14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft announced the winners of the first edition of its Kodu Cup, a game development competition opened to kids that requires participants to use the Kodu platform for their projects. A new visual programming language designed for creating games, Kodu is offered free of charge on both Windows and Xbox.
Those familiar with the visual programming language already know that users do not need any sort of coding skills in order to create their own games. This is how children as young as nine, or even younger can easily build their own gaming projects.
Hannah Wyman, for example, is only 10 but she won a grand prize for her video game in the 9-12 age group with Toxic, the project she put together using Kodu.
“These kids, frankly, did things in Kodu that I hadn’t thought of before. Kids had zombies and fantasy worlds, monsters and infectious diseases, mythical heroes – there was just this incredible variety,” revealed Brad Gibson, senior program manager of Microsoft Research’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs.
“On one hand you say, ‘Hey, they’re kids, you expect a lot of imagination.’ But when you see the depth of gameplay and the richness of the stories they created, I think many of these kids could be on their way to being world-class game designers.”
The software giant has yet to officially announce the list of winners on the Microsoft Kodu Cup 2011 site, however, the company did post a story naming the kids behind some of the winning projects.
Jacen Sherman, 15, is another winner, in a different age group of course, for the Vortex game. David Gardiner, 9, won first place with the Alien Attack project.
Make sure to check the videos embedded below in order to get an idea of the winning games from Microsoft Kodu Cup 2011.
“If you’re tech-savvy, it makes you more competitive and gives you advantages in your work place. What we’re trying to do is find ways to make kids more tech savvy. That’s kind of the foundation for Kodu,” Gibson added.
“It’s been a wonderful and exciting to see what’s happened since Kodu was released. We’ve had over 100,000 downloads in about 15 months and we’re working with schools around the country and around the world to install Kodu.”
Kodu is available for download here.