Y Combinator Company Teaches Students How to Develop iOS Games

“Programming is a superpower,” said Reddit co-founder and partner at Y Combinator Alexis Ohanian.

He told FOX Business Network’s Cheryl Casone that MakeGamesWithUs Academy, a Y Combinator company, gives high school and college students the tools and knowledge to master this superpower and build iOS games.

According to Ohanian, MakeGamesWithUs Academy takes the growing code-literacy movement one step further in that it offers tools, tutorials and a forum for developers to use their knowledge of code in bringing the game to life.

After the students develop the games, MakeGamesWithUs Academy handles the difficult production aspects, he said, including providing professional art, graphics and music. The games are then published in the App Store, and once expenses for graphics and design are paid off, the profits are split 70/30 with the developers and MakeGamesWithUs Academy.

Y Combinator is an early-stage startup accelerator that since 2005 has funded more than 700 startups. According to YC, the companies it has funded so far have a combined valuation of over $30 billion. Three of those companies are valued at more than $1 billion: Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe.

“We get to invest in the best and brightest startups we can,” said Ohanian. “Our mission is about finding that talent and then getting them the resources to deep dive into development so they can get started.”

Khristian Brooks and Kenya Gordon, two students at MakeGamesWithUs Academy, told Casone about their passion for computer science and positive experiences learning the skills to build iOS games at MakeGamesWithUs Academy. They said the best part about MakeGamesWithUs Academy is that the skills learned can be applied to all fields of programming, not just developing iOS games.

And Ohanian said the interest in programming and gaming is no longer exclusively limited to teenage boys, as it was mostly the case 15-20 years ago. The recent broadening of gaming has enabled a new generation of gamers and programmers, with interest from both men and women.

“I just visited 80 universities across the country and it is so heartening to see so many female faces in the crowd,” said Ohanian.