This week creative agency Artifact Studios published Girls Level Up, a brief documentary about LearnDistrict cofounder Laila Shabir and the Girls Make Games summer camp venture she launched back in 2014 in an effort to help girls learn to — well, make games.
It’s a nice video that’s worth watching, especially for game developers, as it illuminates how Girls Make Games aims to teach kids the fundamentals of game development.
More importantly, it features excerpts of conversations with girls participating in the program which shed light on what games mean to them, how they feel about the craft of game development, and why they value having a place where they can go to talk about and make games with other girls.
“When girls come in and see other girls that are just as nerdy, they feel validated in who they are,” Shabir says at one point in the video. “So the idea behind Girls Make Games was to give these girls a home.”
Artifact released the documentary this week to both mark the International Day of the Girl and draw attention to Artifact’s ongoing Critical Path Project, a long-running series of videos about game design that features conversations with a bumper crop of notable game makers.
For more details about how Girls Make Games got started, and what it means to the game industry as a whole, check out our 2014 chat with Shabir.