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I think going straight to Switch would likely be a tall order. I’d start him off with something where he can be successful right away, writing something he can play on his own computer or share with friends easily.
Scratch[0] is often used to start kids out with programming. He may already use it in school, I know my nephew does, who is around the same age. I made a silly little game in Scratch about a year ago to share with my nephews[1], to try and inspire them a bit. The oldest one quickly went into the code and started tweaking the variables I had set to control things like speed and randomness to make it more chaotic. It’s a good way to learn the concepts of variables, loops, sprites, hit boxes, etc without getting bogged down with the complexity of syntax or a professional game engine. It’s also in the browser, so he can easily share with friends and have them play it, or fork it.
After that, maybe look to something like Godot[2]. It’s free and open source, so he doesn’t have to worry about licensing and all that nonsense that a 12 year old shouldn’t have to think about. I briefly looked and saw some videos of people running the Godot engine on the Switch, but I don’t know what’s involved in that.
I wouldn’t get too tied to a console when learning. Rumors of the Switch 2 are floating around, and who knows, that could mean a whole different path. Starting on the computer avoids this problem, and other huddles. Then if he likes the act of game dev and learning those things, he can cross the bridge to whatever the current console is, if that’s the direction he wants to head.
[0] https://scratch.mit.edu/
[1] https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/733627274/
[2] https://godotengine.org/
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I think going straight to Switch would likely be a tall order. I’d start him off with something where he can be successful right away, writing something he can play on his own computer or share with friends easily.
Scratch[0] is often used to start kids out with programming. He may already use it in school, I know my nephew does, who is around the same age. I made a silly little game in Scratch about a year ago to share with my nephews[1], to try and inspire them a bit. The oldest one quickly went into the code and started tweaking the variables I had set to control things like speed and randomness to make it more chaotic. It’s a good way to learn the concepts of variables, loops, sprites, hit boxes, etc without getting bogged down with the complexity of syntax or a professional game engine. It’s also in the browser, so he can easily share with friends and have them play it, or fork it.
After that, maybe look to something like Godot[2]. It’s free and open source, so he doesn’t have to worry about licensing and all that nonsense that a 12 year old shouldn’t have to think about. I briefly looked and saw some videos of people running the Godot engine on the Switch, but I don’t know what’s involved in that.
I wouldn’t get too tied to a console when learning. Rumors of the Switch 2 are floating around, and who knows, that could mean a whole different path. Starting on the computer avoids this problem, and other huddles. Then if he likes the act of game dev and learning those things, he can cross the bridge to whatever the current console is, if that’s the direction he wants to head.
[0] https://scratch.mit.edu/
[1] https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/733627274/
[2] https://godotengine.org/
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