Hey everyone. My name's Eddie the magic monk, I teach computer games programming at a high school in Australia.Here is why I think people, especially children, should learn to make games, and not just play them.Don't get me wrong, I totally understand the need to wind down and play games once in a while. I myself have spent over thousands of hours on various MMORPGs. I started playing MUD before the term MMORPG even came about. I learned a lot through playing MUD. It's the reason I can type A to Z in under 3 seconds.
However, a lot of games have very little benefit, especially games that require very little brain power and you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Once you become addicted to a game, it becomes a very big time waster and can even be detrimental to your health and vision.One day I started teaching teenagers how to make games and I discovered something. Making games is just as enjoyable, if not more enjoyable, than playing games. However, it is usually a lot more rewarding, because you create your own product, and it requires a lot more logical thinking to program a game than just playing it.Just about all my students enjoy game making and some of them have made some really fantastic games. They have learned so much logical thinking in the process, and most of all, the fundamentals of computer programming, such as objects, events, actions, if statements, loops, etc. They will even learn a bit of mathematics (numerical operations, variables, coordinate system, etc.).And guess what. Since I started making my own games, my computer game addiction started to disappear. Because I became more aware of how computer games are made and what they're designed to do, I became less interested in playing them.Watch my games programming tutorials if you would like to find out how to make games.
Here is a game that I made myself - that you can make by following my tutorials.