Thursday, September 28, 2006
Pre-Teen Game Designer Poised To Conquer the World
So the 11-year-old daughter who pwns me at miniatures wargames (well, okay, it's wargame - singular - but the plural sounds like she's so much more 1337) was playing one of those cute web-based Neopets games at the computer next to me while I was hard at work doing game development (or playing Age of Empires III, can't remember which), and she made one of those comments that is designed to sound off-handed to disguise the fact that she's been thinking about it for a while.
"So, daddy... I heard you talk about this thing called 'RPG Maker' which lets you make RPGs without any programming."
Well, this drew me out of whatever I was doing at the time with conflicted paternal emotions. On the one hand, I envision my daughter, the star videogame designer of the world, receiving Shigeru Miyamoto-level acclaim for her brilliant game design and art skills before she's old enough to date. On the other hand, I see myself forking over $65 for a toy that she will tinker with for a few days, and then get tired of and never look at again. After a few seconds of deliberation, I decide that the latter scenario has a slightly higher probability than the former. So I decided to probe her logic a little bit deeper.
"It doesn't require programming experience, but I understand it does have a scripting language that you might need to learn how to program in order to do some things."
My eldest offspring considered this for a second, trying to divine from context what "a scripting language" is. "So is it hard to learn how to do?"
Ah-hah. This was a good sign. "A little," I say, but then add, "But I learned to program when I was only a little older than you."
"Okay, I guess I could do that," she responds. Because she knows anything daddy could do at her age, she can do better.
Okay. Zinger-time. "You realize it's not free," I say. "It costs $65."
That deflated her somewhat. "Oh," she said, quietly going back to playing the game. That's over three times as much as she's paid for anything in her life. She'd saved up for weeks to afford to buy a Guardianship in AdventureQuest a couple of years back. And yet, she still plays...
Some discussion with the wife was in order. Having just finished reading, "The Millionaire Next Door," I was feeling wary of simply gifting my daughter with something that would no doubt involve much more toil, frustration, and labor than she was expecting. But if she was willing to save up her money and fund over a third of the price, she might feel more inspired to stick with it. And, I recalled, the tool came with a 30-day free trial period. So we all agreed on the plan. I warned her in advance that I have ZERO experience with this software, and so I'd be unable to offer her much help to learn how to use it. She'd be on her own.
A couple of days into the plan, she was frantically creating adventures and delightedly showing me the fruits of her labor with the stock art that came with RPG Maker. She had an angelic PC walking around and into buildings and so forth.
"I don't know how to change your start position, yet," she told me. "Or how to place other characters." She called up the documentation in the help file to show me where she'd been looking for more information on the subject.
A half-hour later, she proudly informs my wife and I that she's discovered that spawning other characters is done via an EVENT, and she's now learning to use EVENTS.
The following day, yesterday, she had conversations running with other characters in the game. And was in danger of losing her computer priviledges for exceeding her time limit on the computer making her game. And when her aunt took her to the mall, she stubbornly refused to spend any money, because she was saving for something.
I still think there's a better-than-even chance that it may be forgotten in two weeks' time. Which might be good, because I know what kind of boys a star videogame designer would attract when she hits dating age. But if she does stick with it - Miyamoto, watch out. My daughter will be gunning for you!
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:53 PM (Permalink)
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Out of interest did/does anyone learn to program for any other reason than to make games initially?
I know my visions were of writing a Wing Commander-Elite underwater. (I really like submarines) when I first start though I didn't get very far with Borland C++. Had I went for something more learnable to a twelve year old like RPG Maker, it mightn't have been til I got to college before I started coding for real.
Colm Mac
I know my visions were of writing a Wing Commander-Elite underwater. (I really like submarines) when I first start though I didn't get very far with Borland C++. Had I went for something more learnable to a twelve year old like RPG Maker, it mightn't have been til I got to college before I started coding for real.
Colm Mac
# posted by 
: September 28, 2006 4:20 PM
: September 28, 2006 4:20 PM
Not here. I discovered D&D and videogames in 1981 (Well, I knew about both of them a little before then, but that was when I caught the bug). Discovering that I could actually make my OWN games instead of just playing them was the one, true reason for learning how to program.
Nobody else knew how to program at the time, so I was on my own. I had manuals, a couple of magazines, and a copy of Creative Computing's "Basic Computer Games" to teach me.
I'll tell ya - being exposed to all kinds of programming styles that way was probably a better teacher than any class in college.
Nobody else knew how to program at the time, so I was on my own. I had manuals, a couple of magazines, and a copy of Creative Computing's "Basic Computer Games" to teach me.
I'll tell ya - being exposed to all kinds of programming styles that way was probably a better teacher than any class in college.
Jay,
Just some food for thought:
* I was 11 when I was introduced to computers. Granted, it was 16K and 1MHZ running a BASIC interpreter back then. I had David H Ahl's 101 Basic Computer Games too..
* I had a reaction similar to Colm Mac’s: I dove into (programming) so I could make games *for myself*. I felt compelled to duplicate and exceed what I saw in the arcades (but usually lacked the funds to play) and books/magazines.
* From this, I learned that I had a creative side and I could express with logic things could not only satisfy me, but could interest others.
* My parents didn't know if my making games would ever amount to anything, but they supported all my endeavors fully. From Age 11 to 15, my access to a computer depended on my dad bringing one home from school (he was Science Dept. Director then). He did that every single weekend and break for four years. (Then we bought one of our very own).
* I remember the day I earned a greater salary making games than my father did as a school district superintendent.
* I wrote some of the code in that game you were playing when you should have been hard at work doing game development. :-)
You never know what path(s) your children will wind up going down, nor what they will make of it, yet you stand behind and encourage them because you love them and want them to be happy and experience all they can of this all-too-brief life.
-Spiff
Just some food for thought:
* I was 11 when I was introduced to computers. Granted, it was 16K and 1MHZ running a BASIC interpreter back then. I had David H Ahl's 101 Basic Computer Games too..
* I had a reaction similar to Colm Mac’s: I dove into (programming) so I could make games *for myself*. I felt compelled to duplicate and exceed what I saw in the arcades (but usually lacked the funds to play) and books/magazines.
* From this, I learned that I had a creative side and I could express with logic things could not only satisfy me, but could interest others.
* My parents didn't know if my making games would ever amount to anything, but they supported all my endeavors fully. From Age 11 to 15, my access to a computer depended on my dad bringing one home from school (he was Science Dept. Director then). He did that every single weekend and break for four years. (Then we bought one of our very own).
* I remember the day I earned a greater salary making games than my father did as a school district superintendent.
* I wrote some of the code in that game you were playing when you should have been hard at work doing game development. :-)
You never know what path(s) your children will wind up going down, nor what they will make of it, yet you stand behind and encourage them because you love them and want them to be happy and experience all they can of this all-too-brief life.
-Spiff
# posted by : September 30, 2006 7:01 PM
: September 30, 2006 7:01 PM
Sounds very familiar, Spiff.
That's one thing that I feel strongly about - how programming can be a creative medium. That idea seems lost on a lot of people, even within the game industry. The programmers are somehow just "code monkeys" on an assembly line, and the creative people are all in marketing, art, or whatever.
That may be true among many programmers outside the games industry (I've known many that seemed to want nothing more than just to be told what to code next), I find that most programmers in the games biz use programming as a creative medium.
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That's one thing that I feel strongly about - how programming can be a creative medium. That idea seems lost on a lot of people, even within the game industry. The programmers are somehow just "code monkeys" on an assembly line, and the creative people are all in marketing, art, or whatever.
That may be true among many programmers outside the games industry (I've known many that seemed to want nothing more than just to be told what to code next), I find that most programmers in the games biz use programming as a creative medium.
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