Game Development

Look into scratch (the programming tool), it's amazing to start with

I was teaching myself assembly language and C when I was in 7th grade, so sure. If a kid is self-motivated enough then the sky is the limit.

Kids are capable of some amazing things if given the right tools, enough time and plenty of positive reinforcement.

When I was in highschool, I did a course on games that used this:

https://gamemaker.io/en

It was free, very simple to learn, and reasonably powerful, you could build 3D games similar to the first Doom with some effort.

~~After that, Unity would probably be the next step up?~~

So yes, a kid can definitely create games with a small amount of effort.

Yes with enough time and effort. But beware: they become a "wiz" during the pursuit of that goal. Game hacking/modding/making are usually the kid gateway drugs to an IT career.

Tho this isn't always the case. They could focus on game making in the artistic direction, utilizing existing tools and engines without too much deep knowledge

I mean, it depends on your expectations?

If the game engine is user friendly, like GameMaker for example, then probably a kid could make something pretty simple. I wouldn't expect a kid to know how to program something from scratch or for Pico-8 or something.

Of course, just... temper the expectations of what the means. A kid can probably do tic tac toe, chess, that kind of stuff.

"Real video games" take a lot of work and I would be super impressed if a "normal" kid who just "sort of likes playing" video games could bring up the dedication for learning and problem solving it needs.

It's like asking if a kid can learn to be a really good painter or musician. Sure. They can. It just takes a lot of practice.

And if Scratch is too much Scratch Jr is designed for even younger kids. My children have shown me tons of games they've made with those.

Yes

Kids are smart and simple games are not that hard to make

Yup, check out scratch

An underrated place to start is with Doom modding. The various ports of Doom engines have grown to have surprizingly rich feature sets these days, and a lot of indie games have been getting made in these engines. It's easy to get into because you can get started pretty much right away by making mods for existing games.

So for example, you could download the free game FreeDoom, get the UZDoom engine to play it on, the map maker Ultimate Doom Builder to make maps for FreeDoom, SLADE for the other aspects of editing, and then finally the ZDoom wiki should be able to point you toward everything you'll want to learn to be able to make whatever you'd like.

So you can start learning and producing content very quickly by making maps, learn and develop those maps into more extensive mods, eventually learn and develop those mods so far they become "total conversions" - meaning that it's still technically a mod, and still would depend on the Freedoom game you're building on, but has grown extensively enough to replace all assets; and then finally it is possible to convert that total conversion into a full fledged standalone game.

And of course once you have enough experience with this, you can develop standalone games right from the start of a project.

I'm not familiar with it so I may be wrong but Derek Yu (creator of spelunky) mentions in an interview Gamemaker or something named like that which he used to make games without knowing too much

That's how I started. When I was 10 years old, I discovered game maker and accidentally gained a lifelong passion for programming.

not the computer wizkid, but the average one

I can assure you that 10 year old me was below average with computers. It's a miracle I managed to figure out how to install gamemaker at all. The only thing that matters is interest, passion, and determination. If the child doesn't have those things, they probably won't succeed, and you probably can't force them to, which is fine. It doesn't mean they won't become a software engineer in the future, just that they won't do it at an early age. I know engineers who started learning programming in college, and are way smarter than me even though I had almost a decade head start.

EDIT: btw, I don't know if I'd recommend gamemaker today. When I started with it, it was simple and specifically aimed at learning. Today, it's trying to be a full-blown commercial game engine and it has gotten pretty complex. Another option might be Godot, but I'd strongly recommend against it. Godot is way too complex for someone's first game engine. Some people like Scratch, but IMO it's pretty lame and feels more like a homework assignment.

Some possible alternatives (haven't used them myself):

• https://www.construct.net/en
• https://gdevelop.io/
• https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/

Or just search for "no code game engine" in your favorite search engine. There are probably tons of those today.

As others mentioned, Scratch is a good option.

Another one is Hopscotch.

I know nothing about software or game development.

I think it would depend on how old, how motivated and how interested the kid is. Never in history has there ever been a time when we've had this much free resource immediately available to us. My cousin started his son on learning game development at about 11 or 12. He learned coding, used online resources and video courses and pretty much self-taught in the way any student would learn in a programming course. He's making simple Android games and he's been happy jumping on the deep and and doing it "properly".

I built a dumb little spaceship game in, like 7th or 8th grade, which was over 20 years ago. I used a game-making learner program I found through Nintendo Power magazine. Game making resources and have only gotten better and more numerous since then.