Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the first meeting of the fall semester of the Video Game Development Club (VGDC) here on campus. First, as an aside, Shelby Hall is gorgeous and any excuse to visit is a good one!
President Joshua Dunn (Junior IS major) led the meeting by first having the club sponsor, CS instructor Howard Whitston, and the other officers introduce themselves then presented a bit about what the club would be doing. I quickly realized that this is not a club for lurkers (which is great!). Just as the title suggests, the group will actually be designing and developing games! Teams will be formed with group members of varying talents and strengths. The idea is that the team, over the course of a month, will design and develop a game using the Unreal gaming engine or Unity3D. The club will be working towards levels/badges on the One Game a Month challenge site. Lessons gleaned from one project can be used to hone skills and make future projects better. For those of us in education who want a boots on the ground experience in learning real-time development of games to match the book knowledge, this is perfect. 
Interested in playing a part of this growing club? Follow the group on Twitter and Facebook, or contact president Joshua Dunn for an invite to the Sakai project site (you must have a USA Sakai account to join). And who knows? In the near future when a student asks if you’ve “got game?,” you can answer “YES!”
(Originally posted on the South Alabama Gaming Educators (SAGE) blog.)
Virtually Educated 