Gaming the System

Most of Solomon's students are from modest backgrounds, and only one is female. On a class "getting to know you" form, Kelly Renshaw, 20, wrote that she loves "ghosts and paranormal stuff." Her goal is a job with Bethesda Softworks, the Rockville-based company responsible for the award-winning Elder Scrolls fantasy series.

To provide her students with practical experience, Solomon split them into six teams a few sessions into the course. Each team was charged with designing a video game. Every Sunday, Jelly's team would meet online for an hour or so to develop their story line, characters and Web site. Renshaw joined Jelly and Matthew Davis, 19, a Radio Shack salesman.

Back in the classroom, Solomon directed the students to play Pac-Man online, right then. "This is an assignment!" she said, adding, almost as an afterthought: "There's no reason you can't be inventing new genres now. It's not all been done."

JELLY IS NO LUDDITE. One afternoon in May, with no students to assist at the campus Mac lab where he works part time, he has time to sit and reflect on his life.

One of five children, he was far from the best student back in high school. He cut a lot of classes and graduated from Wheaton High School by attending at night. Today, he shares a subsidized six-bedroom home in Rockville with other Section 8 housing recipients, including an electrician, a fast-food worker and a Safeway supermarket employee. He's single, no kids; he has never married. He got his first job in a printing plant while still a teenager, packing and sorting newspapers and small magazines at Comprint Printing in Gaithersburg. (Comprint is now owned by The Washington Post Co.) Eventually, he became a "paster," gluing the paper rolls together so that the presses would flow without interruption.

His next and longest job was at a Rockville bindery. Decades in, Jelly was making $10 an hour, and prospects weren't good. "To make the big money, $20 an hour, you were expected to work the midnight shift," he says. Eventually, he developed back problems he blames on earlier work lifting heavy paper rolls, and, for a while, he did odd jobs.

During the summer of 2003, seeking a career path without heavy lifting, he took a free basic computer course offered by the county. "I went in there not even knowing how to type or click," he says. The eight-week class was held on the Montgomery College campus. After it ended, Jelly says, he found out he qualified for student aid and enrolled there that fall, starting with an introductory course on desktop publishing. He became a full-time student in the fall of 2004. A class in animation software led him to game development.

He earned a certificate in electronic imaging last year and is on track to a bachelor's degree. For someone who never clicked a mouse until he was 40, Jelly has now played plenty of games: Hardwood Hearts, Laura Croft Tomb Raider, Hoyle Card Games 2005 are among his favorites. Solomon requires her students to blog regularly -- writing about what audio impressed them, what games made them feel emotion -- and, of all of them, Jelly blogs the most. ("Quite a few of us 40-plus age group are into the classic-style games, rather than the multi-level massive RPGs [role-playing games] and some very extensive adventure games," he notes in one blog.) What's next? "Endless possibilities," he says, invoking Montgomery College's mantra. "All of a sudden, life is here."

ON A SUNNY MONDAY IN MAY, the students in CA190 are being graded on a class play in lieu of a final exam, because the factors that go into putting on a play -- creativity, teamwork, character and story-line development, costumes and setting -- are vital to good gaming, too. In the amphitheater outside the humanities building, Solomon's students dress up as characters in the classic Nintendo game, the Legend of Zelda, and act out its simple plot: Link, a young boy, attempts to rescue Princess Zelda (Kelly Renshaw plays Zelda) from the evil Ganon. The half-hour play is the centerpiece of the school's second annual Game Expo Day, which includes speakers from Bethesda Softworks, BreakAway Games and the University of Baltimore.

For the Zelda production, Jelly arrives early to set up the audio system. Then, he and others use duct tape to assemble a five-foot high cardboard castle. Eventually, about 50 people settle onto the amphitheater's benches. The players have spent an hour in makeup, and now it's showtime.

Link and Ganon battle with toy swords until Link, dressed like Robin Hood with elf ears, slays the villain and frees Zelda. Jelly becomes the head moblin, a bad guy with a Redskins Hog-style nose affixed to his face. But he gets in only a few whacks at Link. Ganon falls into the cardboard castle, which collapses, an unplanned touch of reality.

The play over, students file past a table with cookies, cheese and crackers, and giveaway water bottles emblazoned with www.studygaming.com. In a small, packed classroom, they hear from Kathleen Harmeyer, who runs the University of Baltimore's computer gaming program. She promises full scholarships to community college graduates with a 3.5 grade-point average.

A few of the CA190 students listen intently, but most are elsewhere, either having makeup removed or deconstructing Zelda, literally. Jelly is one of those, working with three others to dismantle the castle. Not enough people were helping, he explains, and, "Somebody's got to step up to the plate."

THERE IS GOOD NEWS at the last meeting of CA190. Bethesda Softworks has contacted six students about summer jobs. Two so far have been hired, including Renshaw.

Solomon is also proud to announce that 12 of her students in a more advanced class (IS195 -- "Building Game Worlds") have won the $2,500 second-place prize in the University of Southern California's "Re-inventing Public Diplomacy Through Games" contest. Their game, Hydro Hijinks, has players resolving disputes over water rights. Solomon hopes this success will inspire her CA190 charges as they seek to enter the field. Finally, the teams present the games they have designed. One, called Underground, is a high-stakes poker game that involves eluding the police; Black Flag Pirates is all ship raids and treasure hunting; poison gas, snipers and other World War I pitfalls threaten the soldiers in the Great War; and, in Knowledge Quest, an evil chemist promotes illiteracy. Robot Invasion pretty much describes itself.

Jelly's team presents Haunting Sam, in which a ghost tries to solve his or her own murder. His team has created a Web site ("This Puzzle/Horror game will thrill and amaze you with its Dazzling Graphics and Gripping story. Pre-Order today for a free Haunting Sam Poster!"), a sleeve cover and 30 pages of rules.

A few weeks later, Jelly is not exactly riding off into the digital sunset. His summer job isn't testing computer games -- or anything even close. He's at the college's continuing education office, working at the front desk, "assisting the lady that does the payroll." It's customer service, summer work devoid of glamour. But Jelly isn't worried about his future. He aced the course.

Eugene L. Meyer , a former Washington Post reporter, is a freelance writer who lives in

Silver Spring.