The Game Design Club provides accessibility to a complex but rewarding art form
By Cameron Sauder, September 30 2025—
Welcome to the Game Design Club, a space where game-enthusiasts can come together, make friends and peek behind the curtain to learn how their favourite games are made.
Perhaps video games are a comfortable way for you to unwind at the end of a long day, or the source of endless hours of entertainment. But for members of UCalgary’s Game Design Club, they represent an outlet for creativity, sociability and learning.
Matthew Millum, a fourth-year Computer Science student and current president of the Game Design Club, said he’s “always been interested in games.”
He joined the club in his first year and gradually rose through the ranks, fostering a community for game-lovers along the way.
“[It’s] mainly a social club,” said Millum. Members get together every Thursday to “hang out, talk about games we’re working on, games we like or [even] things that aren’t game related.”
On top of regular meetings, the Game Design Club hosts game jams — challenge-based events in which participants have a limited amount of time to create a video game around a specific theme or restriction — and workshops a few times per semester. Millum said these workshops, which focus on elements of game creation like level design or music composition, are a great way for beginners to start exploring the medium.
“We have tons of people who haven’t made games [and] we have tons of people who have made games,” said Millum. “I like seeing people’s first games, where you can tell […] they’re still learning, and it’s maybe not as polished or perfected, but it’s just really fun to see.”
“If you come in and you’re like, ‘I don’t really know where to start,’ there are lots of people who’ve worked on gaming and give really good advice and their own kind of perspective,” said Millum, who’s made platformers, puzzle games and shoot-em-ups himself and is especially interested in “the tools to make games.”
Of course, for those who don’t know a thing about coding or programming, game design may seem like a “barrier.”
“It’s really hard to make something interactive if you don’t really know how to actually make the computer do that,” said Millum.
“But of course you don’t need to,” he said, pointing out that members can still design physical games — think those of the board or card variety — if the technology is too complicated. Plus, if there was any place to try and learn those skills, the Game Design Club is it.
For Millum, the most rewarding element of being a part of the club is the community. “Just having a bunch of people I can talk to about games and be like, ‘I made this [game], or I was thinking about making this [game], or I don’t know how to make this [game],’ and yeah, just seeing other people’s ideas and being able to get inspired by [those],” said Millum.
There are no admission costs and no expectations of experience, so whether it’s learning about games together, playing member-made video games on an arcade cabinet, attending game jams or just hanging out, talking about games and making new friends, the Game Design Club has something for anyone who’s “mildly interested in games or game design,” as Millum puts it. Video games are a complicated art form, but spaces like the Game Design Club can make them a bit more approachable, especially for beginners.
Interested students can find out more about the Game Design Club via their Discord channel, Instagram account (@uofcgamedesign), the SUClubs website, or by exploring their itch.io page dedicated to games made by members.