Can a child of almost 8 learn to create games with CS 2?

0 favourites
  • 7 posts
From the Asset Store
Add emotion, innocence, joy and cuteness to your video game with these 15 songs and 9 SFX
  • Hello everyone,

    We have a small daughter which at the end of december will be 8 years. She likes playing games on the laptop too much. She is only allowed to play BigFish games which we allow her to play. Games like the Dora line, Delicious Emily, The Island Castaway, Island Tribe, Jojo Fashion show, World Mosaics, jigsaw puzzles and other games.

    But I also like her to do creative educational learning which is fun. Therefore the idea growed to let her create her own games. She is very creative a fast learner and has a lot of fantasy.

    My question is : Can Construct 2 be used to let our daughter of 7 learn to create her own games succesfully? Also any idea which is the best educational method to learn her this activity will be very welcome.

    I thank you in advance for your time spend on my request. Be assured that will be very much appreciated by myself and our daughter Karabo.

    Wish you a very nice day.

    Friendly greetings,

    Karabo and Chris

  • Hi,

    For sure C2 is a good choice but depends how she likes the interface, cause at that age, the interface is everything for her. And C2 can be customized to be more colorful and cute, but still has the Windows 98 kinda of feel, which might not be so great for her. Present her the idea of other visual programming software(Scratch, Stencyl,Game Gdevelop which is similar to C2,BuildBox, GameSalad which is designed for kids and has a great glamour look) and add C2 between them, see which one she picks.

    However even if C2 is easy to learn, when your 7-8 years old you like to build and play stuff, i wold not yet push her to Game development and wold wait till shes like 10-12(thats the time when they might get addicted in game playing and not pay attention to school), reason why, once you start developing games, it takes away the fun of playing games, cause you build an idea of how games are made, and then its like you know the pattern of the games in advanced, which for me is not fun. It taken the fun out of games atleast for me, a grown "ars" man that loved to play games, now im am like ehm... another one.

    If you are not worried about taking the joy out of games for her and want to introduce her to Game Development, then C2 is one good choice. Not sure how Kids see it, im not a teacher, better ask a Teacer/Person who teached C2 to kids and what where their reaction, and how fast they where learning it. Take a look at the Teaching C2 section Maybe you find your answer around there.

    I hope my answer was something you where looking for or atleast give you a different perspective to the problem!

  • Thank you very much GameCorpStudio for your long and interesting answer. You answered all my questions.

    I will follow your advice and ask her if she is interested in creating small little games. It has to be fun for her, otherwise I would not continue with this idea.

    I appreciate your advice and your time spend on my question very much. It is a great reply.

    Wish you a very nice day and a lot of fun developing games.

    Friendly greetings,

    Karabo and Chris

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • No problem at all, pleasure was all mine.

  • The interface could be a problem. I teach 15-16 year old students and they still struggle with the interface sometimes. You'll have to try to see how it fits your daughter. What suggested about trying multiple visual programming environments is a good idea.

  • Hello everyone,

    We have a small daughter which at the end of december will be 8 years. She likes playing games on the laptop too much. She is only allowed to play BigFish games which we allow her to play. Games like the Dora line, Delicious Emily, The Island Castaway, Island Tribe, Jojo Fashion show, World Mosaics, jigsaw puzzles and other games.

    But I also like her to do creative educational learning which is fun. Therefore the idea growed to let her create her own games. She is very creative a fast learner and has a lot of fantasy.

    My question is : Can Construct 2 be used to let our daughter of 7 learn to create her own games succesfully? Also any idea which is the best educational method to learn her this activity will be very welcome.

    I thank you in advance for your time spend on my request. Be assured that will be very much appreciated by myself and our daughter Karabo.

    Wish you a very nice day.

    Friendly greetings,

    Karabo and Chris

    I think that you should also get some sprite packs (some are free (C2 comes with some) and others are paid) because it helps to actually have a game that looks like a game and less like colored boxes on the screen.

    Also I started learning C2 when I was 13 (I am now almost 15) and the first time I opened the program I had no idea what to do, so I closed it =D

    Afterwards I looked up some tutorials on youtube (I recommend this one to start:

    Subscribe to Construct videos now

    ) but she may not want to learn from tutorials so I suggest that you look up tutorials for simple games in C2 and then teach her yourself.

    Anyways, good luck!

  • Thank you very much GameCorpStudio, Glerikud and TRMG for your interesting inputs.

    I am indeed thinking of teach her by example with a small game. Something easy and quickly to do. For example an orange tree, a mango tree or banana tree (actually a plant but most people call it tree). The player has to catch the falling fruits in the basket.

    Also after the basic project is completed, she can add more features. Like flowers in the grass, when the player walks over them they break and a point is subtracted, when he/she jumps over it there is an extra point. There can be a pond added, when the player stumbles in it, the game is over. There are so much possibilities with this theme, she has to use her fantasy.

    I got that idea based on the input here. It is a small project but there is already a lot in it. And she will quickly see the results of her work. She likes drawing, so she can draw the objects of the game herself.

    For me, the fun and educational touch are equally important. In her free time, learning has to be fun for her. She is a very fast learner especially with computer related things. She learns faster when she can try out and do things herself. She is quickly bored when sitting near her and explaining while she sit there. When sitting near her and explain while she does the actions keep her focussed on the task she is accomplishing.

    I already downloaded and watched the suggested tutorial and that is a very good starting point. From there on, we can go further.

    I will also buy and download some sprite packs, so she has a nice library where she can choose the sprites, she cannot or does not want to draw.

    I appreciate all your input very much and again thank you.

    Wish you all a very nice day and all the best.

    Karabo and Chris

Jump to:
Active Users
There are 1 visitors browsing this topic (0 users and 1 guests)