Hello All For This Topic I Would Like To Ask The Following To Help A Family Member With Big Dreams but lacks the skills in mainly math :

1. How would you motivate this young soul who stopped trying because he's absolutely horrid at math ,sophomore(10th grade) in High school to pursue his dreams as a mobile game developer .

2. How do i convince him that he dosent need to be a math expert to do game development... i already told him about engines not needing any hard programming at all how ever he feels if he can't do it like the big guys in the industry then its not worth it.

3. What Books would you have him study for his math issues he said he's only decent in algebra everything else in higher math levels he fails.

(he hasn't showed me any proof he even knows algebra well enough but ill trust him that he knows something in it and i will be buying these books for him so lets not go wild here :). )

4. How do we Make him Interested in actually wanting to learn often because he said he will often lose focus and not do much math at all because its boring.

Maybe game development is just not the thing for him.

ill tell you one thing the kid love's 3d modeling hes a blender addict and does some pretty good stuff as he's more visual but the logic just isn't coming in , and please don't say that lmao were trying to find way's to help him mainly in the math area.

As a sophomore in high school I'm sure he doesn't really know what he wants to do. He probably doesn't even really know what he's interested in. You say he is "horrid" at math. How so? What math classes has he taken? Is he interested in math at all? I know that I hated my geometry class but I had a lot of fun taking calculus classes. It was really only that one class that I didn't like.

1. If he needs to always be externally motivated to succeed at something, he's not really passionate about it. Let him find what he really wants to do and go for that. If he doesn't really want to make games, why force him? That will just lead to him being miserable.

2. You can't, because you do need math to do game programming. Admit it and show him that math really isn't that bad. Let him experience it himself.

3. Just taking math classes will help his math skills. What math classes has he taken? Again, has he shown any interest in mathematics? I've been reading Stephen Hawking's God Created the Integers and have quite enjoyed it. Hawking writes about a mathematician then describes their most important and influential works. I find it quite interesting and enjoy Hawking's writing style. Above all though, if he doesn't have an interest in mathematics then you can't make him do math. Just accept that he doesn't want to do math and may not want to do programming - and that's okay.

4. That's difficult. Wanting to learn is something I think is developed throughout life. As a sophomore, I wasn't all that interested in school. I was bored in most of my classes and, while that didn't change much, through most of my high school career, it has gotten better and I'm a lot more excited about learning now and going to school.

You say that he's interested in 3D modeling. Maybe he's interested in making art for games. There's nothing wrong with that. A lot of people around here are looking for good artists for their games. Encourage him to go after whatever it is he's passionate about. Don't try to force him into going a direction that he doesn't want to - it will end badly. Let him experience all his available options. He's young. He has a ton of opportunities and it would be unfortunate for him to miss out because he's doing something he'd rather not be doing but feels he has to.

ill tell you one thing the kid love's 3d modeling hes a blender addict and does some pretty good stuff as he's more visual but the logic just isn't coming in , and please don't say that lmao were trying to find way's to help him mainly in the math area.

Then maybe going into art/modelling would be the best option. He really wont need to know programming or math for that.

People need to motivate themselves. If he's not into math, then I doubt you can make him like it. And, while using an off-the-shelf engine to make a game doesnt require much math for simple games, eventually he will need it. Programming and game development is in big part about math. It's also in big part about being self-motivated.

ill tell you one thing the kid love's 3d modeling hes a blender addict and does some pretty good stuff as he's more visual but the logic just isn't coming in , and please don't say that lmao were trying to find way's to help him mainly in the math area.

Then he's probably better suited in art. Maybe he should start pursuing in that direction?

You don't have to be a programmer to make games..

This topic hits close to home for me.

I was horrible at High School. I failed more classes than I care to admit. It was not due to a lack of intelligence (although perhaps some might disagree :) ) , but rather a complete apathy to the entire situation. I did not see the relevance of the assignments to anything that I wanted to do. I also naively considered myself to somehow be so "awesome" that I did not really even need to pay attention in school. I would focus on what I wanted to focus on and that is it.

I considered myself to be terrible at math. This was part due to the fact I did not due the homework and part due to the fact that I had "mostly" terrible teachers. My algebra teacher in High school was amazing and he is probably one of the sole reasons that I had any sort of hope when it came to mathematics. Every other teacher could not seem to be bothered to really teach the material or they were so busy getting off topic that we learned very little. What we did learn I did not understand due to not really paying attention anyway.

During this period I had been playing with programming and I had seen glimpses of where things I learned in the class room could help me in my code, however such inspiration was crushed by the sheer mind numbing boredom.

I graduated Magna Cum Laude in College with a 3.88 GPA and bachelors degrees in Computer Science, Physics, and Mathematics.

So what changed?

One night I had... I guess you could say an epiphany... I realized that while I never envisioned my "awesome" self in a low paying and manual labor type job, that is exactly where I was headed with my attitude towards both schooling and effort in general. I realized this during my junior year... It seems such an obvious revelation, but for me it made all of the difference. I made every effort to apply myself and my grades did improve... I did well on state tests and managed to get accepted to college.

I cost myself a lot of potential scholarships (although I would earn more in college from my grades) but the plus side is I knew the taste of failure and I also knew that even if I did poorly in a class that it was not the end of the world!

All this to say the case is not hopeless. Some of the things that have motivated me are the true pieces of advice:

1. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

2. Anything worth doing is hard.

3. If it were easy to do programming they would not pay you well to do it.

I suggest you discuss with him what he wants to do in life and maybe if you are lucky he will find his motivation.

Also the following my help:

https://www.khanacademy.org/

They have great video lectures and web based activities that can help with learning a lot of different subjects including mathematics. I watched these videos fairly extensively and they were a huge help. They are fairly short, broken up by topic, and are very straight to the point without a lot of rambling and distractions.

Here is a link of The use of mathematics in computer games.