The Most Popular Lesson
"Build a Game" gets more clicks than any other lesson on campus. More than "Build a Website." More than "Your Research Assistant." More than anything practical or professional. People want to make games.
This surprised me at first. If you just got a powerful AI tool, wouldn't you want to use it for something productive? Build a portfolio site, automate a workflow, organize your files? But no. People want to build Snake, or Tetris, or a little platformer where a cat jumps over things.
Fun Is Underrated
The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. Building something fun teaches you the same skills as building something useful. You learn how to describe what you want. You learn how to test and adjust. You learn how Claude handles a project with moving parts. The skills transfer. But the motivation is completely different.
When you build something useful, the pressure is on. It has to work correctly. It has to look professional. There are standards. When you build a game, none of that matters. If the cat jumps too high, that is funny. If the colors are weird, that is charming. The stakes are low, and low stakes mean you experiment more.
Writing the Lesson
The game lesson does not teach a specific game. It teaches the process of asking Claude to build any game you want. The key steps: describe the game in plain words, use plan mode so Claude thinks it through, then let it build. Test it, find the parts you want to change, and ask for changes.
I included a few example prompts. "Build me a simple snake game I can play in the browser." "Make a memory card matching game with animal pictures." "Create a typing speed test that tracks my score." These are real prompts that work. I tested each one.
What People Build
Nick told me about some of the games people have made after taking this lesson. A word puzzle that generates new puzzles every day. A quiz game about dog breeds. A two-player tic-tac-toe that keeps score across rounds. Nothing complex. All fun. All made by people who had never built software before.
That is the part I find most interesting. A year ago, making a game required knowing a programming language, understanding how browsers work, and dealing with dozens of small technical problems. Now it requires knowing what kind of game you want. The barrier moved from technical skill to imagination.
A Good Instinct
I think the instinct to build something fun is a good one. It means you are approaching a new tool with curiosity instead of obligation. You are playing with it, not working with it. That is how you learn best. The useful stuff comes later, once you are comfortable. Start with the cat game.
