Gmod and Source Filmmaker were this for the generation that is around 30 now.
There's Roblox which is more or less a game engine, but the company is shady.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Roblox might be the only one that fits the bill, it's kind of like Unity for kids.
Dreams seems like the obvious answer, as creativity is its intention. I also wouldn't count out Minecraft. The fact that people can build functioning computers from the most basic logic circuits is pretty amazing.
Not quite what I'm looking for. I was after the kid versions of business applications. Like Creative Writer is Word for kids, Fine Artist is Photoshop for kids, 3DMM is Maya/Blender for kids.
I would say Machinima simply filled the needs and there was no need for these kind of games to be developed on top of it. Just using existing game engines with a decent editor would always be cheaper and more popular since people are familiar with the assets. Just take a look at how many Team Fortress "movies" are out there.
And even without editor using games was fine. World of Warcraft had a ton of videos as well.
Tools for Machinima also saw the gradual advancements you talked about. While the initial movies produced had a lot of workarounds to get a decent end product there is now dedicated software for it. NVIDIA recently released their own version.
On top of that with smartphones having cameras now, kids can always shoot their own movies.
Not really comparable to a game/creative suite aimed at children in grade (elementary) school. This wasn't about making indie movies on a budget, this was more like the Belcher kids putting on a show with cardboard and a Casio keyboard. 3D Movie Maker was a learning type creative sandbox for computer graphics, emphasis on learning. But it absolutely was not about learning the arcane rituals to get a prosumer open source computer graphics and video editing package working. It was more like a SIMs game where you wrote the script and placed the cameras.
I played a ton of 3d movie maker back in the day. I'm with you; I wish there were games like that today. It might be a niche, but you can't tell me there isn't a market for it.
Could you be more specific about what you want? E.g. building/basebuilding took off in a big way with Minecraft and is arguably creative, but if you wanna be a director, that narrows it down a lot. In fact I don't think I've heard of a game like that since 3D Movie Maker.
SFM is cool, but not really a game, per se. People have made some mindblowing shit in that.
I guess I am looking for kid-friendly versions of business applications. Like Creative Writer is Word for kids, Fine Artist is Photoshop for kids, 3DMM is Maya/Blender for kids..
I don't know the specific examples, but that sounds like it might be sort of niche. I don't know how old the kids would be, (or how motivated - makes a world of difference,) but they can be pretty quick if you help them along. It might be a good idea to give them a leg up on "real world" software.
Well, the 'kid' in this case is me wanting to relive experiences..