I am an instructor at a 3D Animation, and multimedia school in British Columbia, Canada. We are looking to start up a Game design program, focusing mainly on the design end, but with some programming. I am wondering if there is a language anyone can recommend that would give students a taste of the progamming end, but not be so complicated that they would need to spend a year learning it. It would be supercool if they could have an actual game running by the end of the course. They would be using Maya and 3DMax for the graphics end, but it could be a 3D or 2D game. Any ideas?