Video games have become increasingly popular in recent years. According to the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA), 81% of all Australians now play video games (up from 67% in 2021) and 94% of households have a device for playing video games. It’s no longer just boys playing either. IGEA’s research shows half (48%) of all gamers in Australia are female.
Lisa van Beeck is a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and Project Director for the Australian STEM Video Game Challenge (STEM VGC). She hopes that video games will inspire students to pursue the crucial STEM subjects needed to make them.
‘Video games are a really good drawcard to get students to enrol in STEM subjects’ she tells Teacher.
The Australian STEM Video Game Challenge
The Australian STEM VGC is a free, annual video game competition in which teams of up to 4 students (and a mentor, for example, a teacher) are tasked with designing an original video game to a set theme.
Past years’ themes have included Stars, Construction and Destruction, and Networks.
Teams can use their choice of video game engine (such as Scratch or GODOT) to create their games. The finished games are then entered, alongside a Game Design Document and a short screen recording of the key gameplay elements, into one of 5 categories:
- Year 3-6 Scratch
- Year 3-6 Open Platform
- Year 7-9 GODOT
- Year 7-9 Open Platform
- Year 10-12 Open Platform
Winning teams receive a custom hoodie featuring their game artwork, opportunities to engage online and in person at STEM and gaming events, and a 3-day pass to Australia’s biggest gaming festival, PAX Aus – where their winning games will be on display.
According to van Beeck, not only does the Australian STEM VGC generate an interest in STEM subjects, but it helps build employable skills fit for a workforce that could require STEM for up to 90% of roles in future (CSIRO, 2023).
‘The footy scores that come up on the TV, that’s run through the video game engine Unity,’ says van Beeck. ‘It’s cool things like that where it’s like “I’m building a video game,” but those skills are translatable to so many careers. Gamification is being used more and more in medical training in a similar way to pilots running flight simulations as part of their training. Participation in game development opens your eyes to a lot of different career options.’
New resources for teaching video game design
To get more students and schools involved this year, ACER have provided a host of free new resources, including a 10-week lesson plan with tips to help teachers looking to learn alongside their students.
‘We wrote the resources specifically for teachers who have low levels of confidence and little to no technical experience,’ says van Beeck. ‘We also have level-up content for kids that need a bit more of a push or are interested in taking their development a bit further.
The 10-week lesson plans are available for both primary and secondary teachers, and a student-led resource pack is also available for older students working independently on the challenge.
‘Each lesson plan has the curriculum codes, the general capabilities, learning intentions, any prerequisites and knowledge needed before the lesson and links to relevant industry resources’ says van Beeck.
An included assessment tracker allows teachers to easily track student progress, and how student learning is meeting the Curriculum and General Capabilities.
‘The Australian STEM VGC is quite a diverse activity because of all the different roles. You’ve got the storyteller, the visual designer, the audio designer, the tester all those kinds of things. It’s really layered,’ van Beeck adds.
Additionally, this year, a handy new guide to all the recommended platforms has been added, to help staff and students pick the best platform to design their games on.
‘That’s what we get asked about the most,’ says van Beeck. ‘We’ve pulled out all the recommended platforms that meet our challenge criteria, so they must be free or free for education and judges must be able to see the game code, and we’ve divided them into “for beginners” and “for more advanced learners”.
‘We then link to instructions and the basic information about what kind of resources you need, the technical specifications, do you need a graphics card and can you get away with a basic laptop or computer that most schools will already have?’
The theme for the 2025 Australian STEM VGC Challenge is ‘Journey’. Team registrations are open now until 19 June 2025, and submissions can be made between 20 June and 23 July 2025.
You can find more information and access the new resources here.
References
Brand, J. E., Wilson, T. W., Jervis, J., & Huggins, P. M. (2023). Australia Plays 2023. IGEA. https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IGEA_AP2023_FINAL_REPORT.pdf
CSIRO. (2023, June 2) Why Choose STEM? With STEM You Can. https://research.csiro.au/WithSTEMYouCan/why-choose-stem/
