Maybe let him try modding existing games? Steam's community workshop pages are thriving, especially for easily modded titles like Bethesda games.

Back in the day, Warcraft III had a built-in script and level editor and people thrived on making mods and entire new types of games with it (murder mysteries, tower defense, battle royale, DOTA...). It's how I got my start as a coder, modding games that I enjoyed without the boring pressure of "business logic".

I think Fortnite itself has a creative mode with limited logical programming: https://www.firetechcamp.com/course/build-an-escape-room-in-...

Proper modding support is supposed to arrive soon: https://www.pcgamer.com/fortnite-creative-mod-support/

Modding Minecraft is what lead me to be a full-stack developer today

Cool! Any other games like that that people can recommend? Bonus points if it's fairly easy to get started.

I think there's a slight distinction to be made between "games that have built-in low/no-code content editors" and "games that can be modded via an SDK, but you have to code".

The former are good for any creative kid (or adult!) and don't require you to learn a programming language, just logical thinking (as in logic gates/flows). The latter, depending on tooling, can require everything from simple Lua scripts (a common game modding language) all the way up to learning UnrealEngine or Unity.

Games with built-in content editors:

* Warcraft & Starcraft series (oldies but goodies)

* Fortnite

* Minecraft

* Neverwinter Nights series

* Divinity: Original Sin series

* Age of Empires series

Code-moddable games: Too many to list, see here: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Moddable/#p=0&tab=Top...

In particular I'd check out Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights' DM mode, and the DOS editor for a good sampling of what the industry can offer. They are a great stepping stone to actual programming, with triggers, conditionals, and other flow control structures all wrapped behind a veneer of fantasy gaming.

(edit: sorry for potato formatting. no idea how HN handles text formatting)

Overwatch's workshop might be a fun introduction.

Side note, but fun fact! Fortnite, the uberpopular battle royale game, is actually itself a mod of the original Fortnite (now called "Fortnite: Save the World").

Originally a tower defense game (you build structures and traps to defend your base against invading alien zombies), some Epic & Unreal Tournament developers decided to fork it into a PvP (competitive player-vs-player) battle royale game instead, loosely based off Player Unknown's Battlegrounds.

It became a surprise hit, propelling Fortnite from "niche DIY tower defense game" to global pop-culture phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale#Develop...

(edit: this was reposted... old comment was in the wrong thread)

Have you been framing the coding as a way to make games? Basically the only reason I'm here was because I thought making games would be rad, then I realized programming on it's own is pretty rad, and then eventually adult life showed up and it was a natural step to make it a career.