Free Resources for Teaching with Videogames
Below are several freely available resources for acquiring free games and allowing your students to make their own. While in some cases these items bleed over with the previous content category, these are not necessarily games themselves, but programs, links, and game clients which can be used to access games themselves which are not listed on the previous page. Click on the image icons on the left to go to the links and/or programs listed below, all of which are completely free (though some feature premium options and some free games also include options for microtransactions which are completely optional for players but are worth noting).
Free Massively Multiplayer Online Games
This link is to the Wikipedia page for free MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games which are free to play. Here, you will find links to several classic games which is frequently updated and provides links to places where games which are either completely free to download and play, or offer players free timed trials, free access until a certain level cap, or must pay for the game up front and receive online access for free. Many popular games which have been frequently discussed in rhetoric and composition scholarship are here including Second Life and World of Warcraft.
Steam
While Steam functions primarily as a game retail client, it also features access to several completely free games, including MMO titles like DC Universe and Team Fortress 2. Steam is operated by game development company Valve, and provides access to several free games as well as several heavily discounted games. For my own students I recommend acquiring games through Steam as they are typically available for less than half the cost seen in stores or on game consoles. The digital distribution of games, as seen through resources like Steam, shows how the landscape of games has shifted for computers and how this can be to our benefit in the classroom, yet another focus of my current research.
Steam for Schools
One of the promotions currently being held by Valve is "Steam for Schools," which provides educators free access to Portal 2 and the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker. These resources offer valuable resources for the classroom which I am currently exploring and presented on at Computers and Writing 2013 and writing a chapter for in the forthcoming edited collection Computer Games and Technical Communication: Critical Methods & Applications at the Intersection. Providing a critically acclaimed game and its creation tools for our classrooms completely free is a move being made more and more often by publishers and developers and an important one to keep watch of as publishers like EA have pledged versions of their 2013 release of SimCity in a similar fashion.
Source Filmmaker
Along with the standard Steam client (not Steam for Schools, a separate program with access to specific titles) comes access to several extremely powerful tools, like the Source Filmmaker. Valve released the tools they use for making cinematic animations inside of their own games, meaning any computer with Team Fortress 2 (also free of charge) and the Source Filmmaker has access to a full 3D animation suite. Otherwise known as "machinima," players have long been creating short films inside of game worlds, and with the Source Filmmaker, Valve has provided players a powerful tool for doing this. While this program does have more stringent hardware requirements, it also provides several possibilities for student composition in unique spaces such as videogames and makes use of a valuable free asset.
Unity
One approach to teaching in the composition classroom using videogames involves asking students to create games as part of an assignment for your course. In the next unit of my course, students will be required to create a small-scale game and a visual to advertise for it (a poster, game box, or trailer). While the recommendation is to create a text-based game, free tools like Unity allow interested students access to a full 3D game engine. Unity is available for PC and Mac and has been used by several major developers to bring games to life, and for students with game creating experience or interest in taking their skills to the next level, Unity is professional-grade game development software, completely free for non-commercial purposes, with options to pay for access to additional tools and publishing rights for iOS, Android, and other platforms.
Blender
Originally designed as a completely open source 3D modelling tool, Blender has also been built to include a game engine in recent releases. Like Unity, it is somewhat obtuse in its user-interface, however, it is free, open source, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and allows students to perform all steps of creating their own 3D game, including modelling 3D characters, animating them, using simple game logic to program levels and AI, and a physics engine. Not recommended for students unfamiliar with the program and/or game development and computer programming, but an option for those interested in pushing themselves and learning, or for larger group projects involving designing a game.
AXMA
For any Mac users struggling to get Twine function properly, AXMA features a similar set of tools that works much better with Mac systems (in the past students with Mac computers could not get Twine to function at all in many cases). I recommend attempting to use Twine first, but if you encounter the kinds of save data and malfunctioning bugs some students have had in the past, you may want to switch to AXMA as quickly as humanly possible to avoid too many headaches. It's also worth noting that this program has a web-based version that functions on smart devices as well, making it extremely versatile!
Twine
This tool is what I will be encouraging my students to use in our forthcoming unit on game creation. Twine uses a simple user interface and hyperlinks to allow students to create a text-based story which can include images and uses hyperlinks and HTML to create stories. Not only is this program far easier for the unacquainted to use, it also requires no additional software to run and can be exported as an HTML file or hosted easily online to allow any web browser to open the student-generated games. Twine allows students to create games with no need to know or learn programming skills or complex software. For instructors interested in bringing game creation into their courses, this is my current recommendation.
Inform 7
Like Twine, this program is used to create text-based games like the earliest computer games available on home computers. Inform 7 allows users to respond using natural language like those old text-based adventure games whereas Twine uses hyperlinks to allow players to interact with the stories. The interface is a bit less clear for Inform 7 than Twine, but both allow students to make games which focus primarily on composting with text without learning complex computer coding skills or using advanced game engines. While I believe those options should be open for advanced students looking for a challenge, both Inform 7 and Twine are strong alternatives for instructors interested in creating games in the composition classroom.
Construct 2
A template-based game making program. Among a few that I have not done much research into or used personally. I've not used this tool personally, though students have in fact used this tool to make games for themselves in the project which requires students to design games in my ENC 1145 course.
Game Maker Studio
Another template-based game design program. This program outputs to many devices as well. I have not used this program extensively, though I have helped students working with this program. The designers have ambitions of this program's use to be tied into users buying premium accounts down the line, so initial user tools can be somewhat limited and cumbersome in some cases, but nonetheless a rich design tool.
Game Salad
Also template-based. Creates simple games without a great deal of programming knowledge needed. Another tool I am personally unfamiliar with, though have heard great things from others in the field from who have used it themselves. Strongly recommended for those craving more "game-like" games and a set of tools for doing so.
Stencyl
Also largely template-based, and allows students to create Flash-based games among other things. One student in one of my courses actually designed a game using this, the platformer The Ultimate Hipster. They told me this engine made animations much easier for them, as a student of design. The final result can be seen at my ENC 1145 Arcade, for the curious!