The Story of an 11-Year-Old Whose Video Game Went Viral
The halls were bustling with students rushing to their next class, chatting with their friends. It was just another typical day at a local middle school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Yet, something unusual was going on. A bleary-eyed group of kids had stayed up all night playing a new video game called Weapons Trafficking and were passionately discussing it. A student vaguely explained that the players had to kill bad guys, and the more they killed, the more points they scored.
Lucas Roitman, 11, happened to overhear his classmates describing the game rules. He couldn’t resist but explain them himself. Weapons Trafficking was a game that involved collecting weapons while fighting off thieves and avoiding bombs and mines. If a user stood on top of a plane, it got destroyed and would get rid of the thieves, but only temporarily as they’d send another one. Everyone gasped as they realized he was in fact the creator.
“I sent the game via email to one website I knew, and went to sleep, thinking they would ignore it. But the next day, my personal web had exploded with visitors from all over the world – in many languages like English, Spanish, German, and even Russian,” Lucas remembers. The game had gone viral.
Roitman was always fascinated by technology. As a kid, he spent countless hours playing video games, dreaming of one day creating his own. When he was in elementary school, he started dabbling in programs like Photoshop and PowerPoint, experimenting with different ways to create animations and cartoons. He was amazed by the possibilities that these programs offered and spent every spare moment tinkering with them.
Soon, he started creating simple video games and using Flash. That motivated him to delve into basic programming also using ActionScript. After that, he received tutoring from a university student in order to take his skills to the next level. Lucas was thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from someone with more experience and quickly picked up the basics of web programming in HTML and PHP.
“When I first heard that Flash was the go-to tool for animations, I knew that I had to master it. It was like discovering a whole new world of possibilities,” Lucas reflects.
As he continued to develop his skills, Lucas gradually started making more advanced video games. After months of hard work, he launched his first multiplayer video game that allowed users to interact virtually with each other in real-time. The multiplayer feature was still a novelty at the time, so, naturally, everyone was eager to try it.
“All my classmates were using it and they even started playing with kids from different schools. It blew my mind that everyone I knew was talking about it,” Roitman remembers.
Lucas had done it. He had created something truly revolutionary for his age. What had started as a simple curiosity had turned into a lifelong passion and a successful career.
Lucas Roitman’s journey is a testament to the power of persistence and dedication. His inspiring story proves that age is just a number and that anyone with a passion for technology and programming can achieve great things. For those hoping to follow in his footsteps, take a page out of Lucas’s book and keep working hard – you could be the next big thing in the world of programming.
