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It’s no secret that most kids love to play video games. However, if your child is interested in learning about game design, you should support them and nurture their passion. Not only does game designing encourage creativity and imagination, but it also boosts your kid’s confidence and teamwork. What’s more, you expose your child to the world of tech and equip them with critical skills like coding that will open numerous career opportunities in the future.
Here are a few tips you can use to help your child pursue their dreams of becoming a web designer.
Play and Evaluate Games with Your Kid
The first and best way to introduce your child to the world of game design is by playing video games with them. Doing so allows your child to catch patterns in a game and understand the elements that make it fun. Although it is necessary to expose your child to good games to inspire their creativity, you should not forget about the boring or bad ones for contrast.
While playing the games, explain what makes a game good or bad. By evaluating the video games when playing, your child gets a better understanding of basic game design concepts. You should work through different games and try to recommend suggestions on how to improve the dull ones. Due to this, your child develops the problem-solving skills necessary in web design and tech.
Use Code
Encourage the use of code for game design. While it is not compulsory for game designers to have coding skills, most game developers write games using programming languages like C. Your child, therefore, needs to learn coding early to excel as a game designer.
Understanding programming gives your child a better understanding when working with programmers to develop a game. It also enables your kid to script faster and build their own games independently without relying on programmers. Fortunately, there are numerous resources and coding classes for your kid to learn to code and add to their tech skills.
By enrolling your kid in a coding class, you set them ahead of the pack and equip them with all the skills they need to excel as game designers. You can also teach your kids to code at home using tools like Scratch and CodaKid that introduce coding to kids through games.
Follow a Storyline
To help your child become an excellent game designer, allow them to tell their stories when coming up with a game by following a storyline. A storyline comes from the game levels, difficulty, and even user experience. A game with a good storyline will have players looking forward to the next level and makes it more immersive and successful.
Ensure you explain the importance of a storyline in a game and encourage your kid to create a storyline before designing a game. Let your child decide the type of game, player choices, and how they affect the game as well as the game’s ending. You can boost your child’s storytelling by engaging them in storytelling games or providing resources like books.
Design Games Using a Strategy
When guiding your child through game design, emphasize the need for a strategy when designing a game. Doing so enables your child to create engaging games with replay value. According to an experienced game developer known as Darran Jamieson, game design should have four main elements; challenge, choice, change, and chance.
The game should present challenges to the players to avoid being dull or frustrating. Also, the difficulty levels should gradually increase as players go from beginners to experts. It should also be dynamic and offer players a choice to vary their experiences while playing. Options allow players to enjoy different game-play experiences depending on what they choose.
Teach your child to use change by switching up elements like backgrounds and scenes at various game stages. Offering a different look and feel for different levels reduces monotony and increases the game’s replay value. Lastly, teach your child to apply chance through introducing unpredictable events or items in the game like unknown attackers or challenges. The uncertainty and randomness keep the game interesting.
Encourage Regular Practice
To become good at game designing, your child should practice the craft regularly and sharpen their skills. Regular practice involving evaluating games, creating storylines, and generally designing games will help your child become better at what they do. It also gives your kid hands-on experience in game designing and allows them to get a picture of what to expect. With proper training, such as taking coding classes, your child can begin creating their own games and work towards becoming skilled game designers.
The above tips should help you guide your child towards developing and sharpening their skills in game design. Through designing games, you enable your child to see things from another person’s perspective. You, therefore, enhance your child’s value of creation and promote entrepreneurship.
Originally posted 2021-06-16 17:36:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
