My house is a house FULL of nerds. Top to bottom, left to right, you can stir the nerds with a stick in here. So when I got an email with a membership pass from Tektoma, I knew there would be one excited 10 year old nerd in the house.
For those of you with less geek-like tendencies, Tektoma is a membership site that teaches amateur nerds and other wanna-be’s out there how to make your very own computer games. Way cool! I know!!
Tektoma offers video tutorials for kids as young as 7-ish up to *ahem* let’s just say some adults might be interested too. ; ) The tutorials start out simple and get increasingly more challenging and in depth. Some of the very first tutorials your kids can complete involve making a racing car game, an arcade game and a memory game. These three are the easiest and quickest to create. After these the child can then move on to a platform game (think Mario Bros. here) and other full game tutorials as well as tip-like tutorials on how to make your games cooler.
So obviously, I think this is really cool. But I’m a nerd and a grown up. What does the 10 year old think? Totally awesome!!! While my son doesn’t spend much time at the computer screen, he does spend quite a bit playing video games. In fact, he wants to get a job making video games when he grows up. (Personally, I think he should get one of those gigs where he plays in video game tournaments making a bazillion dollars beating other video game junkies and then pay off his mama’s house as a thank you for letting him play video games when he was ten… but whatever.)
Completing the tutorials was much like playing the games for him, I think. He didn’t want to quit or give up until it was completed. He never finished an entire tutorial in one day (though the shortest full length one is only an hour and twenty-three minutes). He would work on it for about an hour or so, pausing the video as he worked on the game, and then take a break til the next day. The tutorials are rigid enough to get him started but flexible enough for him to add his own touches to the games he created.
Oh yes, the program used to actually create the games is a free download so no extra software to buy. (Yes!) I could totally see this as a neat birthday gift that would last the whole year long. A yearly membership is $140 while the monthly plan is $14.95. One of the main reasons this membership fee is worth paying is the safety aspect. The tutorials are appropriate for small children – no bad language, no blood, no guts. The user forum is a private forum for members only and is completely moderated. There are many tutorials for these kinds of things online but youtube is NOT where I want my 10 year old son hanging out. Neither are these gaming forums where all kinds of pictures show up. Tektoma is a safe, clean environment that is monitored. I have no worries of inappropriate pop-ups or ‘bad people’.
Not only can you create games with the tutorials, but you can also play the games other people have created and even share your games online! Cool, huh?! If you think this looks like something a kid in your house would enjoy, be sure to check out the website. There’s plenty of good info and of course a free trial. Sweet!
Tektoma gets a nerdy thumbs up from the O’ household. : )
Sara O’