Encouraging children to innovate is key to future gaming success — and learning

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Image Credit: Yudiz Solutions

Game development requires a great deal of innovation and conceptualization. The future of gaming innovation lies with the young minds who must use their latent power of imagination to unlock further prospects

Investments in gaming are at an all-time high, and gaming itself is now a serious industry — it’s no longer child’s play. But it’s children who can unlock the future of the industry if trained at an early age. Many entrepreneurs offer encouragement with free-coding clubs for youth, under the guidance of active developers and experienced concept artists.

Recognizing opportunities

Boosting inclusive and supportive social engagement is a must, with many opportunities in the market. The need for talented coders is still there, even though it appears that the industry has plenty of software engineers. It’s important to expose children to different approaches to programming and subject matters so that they get fresh problems to solve. Their natural curiosity and inquisitiveness will be a boon for developers to look at gaming scenarios with fresh perspectives.

The role of gaming beyond entertainment

Gaming plays an integral role in lives today, and new games and mobile apps are making the most of the need for some “playfulness” in one’s serious life. The market is still wide-open for innovation since the need is to connect with a wide range of players and not just a niche audience.

Gaming has many opportunities, especially in the form of mobile games, console gaming and online gaming arena, in facilitating deeper engagement between players. Games that work on multiple platforms have a wider reach, too. Gaming companies need to know that they shouldn’t limit their games to a single media or platform.

Apps that solve real-world problems are key

Putting the work into creating something new and fresh is comparatively easy than devising apps and games, which solve real-world problems. The gaming arena is full of such apps, but not many gain traction with new ideas, unless they manage to convince the users that the apps are of value for a typical real world scenario, or in sharpening some useful skills.

Train the brain

Recent research shows you can strengthen and build up specific areas of the brain, and this establishes the patterns of thinking, habits and behavior. Children need training at an early age to grasp real world intricacies and coding behavior of different languages. The way they interact and evolve with age would translate into their code and their varied capacity for creative thinking, influenced by their interactions with their surroundings.

Improving brain performance and learning ability

Practicing creative activities help the young to recruit their brain’s creative networks better than others and the strength of imagination builds up over time. Those suffering from cognitive problems are now looking for brain gymnasiums, programs that help train children’s mental capabilities, to improve performance. The learning capability and the imaginative power of a young child improve with constant exposure to different fields and real-world scenarios.

Switching at will and the need for relaxed atmosphere

Some children have the ability to shift between convergent and divergent thinking, and others can learn it with consistent practice. Most training programs alternate periods of convergent thinking with divergent thinking on different levels that affect brain patterns considerably, delivering greater creative thinking capacity.

Additionally, a relaxed ambiance will generally provoke imagination enough to support creative development. Children who are trained to be relaxed in all situations tend to be creative in different ways, since they control brain responses effectively because of a suitable familiar atmosphere. The more relaxed the individual, the more “open” the mind becomes, along with more creativity and awareness to the world and its working.

Reduce — or remove — multitasking in a child’s life

The age of multitasking has robbed many of the creative potential that they are capable of. Giving the mind to interruptions or distractions without working on a task with focus can be detrimental to productivity that one can generate.

The gaming industry needs highly creative people who are able to utilize non-conscious processing of innovative ideas with divergent solutions, giving time to the brain to “incubate” and access cognitive solutions that were not accessible to conscious awareness.

For a ripe future in gaming innovation, today’s kids need proper guidance. Excessive multitasking and unnecessary mental restrictions can kill the potential in an individual, and hence, you need to avoid these.

Chirag Leuva is a CEO and iOS developer at Yudiz Solutions. His experience ranges from programming to development of iPhone apps and iPad apps. He loves writing about his insights into the world of iOS to share his views with like-minded people.

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