Logan Hendry is taking the first steps to achieve his dream of making video games.
The Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School student decided to make his own video game as part of his Grade 12 Capstone project because “it allowed me to work on something that I find enjoyable and fulfilling.”
The game will be a story-based scenario that allows players to go through the memories of a man whose wife is sick and in the hospital as the man tries to cope with his situation. There were many steps involved in creating his game, he said, such as coming up with the story and script and learning the basics of coding and how each function worked.
“One of the biggest challenges was that I was teaching myself everything that I was doing. I went into this project with a bit of prior knowledge on the subject - coding, art,” Hendry said. “But most of what I did was new to me, so I spent many hours researching and testing to find solutions, and honestly half of them didn’t work, but I kept going because I found joy in searching for them.”
As part of the B.C. school curriculum, the Capstone project is an assignment usually completed during a student’s final year in high school. It can be in a variety of formats, but is usually based on the student’s individual interests. According to the B.C. Ministry of Education, the purpose of the capstone is to let students “demonstrate the knowledge, competencies, and passion that they can offer the world, as they integrate personal interests, strengths, and new learning with preferred future possibilities.”
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Although he has yet to finish the game, Hendry said what he enjoyed most about the project “was actually getting stuck on a problem.
“It sounds a bit counterintuitive,” he said. “But whenever I got stuck on a problem it would stretch my brain in a sense and allow me to think of new and more creative solutions in order to find the answer. Plus, the rewarding feeling I would get after solving one of these problems would make it all worth it.”
Hendry added he would have liked someone else to be able to work on the project with him. “That way I would have someone to help with the solutions but more importantly be there for each other when we struggle. Plus, then you will have someone to motivate you to make something even better.”
After high school, Hendry plans on getting a degree in computer science and said his video game would help quite nicely with that. But he added, “more importantly this helps me because in the future I want to make my own little video game company where we make games that we are proud of and that people really enjoy.”
In the end, Hendry left some advice for next year’s students who will be doing the Capstone Project: do a project that you enjoy doing. “Not only will it be more fun for you in the end but you will ultimately be more proud of yourself than if you were to do something else.”
Lauren Keller is a Grade 12 student at Peter Skene Ogden Secondary who did her Capstone project with the Free Press.
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