Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?
My son hasn’t really showed any interest in computers until now. He’s been spending a lot of time over the last couple of weeks designing some sort of a game (on paper) and now he wants me to help him build it, whatever it is. I don’t want to let him down but I also know how much work that goes into a game (he specifically wants it to be 3D).
I’m a decent developer, although I’ve not done game development professionally I did tons of demos on the 90’s so I feel I know the basics of 3D math but I’m pretty sure he will lose interest if I try to teach him x86 assembler :)
Joke aside, what can I do? This sounds like a great project for us to explore together and hopefully he can grow interest in software design and development.
Are there development kits I can start with (unity?)
How do I keep the project “contained” so he feels that he accomplished something but still feels we developed something close to his vision?
Thank you HN.