D6 Learning is the Game Design School You’ve Been Looking For ► Ludology Now!

I’ve wanted to make my own video games since I was old enough to understand that was an actual job a person could have. When I was in high school I considered going to Full Sail University, the closest college that offered any sort of game design courses, but was never able to afford it. This is how I fell into the food industry for fifteen years, and after cooking everything from hot dogs and fried chicken at Sonic Drive-In to catering weddings and assisting on film productions like Magic Mike XXL, it was time for a change. Around 2012, I started learning how to make games for real.

It was a difficult process. I hadn’t been online much in the previous years, I didn’t know how to utilize YouTube or Reddit to collate reliable information. I knew how to code in HTML (thanks MySpace!) and I knew of things like C+ and BASIC from the computer design books I begged my father to buy for me as a child, but 10 PRINT ‘HELLO WORLD’, 20 GOTO 10 was about as far as my knowledge went. My first game, Welcome to Pineview, was made in the QUEST engine over 1 1⁄2 years, and as a “first” game I’m still rather happy with it. However, to look at it you wouldn’t guess the amount of effort involved, and that’s because I had no idea what I was doing for the majority of the game’s development.

Remember, though. That was 2012. It’s 2025 now. Things don’t have to be so hard, and online game design schools actually exist. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. A few weeks ago, in the “Recommended Media” section of my column about the city of Savannah, GA in video games, I spoke briefly about D6 Learning, and this week I’d like to take some time to expand on exactly what that is and why, if you want to make games and are just getting started, you should check it out.

D6 Learning: Targeted Classes by Talented People

D6 Learning is an international online school with high-quality, targeted courses in programming, web design, game development, IT, and art. I found out about D6 Learning because I follow Konstantinos Dimopoulos (game urbanist and author of the excellent Virtual Cities: An Atlas and Exploration of Video Game Cities) on Bluesky. Dimopoulos is one of three core team members of D6 Learning, alongside Georgios Tsatiris and Nikos Apostolakis, and there are currently seven other lecturers: Konstantinos Fousteris, Aggeliki Katopodi, Nick Mastrokolias, Mike Papagathangelou, Pietro Polsinelli, K Yoland, and Ben Jones.

For the past few months I’ve been attending free courses hosted by multiple lecturers, both to feel out D6 Learning as a whole and because I am genuinely interested in the subject matter. I’ve attended workshops hosted by multiple lecturers on things like A History of Video Game Graphics, Game Urbanism, and Systemic Game Design. If I had one main takeaway from all of these classes, it’s been this: Why are there not more people here?

The above post by (2024’s Game of the Year winner) UFO 50 designer Jon Perry speaks to the lack of communication in the gaming industry. This is true when starting out just as much as it is for established studios; very few people are teaching the “how to think, how to plan” aspects of game design. That’s why, whether you have never touched a development engine or written a line of code yourself or not, it’s important to see how other professionals do things. This doesn’t just go for video games, either, as tabletop game developers can benefit just as much from these conversations. D6 Learning has classes specifically targeted to tabletop game development.

D6 Learning is a game design school started by professionals, run by professionals, and taught by professionals. All of the classes are handled over Zoom and, while the actual activities vary depending on the teacher, most that I have attended involve lectures supported by slideshows, videos, practical assignments, Q&A sessions, and the possibility for one-on-one discussions and tutoring if requested. It’s an easy, accessible way to absorb information, and more people should be taking advantage of it.

One question everyone must weigh when determining whether or not to jump into a program like this is “How much does it cost, and is it worth that much?” In general, the classes will range from about €600 to €300 (or roughly $684 to $342) but I have seen outliers from as high as €780 to as low as €160. I can’t make the decision of whether that is financially viable for you, but if it is, I can say that, in my opinion, it is worth that much, and you will very likely get your money’s worth and more out of any D6 Learning course you sign up for.

D6 Learning is a fairly new coding and game design school, but it’s one that I am very excited about. It’s also one that I want to stick around, which is partially why I’m writing this article right now. This industry can feel so overwhelming, so challenging at times, and it feels like there are so many people trying to get ahead while standing on the backs of others. In a space like that, it’s not just lovely to find a group of talented, supportful professionals who just want to pass their game development knowledge on, but it’s also important to financially support businesses and educational institutions that you think are actively helping people.

All I’m asking is this: if you are interested in making games and don’t know where to start, check out D6 Learning. If you know someone who wants to make games but, like me when I was growing up, can’t go to a proper college for it, tell them about D6 Learning and other online game dev schools. Let people know it’s an option. The more people who know about organizations like this, the more people who actually sign up for online game development classes, the more games all of us will get to play in the future. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDED MEDIA:

[READ] The Sunset Tree Turns 20 by Tom Breihan for Stereogum. An absolute tearjerker of an album anniversary review. If people reviewed reviewers, this would receive 5/5.
[READ] The End of Sierra as We Knew It, Part 2: The Scandal by Jimmy Maher for The Digital Antiquarian. An excellent deep-dive on the last days of Sierra On-Line and one of my favorite video games of all time, King’s Quest 8: Mask of Eternity (no, seriously).
[WATCH] Do Starfield’s Pipes Make Any Sense? by Any Austin for YouTube. It’s excellent watching Austin’s videos evolve to be more and more educational over time, and I’m so glad he’s finally found his audience.