> YOUR SON DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN TO CODE

Maybe he does, but he doesn't know it yet. Do not force him, but you can show him. That's actually how I got into coding. Like every kid, I wanted to make a game, but progressively, I found that I had more fun coding than actually making the game. In the end, I went in so many tangents I didn't complete my game, but who cares?

Everyone is different. Maybe he just wants to imagine stuff, maybe he really wants to produce something, or maybe he wants to code, or write, or draw, whatever. Maybe that's an opportunity to see what he is really into. For me, it turned out to be code. People, kids and adults alike don't just want to "learn to code", they have a motivation and code is what gets them there. You need a starting point. For adults, it is often making money, but for kids, making a game is probably the most common.

Absolutely this. As a middle school teacher of many years I feel like I have some knowledge on this subject. Almost all children want to spend time with an adult. In my classroom the activity we do together doesn’t matter to my students, besides the attention I give them during the activity. For kids, adults are treasure troves of attention, and they want that attention. Give it to them in positive ways and you will see the relationship grow. Don’t worry about whether or not you produce something in the end, it was the relationship that mattered to the child from the get go. Really only adults, through social conditioning, are worried about producing something. Kids just want to feel important and feel part of a healthy, positive relationship.

What a great response. To follow, this doesn't preclude anyone's child from jumping head first into programming, just that "producing" a game isn't really the goal but "making" it is. My 9 year old son makes mini RPGs on paper. Like he draws hit points and a monster and does attacks and marks damage as he plays. It's awesome. Sometimes "making a game" doesn't need to be programming at all.

When I was ten years old, I played a lot of web games built on Flash technology and asked my parents how I could build my own. My parents sat me down and taught me the very basics of how to code. I didn't learn very well from them, but they also bought me a textbook and I learned great from that. By age 12, I had recreated a lot of the games I was fond of, pacman, snake, space invaders, etc.

Maybe the bar was lower for my interests at the time (flash mini games vs AAA 3D games as described here), but just offering a different take: Maybe your son _would_ very much be interested in learning to code. Though starting with 2d retro games might be easier.

That reminds me: When I was about 9 or 10 I created the sequel to Zelda a link to the past. With colored pencils. On paper. Dozens and dozens of sheets of paper.

That game was amazing. I can’t believe Nintendo didn’t call me up, but instead decided to make a 3D game

I wish I had read your comment 5 years ago when my son wanted to build a utterly complex game in Scratch. I ended “coding” the game, almost on my own, because it was boring for him, and the result did not resemble what my toddler wanted/imagined. Of course he was imagining an AAA game built in Scratch… If anything good, the learning for him was building games is hard, and lost interest trying further. Great advise!

> He doesn't want to CODE. He wants to make a game. Like every kid. [emphasis mine]

Well, I as a child (say: 6-8 old) was really rather thinking deeply how a suitable way (what programmers would call "data structures" and "programming abstractions", "design of a programming languages" - but of course on a child's level) might look like so that the computer can "understand" and precisely execute my game ideas; my games as executable files would rather be the central side product of this.

I also (I am really not lying or boasting!) was thinking as a child (just to be clear: this was my child's imagination; from my present knowledge I know of no suitable way to make this actually work) how if the abstractions are there, one could easily "combine" existing games to make new games - perhaps even partly automatically by a computer:

Imagine this: using some photo editor, you can use the magic wand or lasso tool to select some part of a photo, and copy-paste this part into another photo. Why isn't it possible, if you, say, wrote both a space shooter game and an economic simulation game to select and copy-paste some part of the latter into a former to turn the space shooter into a space shooter that also contains economic simulation aspects?

The "best actually existing" (really bad) approximation of this that I have seen in life is how the GURPS tabletop role-playing game system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS) enables (in principle) to "copy-paste" elements from one role-playing setting into a whole different "incompatible" one (but it is not that you would want to do this for your typical role-playing session :-) ).

Yes, this is how a 6 to 8 years old child (the former me) thinks about game development. :-)

I did this, we produced a board game eventually, using dice for monster spawn and dice for monster hit, and hitpoints, etc.

Pretty much nethack, but using his dungeon designs which he spent hours designing with graph paper.

I did it this way because that's how I designed my first game, on a C64, in 1986, at age 10.

He gets to design monsters, treasure, items, dungeons, etc.

Tabletop implementation is the fastest way to actually play it.

This ! Learning to code will come after, spending time with your son writing down ideas might be more fun at first and it's a good time to teach him that games are thoughts first and then coded after.

I would have recommended Scratch [1] for a first introduction instead of hoping into code right away, but since he is 9yo he will most likely want to hop on big game engine like he sees his favorite youtubers doing.

so while you guys are thinking about ideas, you should look up and compare engine in this thread and learn one, then teach him and make the game/prototype together later.

[1] - https://scratch.mit.edu/

Yes. My then 10 y.o. son also wanted to build a game. At least that's what he told me. So we went out together to learn how to do it in Roblox. We eventually learned we needed to be coding in the Lua programming language, which is by itself cool as we are Brazilians. We took some classes together but then I saw my son suffering as he tried to get along with abstractions and the development process itself. He quickly found out it had nothing to do with playing games! So the lesson we learned was, as the parent commented, my son and I just wanted to do something fun together. That's basically it.

>YOUR SON DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN TO CODE

You are probably right, but when I was 9 I definitely wanted to learn to code.

This. When I was a kid my best friend and I made our own Pokemon game by drawing our own Pokemon cards and assigning various nuts (still in shells) to each one. My Charizard was an almond and her Mewtwo was something like a pecan, for example. We created our own arena on cardboard and would "battle" by knocking our nut-Pokemon against each other - the Pokemon that got knocked out of (or overshot) the borders of the arena lost, and eventually the loser of the set would get to pick an opponent's Pokemon (nut and handmade card) to confiscate.

I love video games and went on to work in game dev for more than a decade, but that was still one of the most fun things I've ever played.

kids need to spend fun time doing creative stuff with their family members for their healthy development. They are somehow aware of it and they ask for it.

Moving their hands for precise ability and their whole bodies, or sitting down to draw or read, might be more urgent than sitting in front of a computer, though

This comment is so incredibly important.

We made a game within Minecraft, a story and a treasure map and a treasure.

Don’t overcomplicate it.

10years later my son showed me his multiplayer, 3d unity game he made for fun. I was blown away!

there are 9 year olds who want to learn to code, don't stop them if they do

> Understand that you're not going to finish what you start. Do things that are fun. Keep a notebook of ideas. Talk about plans and what you want do.

Do you think of this advice as specific to working with your kid(s) or do you feel it applies (or should apply) more generally? If so, in how far?

Wow, this is great advice. I never thought about it this way.

I put on my engineering hat and saw a "problem" to be solved and a "solution" being a finished game...

And it's mutual, I want to spend time with him on something he's passionate about, but I made it into a problem I can solve.

Thank you!

> YOUR SON DOES NOT WANT TO LEARN TO CODE (right now)

This. 100% this.

He wants a game, that he can tell himself and everyone that it is His and he wants you to do it for him. He does not want coding to show up in the way!

Take this as a chance to show him that he can build things, the way he wants it. Make an effort and let him see it. Give him a taste for it. There's wisdom in that quote about longing for the vastness of the sea to make good sailors.

There will be joys in small wins. It will surely never complete. But he and you both will cherish the wild imagination that comes with something like this.

I wanted to learn coding at 8 to make games, not necessarily with my father. It was begin 80s so bit different; I went to halls were they sold inventory from burnt out stores where I got books and mags for pennies and so I learned basic (and basicode), asm and pascal. After that my parents brought me to meet-ups. I wanted to spend time with wizards who could teach me software/hardware, not my parents per-se (although my father did work at a IT firm, programming was not what he did).

Thankyou. And thankyou to OP. I have exactly the same situation as them, and spend a lot of time beating myself up that I can’t help him realise his never-ending torrent of creative flow. But you’re right: I need to immerse myself in it with him. Thankyou.

> doesn't want to CODE. He wants to make a game. Like every kid.

But all of these video games are not going to just CODE themselves. =/

Wow, great answer!

I can apply this to some situations I have with my daughter. I have a tendency to get over-excited when she shows interest in my interests, and try and push her to do the things with me.

I was going to post about game engines worth exploring to get this project off the ground (bevy, Godot), but then I read this post. OP, this guy gets it!

NOTEBOOK

NOTEBOOK

NOTEBOOK

---

THe ONLY successful devs who've built shit you touched, common: PERSONAL NOTBOOK.

Make them write.

What makes a successful comedian: WRITING.

NOTEBOOK is the most underrated Human Tool.

If you want to be an author, CREATE. WRITE.

This is some mountain kung fu master level of advice. Good job, sir