Game Maker · Adventure 3
Game Maker
A 4-lesson Adventure where students design games and use data to balance and refine them.
The 4 lessons
Lesson 1: Lotería Toss
Students explore how data is created through play in a Lotería-inspired tossing game that combines identity, culture, movement, and chance.
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Lesson 2: Paperclip Toss
Students design a paperclip-toss game to make scoring easy or challenging, then collect score data and use mean, median, and mode to test whether their design produced the experience they intended.
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Lesson 3: Games Mashup
Students combine well-known games into a new fast-play carnival game, making design decisions about fairness and scoring while applying an engineering design process.
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Lesson 4: Data Carnival
Students play each other's games and give data-informed feedback to refine their designs in a fast-paced, collaborative final Game Maker lesson.
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The arc
In Game Maker, students become game designers, engineers, and data scientists as they investigate how games create and use data. They play and analyze games, collecting data about outcomes, fairness, and player experiences, and learn how measures such as mean, median, and mode can guide design decisions and improve gameplay.
Using the engineering design process, teams invent their own carnival-style games, test them with classmates, and use the data they collect to refine their designs. The unit culminates in a classroom Data Carnival, where students share, play, and evaluate each other’s creations and see how data can be a tool for innovation and problem-solving.
Unlike Avatar Maker and Festival Maker, Game Maker has no digital app. It is a hands-on, classroom-only Adventure.