Well, that's it for me. I just cancelled Facebook; I think there's a deeply frightening assumption being made by Zuckerberg, and the candy of Facebook is not worth the marketing nonsense that it will likely bring, or the endorsement of the generally poor behavior of the CEO. At least from where I'm sitting, the only option anyone has to disagree is to deactivate their account, citing privacy concerns.

At 12, I think you want to impart a good foundation, not expertise in a specific language. I learned BASIC on a C64 back when I was 5-8, and followed it by learning C and C++ in my early teens. I think BASIC remains a reasonably decent starting point, in that you'll be teaching the rudiments of loops and program flow without the complexities of pointers, but depending upon the learner you may want to dive into C immediately after walking through the basics of BASIC. C# would arguably be the logical replacement for C++ in a new programmer, these days. If he's like most kids, you could even teach both C# and XNA, and work with him on learning to write code via a small video game project; if he has a Windows PC or an XBox, he can even show it off to his friends.

Seriously, this.

Perhaps you should stop being a jerk to the people who go out and do things you can't do, like build relationships to clients, convince them to spend their money to buy the product you make, and ultimately to funnel money into your paycheck?

Quoting from the article, "You have to make a game of a certain size and certain type. It's got to be simple but also rewarding within the first 60 seconds." What's with this idea? I've written about the problem of conceptualizing "casual gaming" as being different from "hardcore" gaming before; I think that the medium of downloadable games lends itself well to properly executed game design, because you can't lean on graphics or massive worlds, but even so there's no reason to say that a small game has to pander to impatience.

The underlying question here is, I think, whether Braid was Important. Games are rarely seen that way - most of them are debated on the basis of whether or not they are "fun", but not on whether or not they somehow embody something larger and more fundamental than just being entertainment.

One possible approach (quoting from The Hip Gamer) is to distinguish between the game's implementation (the "system") and it's ambition (the "game world"). I find that game systems are usually best evaluated formally, where one can look to a review to comment on things such as depth, elegance, and replayability; game worlds are more subjective, where one reads reviews for more information on a world's theme, concepts, and morality when considering them.

What Braid does well is the latter; the world is clearly well thought out and considered, and the non-gameplay pieces (the story books between levels, the artwork, the music, etc.) all advance that world's realization. The game system is solid if not astounding: it's a platformer with a time-control element, with some clever puzzles. Does that make Braid "Important"? Perhaps -- there are a dearth of so-called casual games that meet those criteria. However, in the larger scope of gaming, I don't know that I'd put Braid on the same level as, say, the original Half Life, or Space Invaders, or Planescape: Torment. Gaming itself is unlikely to be altered by Braid's existence, even if playing through it is enjoyable.