How To Help My Kid Become a Game Developer? | 98thPercentile

ElevatEd
Coding
June 13, 2025

Your 10-year-old spent three hours spinning out their "epic game idea," complete with dragons, space travel, and a pizza-delivering robot sidekick. You smiled and nodded along, a thought flashing through your head: "Could this crazy imagination become a career?" The answer is more than you might think - the gaming industry is bigger than movies and music combined, and bedroom fantasists today become industry shakers tomorrow. But here's the rub: letting your child make a living playing games takes more planning than any boss fight they will ever encounter.

Start Your Child’s Game Development Journey!

The path from game player to game maker is not just one of how to program, though that's certainly involved. It's one of cultivating creativity, technical acumen, a sense of storytelling, and the persistence to bring creative ideas into playable worlds.

Ready to soar your child's future to new heights? Let's discover the blueprint that converts enthusiastic gamers into pro game developers!

Understanding the Game Development Environment

Game development is one profession that incorporates several fields into one fun profession. Unlike other programming, game development combines technical skills with artistic expression, which is why it is especially interesting to kids who enjoy both technology and the arts.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." – Alan Kay

This quote best describes the nature of game creation: authors create the virtual worlds that millions of individuals will experience and delight in.

Modern game development has numerous different specialization paths, from programming and art to sound design and storytelling. Getting to know these different positions enables you to guide your child toward their strongest interests and natural talents.

Skills Desired by Possible Game Developers

Game development requires a unique blend of technical and creative expertise that can be learned stage by stage over time.

Skill Category	Key Elements	Age to Start
Coding	Logic, problem-solving, and programming languages	7-9 years
Art & Design	Visual imagination, UI/UX skills	5-7 years
Mathematics	Geometry, physics, algebra	8-10 years
Storytelling	Narrative structure, character development	6-8 years

The brilliance of game design is the way these skills work together. A mathematically gifted child may design programming differently than a child who is artistically gifted, resulting in innovative and creative solutions.

Parent Tip: Pay close attention to what your child discusses games the most about - narrative, graphics, or mechanics. This often indicates their predestined career path in the industry.

Building Foundation Skills Through Play

The path to being a game developer must be an extension of play and not education. This way, the fun element is preserved while the skills are honed.

Start with Game Design Thinking

Before learning how to program, tell your child why games are interesting and fun.

Discuss their favorite games with them: What is it that makes particular levels hard but not maddening? How do characters develop and mature? Why are some games addictive and others quit right away?

This type of analytical thinking constitutes the critical game design intuition that separates excellent game designers from people who simply know how to code.

At 98thPercentile, our curriculum in game development begins with these design thinking activities, so students are studying player psychology and engagement principles before they ever write a line of code.

Choosing the Right Development Tools

Not all development environments are available to the next generation of game programmers. The right tools will accelerate the learning process without sacrificing the fun element that will engage kids.

For novice students (ages 7-10), graphical programming interfaces such as Scratch for Games or GameMaker Studio's drag-and-drop functionality offer instant gratification and learning of the basics.

Intermediate learners (ages 11-14) can move on to engines such as Unity with C# or Godot with GDScript, which provide industry-level functionality with learning curve-friendly approaches.

More advanced students (over age 15) might pick up Unreal Engine or go directly to languages like Python or JavaScript for web games.

Nurturing the Development Journey

Supporting the child's aspirations for game development requires a balance of support and realistic expectations of the learning process.

Creating a Supportive Environment

Set aside a specific space for game development practice, separate from other homework or recreational activities. Physical segregation does the work of making game development stand out as a serious creative activity.

Encourage your child to document their game ideas in a development journal. This teaches them about project planning and keeps ideas handy for future projects.

Building a Portfolio Strategy

Professional game developers showcase their talent with portfolios of completed games. Introduce this early on by making your child complete small game projects rather than starting lots of good ones.

Join Game Dev Community!

Even simple games like "guess the number" or platformers demonstrate programming ability and creative thinking to potential schools or businesses.

At 98thPercentile, we emphasize portfolio development greatly in our curriculum for game development so that students have real projects to showcase their emerging skills.

Handling Common Issues

All potential game developers face the same dilemma. Knowing what to expect allows parents to provide appropriate help during difficult moments.

Managing Scope and Expectations

Children would imagine games as complex as their favorite ones without having the slightest idea of the teams and budgets behind professional names. Tell them to start with simple projects and gradually add complexity.

The "walking simulator" by which a player character moves around in a bare-bones world might be uninteresting to them, but it exposes them to fundamental programming concepts like user input, collision detection, and managing scenes.

Debugging and Dealing with Frustration

Game development is debugging and problem-solving - something you must learn to do patiently and persistently.

When your child runs into bugs or is having a difficult time with concepts, don't do the work for them. Instead, pose directive questions that will make them figure it out logically.

Did You Know?

The average game developer starts to learn how to code at the age of 12, but successful developers learned earlier using tools like Scratch.
Female video game developers earn 86% of what men developers earn—one of the smallest gender pay gaps in the tech sectors.
Independent developers can make a good living: individual developers have made games that earn millions of dollars.
The video game industry alone has over 220,000 workers in the US and is growing at a very rapid pace.

Schedule Parent Consultation!

Long-Term Career Planning

Game development also offers different career options beyond programming. Awareness of these career options assists you in directing your child as his/her interests shift.

Some kids are attracted to programming roles in technology, others to game design, art production, or project management. All are good-paying jobs in the gaming industry.

Keep in mind that game development skills also transfer readily to other tech careers. Technical skills, problem-solving, and creativity learned in game development readily transfer to whatever tech career your child may be interested in.

The video game market continues expanding into new media - cell phones, virtual reality, and new technologies - with great promise for future generations of game designers.

Their goofy game ideas now may be the future industry-defining innovations. With the proper tools, guidance, and encouragement, their passion for gaming can translate into a lucrative and fulfilling profession.

FAQs

Q1: What language do I introduce first to my child to make games?

Ans: Scratch-style visual programming languages are ideal for beginners. Once they become advanced, Python or C++ are great platforms for serious game development but are still beginner-friendly.

Q2: How can I determine if my child has genuine potential to become a game developer?

Ans: Look for enduring passion in learning about game mechanics, adaptability to experiment and perfect ideas through iteration, and enjoyment in resolving technical and creative challenges.

Q3: Should my child spend time learning existing games or creating new ones?

Ans: Both! Designing and analyzing current games increases design sensitivity, and developing new games increases technical proficiency and confidence.

Q4: What if my child likes game development but isn't very mathematically inclined?

Ans: The majority of game development areas do not require advanced math. Address their strengths initially and then gradually introduce mathematics step-by-step through actual game development usage.

Q5: How is the job market for the game development industry?

Ans: While competitive, the industry is growing rapidly and values diversity of ability. Building technical and artistic skills and maintaining a good portfolio significantly increases the chances of securing employment.