout the semester in Library 17, located in the Schauerman Library’s west wing basement, to host workshops on Godot 4 to teach basic coding and development within the engine.

By the end of the semester, the club aims to have helped students create portfolio pieces to show off and skills that students can apply to their own projects.

“Whether it’s demos or template projects or anything that I use intended to teach people, I want to give people the opportunity to see an end goal, then show them how to get there,” said McCray.