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Basil Okpara Jr, a 9-year-old is building a hide and seek game, using a free programming application called Scratch 2 has caught the attention of the world. Basil who leaves with his family in Lagos Nigeria, has used the software to generate more than 30 mobile games.
“I learned how to build games at a boot camp. Now, I build to keep me busy when I am bored,” Basil told CNN.
In March, his father who told him out of anger to build his own game instead of playing games signed him up for a five-day boot camp for children aged 5 to 15.
Growing up, Basil used to play a lot of mobile games says his father, Basil Okpara Sr.
“I bought him a tablet when he was 4 years old because I saw that he was always grabbing phones to play games with. He played Candy Crush and Temple Run a lot,” the father told CNN.
But Basil’s interest in creating his games grew at age 7 after he got scolded for spending all of his time playing.
“There was this day he was on the tablet, as usual, he was so carried away with the game he was playing that I got upset with him,” his father said.
“Out of annoyance, I said to him, ‘you are always playing games, can’t you think about building your own games so others can play yours too?’. I was angry when I said it, and I did not know he took it seriously,” he added.
Since then, Basil actively showed interest in learning how to make his own games, prompting his parents to buy him a laptop and register him to learn the first steps of building games.
Basil, who wants to be a scientist in the future, titles his games based on what they are about.
The games are still in their raw form and can currently only be accessed on computers that have Scratch 2 installed.
But according to his father one of them, titled Frog attack, will be available to the public on Google play store in August.
Today, Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are investing in Africa and we hope this will be a good opportunity for Basil to develop his knowledge and perhaps becomes the first Nigerian game scientist in the world.
This 9-year-old has built more than 30 mobile games https://t.co/Mcjmj1YGxR pic.twitter.com/AMxdHZopSW
— CNN International (@cnni) August 6, 2019
