Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?

Now I enjoy making games - but I do not use 'off the shelf' products. However, if one of my kids at this age suddenly became interested in making a game, I would not bother showing them any programming by default. What worked for me might not be the same for him.

I have never used Unity or the like myself so it is a good opportunity to do so. In your case, use this excitment with your son and allow him the power and opinions on which direction to go.

I would start off by suggesting that - "there are 3 game engines I am aware of. Unity, Godot, and Unreal. Shall we spend this afternoon looking at them, installing them, and figure out what is best to use?"

This on it's own is not just an afternoon. It is (atleast) a weeks worth of content. Not only are you deciding which one to use, you are also looking at various tutorial websites.. likely how to "move things around" or setting 1st person or 3rd person perspctives, keyboard inputs, etc. Your son is learning a lot of things under the interest of his own game idea. In my opinion should keep him thrilled to continue.

Dont jump to the deep-end too early. He will likely loose interest.

In my world, I am interested in the logic of the game. Its the reason I became a programmer. However, and I think for most, when they are interested in making games -- it is about 'designing' a game. Coding is just one aspect, so find the areas that interest him the most when learning.

For all you know - this could be the starting point of him becoming a photoshop guy, or a blender guy, not just becoming a level editor guy.. or a programming guy.

Give him control and help guide him into the direction he wants to go. Maybe express interest doing the bit he isn't into doing just yet.

Just my 2 cents.

-- Edit: added some more content --

I became interested in "how does this work" when watching Street Fighter 2 for the first time.. along with many other games. It was not until I was 13 and seeing DooM for the first time I was like "I have to figure out how they do this!"

My era with these games, especially Quake with QuakeC, or Level Editors like Worldcraft, was my days of learning and figuring out games.

What I have learned is to not interject how I did things in the 90s when I was young compared to how the young can do it today. At a simple level, they have Scratch. They have Minecraft. They have GMod. They also have Godot, Unreal and Unity.

Point I am making (and believe is the same you and your experience) -- avoid interfering too much. That would be my priority.

I didn't have any interest in computers until my dad bought a PC that came with Age of Empires 2.

Soon I tried to teach myself to code and failed miserably the first few times. While visiting a friend of my fathers (whom I am immensely grateful to), on a whim they gifted me a book that had introductions to ~10 different programming languages (setup, hello worlds + some). Over the next months I went through them one by one and nothing clicked.

When I was around 11, while sitting at a boring camping spot while my parents were off diving, I came to revisit the chapter on Windows batch programming and finally managed to make something work. The low complexity and easy setup helped a lot. By the time we came back from vacation, I had made a crappy note-taking app in batch on that 5kg "portable" 300MHz computer monster which my parents used to log their dives. You have no idea how proud I was about having made something.

I graduated to VBScript from there, then to Java (which came after in that book). For about 5 years I exclusively programmed in Java, in which I also made my first games (worms-like thing with stick figures, pong-like game where you have to hit blocks etc.), even though I had much bigger projects I attempted: for instance A multiplayer RPG in space, where you design your own physically simulated 2D spaceship and fly it around (I never got collisions in my handrolled physics engine working properly, but learned a lot teaching myself to read mathematical notation).

The point I'm trying to make is that they'll probably bounce off the first few times, and that's fine. Don't be overly focused on results. Even all my failures taught me a lot in retrospect. If they give up this time, then maybe a few months from now they'll want to try again, and it'll click.

Another important thing is treating them like an adult: They've set out wanting to do an "adult thing" - dumbing it down and turning it into a colorful kids activity is probably going to dampen their enthusiasm. If they are proud of something they accomplish, you're allowed to be too as a parent, if they fail, don't act like you expected them to and simply move on until they want to try again.

Don't be afraid to start something complex like Unity or Unreal. Even if they are huge complex monsters, getting something basic up and running in them is thankfully easy. Failure is okay.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense