
Bloxels – Build Your Own Video Games - handpickednames
http://home.bloxelsbuilder.com/
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redwoolf
I bought this for my kids about a year ago. The novelty wore off quickly, and
they ended up only playing the demo game included with the app. The process of
creating an image with the blox takes so long that the effort doesn't seem
worth it. I've purchased a lot of these "get kids into tech" type toys over
the years. I find that none of them have kept my kids interest nor have they
really actually taught anything technical. Some were downright patronizing
(I'm looking at you GoldieBlox).

If we want to get kids interested in technology, we should be teaching them
about technology, not creating abstractions on top technology and then
teaching them the abstractions. I learned about computers with Murphy's Laws
of Dos and Dos 4 on a monochrome screen. I knew that what I was doing was the
same thing that professionals did, and I knew that the knowledge I was
acquiring would be applicable in many settings. Later I learned Basic and
HTML, and again these were tools used by professionals.

We should stop lying to ourselves that these toys teach technology, and sit
down with our kids and teach them how to build Pong with Pygame.

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le-mark
I suspected this maybe the case. I think there's an important distinction when
relating your (and my) experience in the previous era with the current era.
That is: expectations are _much higher_ now. In the 80's we watched Matthew
Broderick in Wargames having fantastic adventures with a green screen terminal
and modem. We played pong, space invaders, and pac man. Today, kids use touch
devices to watch videos on youtube and play triple A console games with
incredible production quality.

 _I learned about computers with Murphy 's Laws of Dos and Dos 4 on a
monochrome screen. I knew that what I was doing was the same thing that
professionals did_

It's not obvious to kids today that that's what professionals are doing. As an
adult I made a simple platformer and showed it to a few nontechnical friends.
Their reactions were, 'why can't it do this', or 'are you going to fix the
graphics?' ie very un-impressed, and honestly quite dis-spiriting. Imagine a
kid creating a simple game today, won't impress her peers, and probably even
lead to ridicule and scorn today.

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m0ther
I strongly believe consumers are blissfully unaware of how complex software
can be (and what software is by nature more complex than what other software).
It's not only a problem with the people you show your independent work to,
it's a problem with non-technical management as well. I'd be very interested
to understand a few of the ways non-technical people think programming works.
If someone would put together some non-trivial demo, and get 100 non-technical
people to speculate (in detail) on how they imagine it was made, I'd imagine
the answers would be fascinating.

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wccrawford
I'd agree, except for the word "blissfully". Go visit a games subreddit and
you'll see tons of people who think programming is easy and are _screaming_
that the devs are lazy money-grubbing idiots that should be doing things
better. They aren't "blissful", just ignorant.

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Pica_soO
I think part of the yelling is the subconcious painfull realization of ones
own lack of capabilitys.

These guys want to participate- as they did in cowboys and indians, and are
unable to do so with just a stick and imagination.

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tombert
Honestly, whenever I've wanted to teach people how to get into programming, I
usually just try and teach them the "real" tools for it; something like Unity
or Scirra Construct is powerful enough to actually make something commercial,
but simple enough to get started that it's not super intimidating (in my
opinion). While it's (rightfully) lambasted nowadays, I actually feel like
Flash was a good way to get started as well, since it's a lot more interactive
than opening up Vim and writing C++.

That said, as a grown-up I quite like these "intro-to-programming" kits for
myself. I spent more hours making little toys in Pico-8, eventually leading to
a simple raycasting engine.

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wiremine
We purchased this for my 11 year old at Christmas, and he's been enjoying it
very much. He's also into Scratch, and I asked him why he likes them both: he
said the Bloxel code is more limited, but is easier to prototype ideas.
Scratch is more flexible, but also more time consuming.

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otterpro
I support tools and software that help kids learn technology and coding. I
really like the idea and the simplicity, and the cool 13x13 pixel concept, but
I can't get over the pricing just to get access to its online EDU hub (license
is $100 for 25 students) or classroom packs (which is more expensive but also
more acceptable since it includes physical pixel boards). Perhaps I feel
grumpy for its over-commercialization of education from Mattel, one of the
largest toy company in the world. Another is the several patents that they
have on the concept, which irks me.

Scratch is not perfect, but it is at least free, and access to own accounts
and community is free.

Also, I think we're giving our kids too much screen time. When I was a kid,
the most helpful concept of programming was not a programming language or
software, but rather it was just learning the concept of logic and playing
with "and" and "or" with electronics and transistors / gates / switches. For
that, I think electronics kit (Heathkit) were awesome.

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JustSomeNobody
Makes me remember learning how to do sprites on my C=64 using graph paper.
But, then I got a proper sprite editor and never looked back.

I kinda think this would get old quick like the graph paper did for me.

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djsumdog
Yea the photos made me think of The 8-Bit Guy videos and him showing how to
create sprites using graph paper.

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larrydag
We got this for my son and he plays it now and again. He's fairly creative and
loves Scratch too. A good gauge is if your child likes Scratch then this is a
good compliment.

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jason_slack
I found out about this yesterday when I posted this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282594#16286614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16282594#16286614)

What I don't see, when visiting their site is now to order less than a 5 pack.
It seems you can't just order one board and blocks.

~~~
calebh
I highly recommend GameMaker for teaching programming (this is actually how I
started programming). The drag and drop interface is easy to understand, while
also being powerful enough to use on real projects. There are even numerous
examples of successful indie games that have used GameMaker. It's pretty great
for rapid prototyping in game jams as well.

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djsumdog
Hotline Miami I and II were both in GameMaker (IIRC).

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k1ns
As a learning/teaching tool that fosters creative thinking, this looks really
cool. I think the idea of having a physical medium that represents an abstract
model of an area of your world is also a really neat idea. I will definitely
be picking this up for my kids (once they're a bit older).

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djrogers
This seems a lot more like ‘build your own maps’ for a side scrolling engine
than ‘build your own video games’.

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paulryanrogers
Takes the block-as-a-unit thing from Minecraft and has a side scroller engine
to start with. There art editor cleverly separates the pixels, though I prefer
more traditional paint programs.

Reminds me of Klik & Play. That product relied on a spreadsheet or prompt-
based effect definitions.

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_jrk_
My son has enjoyed making games in Roblox Studio more than anything else. It's
scripting language (Lua) has been easy for us to learn together.

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sirsuki
Tried the demo in Firefox on my Linux box and load average spiked to 20+ and
froze the computer for 10 minutes till FF eventually crashed. That is NOT how
one should write JavaScript. Considering this a malicious concept will never
purchase.

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rjmunro
That's a bug in Firefox or some other part of your setup - no matter what the
JS of a website does, even if it is deliberately engineered to be malicious,
it should not be able to cause the computer to freeze.

