When I was ten years old, I played a lot of web games built on Flash technology and asked my parents how I could build my own. My parents sat me down and taught me the very basics of how to code. I didn't learn very well from them, but they also bought me a textbook and I learned great from that. By age 12, I had recreated a lot of the games I was fond of, pacman, snake, space invaders, etc.

Maybe the bar was lower for my interests at the time (flash mini games vs AAA 3D games as described here), but just offering a different take: Maybe your son _would_ very much be interested in learning to code. Though starting with 2d retro games might be easier.