Read Me First: Android Game Development for Kids and Adults

by Newton Lee

To code, or not to code? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, and other luminaries appeared in a 2013 YouTube video encouraging everyone to code. At Disney Online, I produced and engineered over 100 games between 1996 and 2006. While games are fun to play, children should grow up not just being the consumers of technology but also the creators of technology.

With the help of this book, parents can sit down with their kids and create a game with their favorite songs on their Android smartphones or tablets using professional tools. Teachers and students can follow the step-by-step instructions with troubleshooting in the book to learn how to create a commercial game and publish it in the Google Play Android Market and the Amazon Appstore.

Using the commercial mobile game Be.X as an example, complete game source code is included in the book. You may freely use, modify, and adapt the game source code for any commercial and noncommercial software development projects.

This book is meant to inspire and motivate novices. It does not teach Java programming. Instead, it aims to instill curiosity and excitement in kids and adults about software game development.

148 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2013

About the author

Newton Lee is an author, educator, futurist, and FBI ambassador. He was the founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of AT&T Bell Labs' first-ever commercial artificial intelligence tool, inventor of the world's first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library, and longest-serving editor-in-chief (2003-2018) in the history of the Association for Computing Machinery since 1947.

He is chairman of the California Transhumanist Party, education and media advisor to the United States Transhumanist Party, and president of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science, and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science.

Lee has lectured at Emily Carr University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Simon Fraser University, University of Southern California, Vincennes University, and Woodbury University. He has been honored with a Michigan Leading Edge Technologies Award, two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company.