The Game Development Club (GDC) at Alfaisal University is a student-led community that provides members with the chance to design, develop, play and talk about video games. The goal of the GDC is to promote and support the development of independent video games at Alfaisal University and foster the growth of the indie game development community on campus. The GDC holds monthly meetings and other events throughout the academic year, such as competitions, workshops, and game jams; and they tend to keep things pretty light-hearted and relaxed in a vibrant and energetic community of students.
The mission of the Game Development Club is to foster a community for students to design video games, as well as provide an outlet for them to display their work beyond the university community. To achieve this goal, connections both on and off campus were developed with the support of the university and its partner institutions. The club participated in local and global events, such as the Gamers 8 Season’s Gameathon in 2022 and the Global Game Jams in 2021 and 2022 both on-campus and via the Saudi Game Developers Association (GDA) under the umbrella of the Ministry of Communications and IT (MCIT).
The club was founded in October 2021 via the founding members, Abdullah Adam, Faisal Aldhubaib and Faisal Alotaibi. In 2023, the club has more than 50 members and leadership has transitioned to three rising juniors and rising seniors, Saleh Alghannam (rising Junior), Munira Alzouman (rising Junior) and Alya Alshaeikh (rising Senior).
Who can join? Students with an interest in game development at Alfaisal University are welcome to join, whether they’re a programmer, an artist, someone with ideas, or game enthusiasts who are new to the field. The club offers a fantastic place to learn new skills, share projects, and meet other people who also have a strong interest in game development.
The Game Development Club hosts a variety of events throughout the year.
- GameDev socials – Gaming nights they host for playtesting, meetups etc.
- Game Jams – Speed run making a video game within a specified period of time.
- Game Showcases – Have you been working on a game? Then come present it to the public
- Game industry events – Talk about getting a job and how to survive outside of uni.
- Skill building workshops – Technical or design workshops offered by club members for participants to learn some new skills in Programming, Art, or Design.
The Game Development Club also contributes toward Alfaisal University’s summer enrichment programs http://auep.alfaisal.edu that are offered during the summer timeframe of June to August of every year. In the Game Development summer programs, the Game Development Club offers student-led workshops aligned with the AR/VR Game Development curriculum to guide pre-collegiate students in learning effective professional game development techniques.
The club also participates in university-wide student club events to promote opportunities in the game industry in our local context of Saudi Arabia. They accomplish this by helping students explore different areas of participation, and organize into teams within the rapidly growing landscape of local gamedev events to get practical game development experience, as well as by discussing game design concepts and demonstrating technical processes.
The club frequently gathers students of different majors who are interested in making games at all points of the process: be it programming, art, music, writing, and anything in between. They host regular meetings on-campus that enable them to form groups and develop their game projects. The club is aligned with, and supported by, the Game Innovation Center at Alfaisal University which is led by the faculty advisor for the GDC, Eng. Hoda Elsayed.
The Director of the Game Innovation Center, Hoda Elsayed noted that, “The Game Development Club has been instrumental in engaging with students in activities and events that are oriented towards capacity development for games and gamified systems”. The club also helps students get into and attend game industry events that will help them display and promote their work. These activities would help to enable further education in game development beyond the current offerings at the Software Engineering department at Alfaisal University. More information about the GDC is accessible online at https://www.alfaisalgdc.com.
