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I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming. If a grey haired computer

I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming. If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer today. So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games is a gateway drug for programmers.

andrewroycarter 14y ago
Same experience here! Got started with Qbasic games -> web dev -> iOS
outworlder 14y ago
This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS than landing a job in a studio. The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A games vs an iOS tower defense.
ANTSANTS 14y ago
I don't think the author intended this advice for passionate, eager to learn 12 year olds. I think it's targeted towards dangerously naive teenagers who are close to leaving high school with no experience, marketable skills, poor grades, and/or little idea of what they want to study if they go to college, but know they love video games, and are about to be suckered into wasting their youth and parents' money by "game design schools" that emptily promise to turn them into rockstar game-creating wizards. It pains me to describe them this way, because I was friends with many kids like that in high school, but that's what they were: Naive kids who never tried to learn anything on their own or even figure out if the field was something they would actually enjoy working in, but instead held onto a fragile dream while playing video games and masturbating, truly believing that they could just sit on their asses for years and wait for a university or "game design school" to turn them into talented in-demand professional. "Waiting for superman," if you will. It's totally different for those young enough not to have high school graduation looming over their head. In between the ages of 12 and 17, a middle class kid has a simply mind boggling amount of free time that most people end up utterly wasting most of (myself sadly included). Your kid is doing well by 99% of their peers if they spend a few days or weeks make a pong or breakout clone, drawing character designs, composing a diddy in a tracker, or even spending months on a working project they never finish. The proper response to the words "I want to make video games" coming out of an elementary, middle, or early high school student's mouth is, I believe, "You know, you're actually perfectly capable of making them right now! It's hard work and you'll learn a lot along the way, but you could totally make something like Space Invaders with a couple weeks of effort, and who know where you'll go from there! Just put your dream game on the back burner for now; you've gotta learn to walk before you can run. Come on, let's go download Love2D (or use some BASIC or GameMaker or JavaScript + canvas or whatever)..." If they don't give up early and learn: * That the joy and practice of creating things is almost completely divorced from the act of consuming it * That creating and understanding even simple things like Pong clones feels incredibly rewarding * How to teach and train themselves * To prioritize creative pursuits and learning new things over empty pleasures even 10% of the time you can be certain they'll go places, whether or not they follow their childhood dream of making video games.

andrewroycarter 14y ago

Same experience here! Got started with Qbasic games -> web dev -> iOS

outworlder 14y ago

This is not what the author said. He said that you should give up on 'the industry', and you'd have a better chance of creating a best-seller on iOS than landing a job in a studio. The math requirements are very different if we are talking about triple-A games vs an iOS tower defense.

ANTSANTS 14y ago

I don't think the author intended this advice for passionate, eager to learn 12 year olds. I think it's targeted towards dangerously naive teenagers who are close to leaving high school with no experience, marketable skills, poor grades, and/or little idea of what they want to study if they go to college, but know they love video games, and are about to be suckered into wasting their youth and parents' money by "game design schools" that emptily promise to turn them into rockstar game-creating wizards. It pains me to describe them this way, because I was friends with many kids like that in high school, but that's what they were: Naive kids who never tried to learn anything on their own or even figure out if the field was something they would actually enjoy working in, but instead held onto a fragile dream while playing video games and masturbating, truly believing that they could just sit on their asses for years and wait for a university or "game design school" to turn them into talented in-demand professional. "Waiting for superman," if you will. It's totally different for those young enough not to have high school graduation looming over their head. In between the ages of 12 and 17, a middle class kid has a simply mind boggling amount of free time that most people end up utterly wasting most of (myself sadly included). Your kid is doing well by 99% of their peers if they spend a few days or weeks make a pong or breakout clone, drawing character designs, composing a diddy in a tracker, or even spending months on a working project they never finish. The proper response to the words "I want to make video games" coming out of an elementary, middle, or early high school student's mouth is, I believe, "You know, you're actually perfectly capable of making them right now! It's hard work and you'll learn a lot along the way, but you could totally make something like Space Invaders with a couple weeks of effort, and who know where you'll go from there! Just put your dream game on the back burner for now; you've gotta learn to walk before you can run. Come on, let's go download Love2D (or use some BASIC or GameMaker or JavaScript + canvas or whatever)..." If they don't give up early and learn: * That the joy and practice of creating things is almost completely divorced from the act of consuming it * That creating and understanding even simple things like Pong clones feels incredibly rewarding * How to teach and train themselves * To prioritize creative pursuits and learning new things over empty pleasures even 10% of the time you can be certain they'll go places, whether or not they follow their childhood dream of making video games.