Game Design: How to get your kids interested in a career

If you’re anything like most parents, you’re concerned that your child is spending too much time watching TV. What you probably don’t know is that you could help your kid use this time better and become much more productive if you nurture their interest in game design.

But how do you go about that? In this brief guide, we’ll take a look at how you can get your child (or children) interested in game design. Before that, let’s first understand why game design is such a great career choice for your kids.

Why you introduce your child to game design

Recent research shows that playing video games can be quite helpful for kids. Not only can it boost creativity, but it can as well help them acquire problem-solving skills, improve focus, and even reduce stress. Better yet, learning game design and development helps young learners build cognitive skills and become even more creative.

Even if your little one loses interest in this career at some point in their life, all is not lost. Game design learning will equip them with essential skills such as management, teamwork, UI/UX, software design, and marketing. These are key entrepreneurial skills – which can help them in virtually any profession.

With the game design industry getting bigger by day and the possibility of earning better pay, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get your kids interested in this career.

How to get your kids interested in a game design career?

Game design is no child’s play – it takes a lot of learning, training, and practice. Luckily, there are plenty of resources to help kids develop their game design interests and skills.

1. Play games and evaluate gameplay

Playing games is the first thing you can do to get your kids interested in game design. As your little one spends time playing games, they will begin to notice patterns.

They will soon discover that certain elements of a game can make it fun, engaging, addictive, repetitive, or boring. This ability to notice patterns is one of the first things that will help them develop a problem-solving mindset.

2. Teach kids how to code

Coding is key for successful game designers. They often write scripts when laying out levels or when technical issues come up.

For kids, however, coding doesn’t necessarily translate to writing long and complex lines of code. Introducing them to activities and fun, hands-on games that make them think like computer programmers is enough.

Fortunately, there are many apps, programs, and other resources to help teach kids to code. Some of the top coding apps for kids include Scratch, Cargo-Bot, Lightbot, Kodable, Tynker, and Daisy the Dinosaur.

3. Teach them to become better storytellers

Storytelling is essential for game design. It helps developers create engaging games that will immerse players in the storyline.

For kids, ushering them into the world of storytelling is vital for their development. Besides helping them improve their social, communication, and interpersonal skills, it also helps with their brain development and lays down the foundation for them to think like computer programmers.

There are lots of things you can do to help your child become a better storyteller. These include encouraging them to play storytelling games, reading together, motivating them to read by themselves, taking them to events, and, of course, enrolling them in classes.

Wrapping up

Helping kids develop interest and become game designers is not easy. Nevertheless, getting your loved one started at an early age might be the best thing to do as history suggests many of those that made it in this industry started young.