Research

Testing and Evaluation Results

Game Maker Lite is the free version to Game Maker Pro. Both allow you to design and produce games, however, the Lite version has fewer pre-programmed, drag-and-drop, action features. In addition, the Lite version “talks back and forth” or sends and receives information from two countries; one being Russia. Russia is known for its high volume of Malware (known as malicious software) traffic over networks. As this creates obvious concerns for school districts looking to implement game development courses, I worked with Alan Duerr, Network Administrator for Hays Consolidated Independent School District, to test Game Maker and see if the same was true for the paid Pro version. After running several test scenarios, from designing games to running and playing those games, the Pro version proved to have absolutely no communication with outside countries. An additional benefit we discovered during our testing concluded that there was minimal traffic being sent and received which slows down District networks.