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There are a lot simpler ways to go...

One very popular alternative is DarkBasic. The scripting language sucks, but if you want experience at game development it may be worth your while.

An even better alternative is 3D GameStudio. This is a complete development environment as well, and it uses a proprietary C-script that looks pretty easy to pick up. Actually, if you look at the future plans for this game authoring environment, you'd be pretty impressed. It may be good to use a simpler environment to get your feet wet, then move on when you've outgrown it.

I was facing this predicament recently and found a few solutions. They're all BASIC dialects, but I learned BASIC on the Apple II decades ago and still turned out to be a decent programmer when I learned "real" languages. (Personally, I think that if you can be "ruined" by using a language, you were too brittle to be a programmer anyway.)

The first was BLASSIC, which is as close to the BASIC dialects of early personal computers as it gets, complete with line numbers, PEEK, and POKE. The cool thing about it is that it supports simple graphics, which is what really got me interested in the early 80's. It's free and purports to be multiplatform, though I've only tried it under Linux.

The other two interesting BASICs were DarkBasic and Blitz. DarkBasic actually consists of several different packages. There's one called the 3D Game Designer which lets you create first-person shooters by dragging and dropping. When your little one has exhausted the rather limited possibilities there, you can upgrade to the full DarkBasic package and he or she can begin implementing simple behaviors in dirt-simple BASIC.

The Blitz product is primarily interesting (to me, anyway) because they offer a dedicated 2D version of the language devoted to 80's-style arcade games, which are orders of magnitude easier to program than 3D games for a novice programmer. Blitz doesn't use line numbers and optionally supports C-style syntax for function calls, and has a GUI toolkit that is pretty easy to use once your beginner gets a toehold in programming.

My project with my daughter was a clone of Pac Man with Blitz. It took several weekends, much of which had more to do with helping her understand cartesian coordinates than actual programming, but in the end she did most of the coding for a single level of Pac Man, and she was quite proud of herself. I doubt she'll pursue it very far -- which wasn't the point anyway -- but now she has a much better understanding of how software works.

I think everyone out there crying "Java, Perl, Python, Linux" is missing the point of the article. We used to be able to flip on our Apples, Commodores, and TI-99s and start typing away in BASIC. In a few lines, we could draw something on the screen, maybe move it around with the keyboard or joystick. Today, trying to get a GUI or some other type of graphical application going in Windows or Linux is not the easiet of things for a kid starting out. He or she probably won't get callbacks, event handling, etc. Forget Java: classpaths can drive an adult crazy, let alone a kid. A child's attention span is going to be pretty short, so they need to get going quickly.

Somebody mentioned RoboCode, and someone else Neverwinter Nights--I think that's an awesome idea. Another one is DarkBasic (http://www.darkbasic.com). In just a few lines of code even a beginning programmer can have a 3D game up and running on the screen.

If the language itself is too complicated, there are several creation kits as well. I suspect that transitioning from one of the kits to the full language will be a great learning experience.

Dark Basic

Maybe it's time to buy a copy of The 3D Game Creator and whip out a quick Quake-style game which eschews violence against law enforcement officials but gives the player plenty of opportunity to shoot up the Washington state legislature.

Of course, this is just a cynical move on my part, as an Oregonian, to tie up the legislature of our chief economic competitor with pointless bills while our legislature concentrates on stimulating the local economy. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Oh wait, our legislature is hog-tied by anti-tax fanatics while the roads and schools crumble. But that's off-topic and not even very funny, so I'll let the matter drop.

DarkBasic is a programming language and dev environment that lets users with little or no programming experience create 3D games.

The great thing about DarkBasic is that it acts as a very good introduction to both programming and 3D programming (which can be a nightmare if starting with something like DirectX).

There are a few of these already. Most of them are slightly shy of the full graphical splendor of some of the best engines, but a talented person can do some good stuff with them.

Extensions for some of them, such as 3D Game Studio, can be written in an included C-like script language, or as a full-fledged C++ plug-in.

3D Game Studio

DarkBasic

3D Rad

Could this be what you're looking for? It's supposed to be pretty good. I've never tried it myself though (I don't dare touch BASIC, it's too weird for my taste).