Thirteen-year-old Preston Parks has never been the athletic type, his mother Hope said. Computers, video games and entrepreneurial aspirations are more his speed, she said.
When he was in fifth grade, he did a class report on Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs. Later, his mother said, Preston decided he wanted to create an app for Apple devices by his 13th birthday.
Preston’s first gaming app, Bubble Warrior, debuted in January. By the time his 13th birthday came around in March, the Navo Middle School eighth-grader had released his second game, Speedy UFO.
“You could always see the wheels play in his head that he wanted to program,” Hope Parks said. “He’s just constantly thinking of new ideas.”
In May, Preston, of Providence Village, debuted Guest Defense, a game he programmed with a group of developers known as Spark Studios on Roblox, an online game-building website. Through a Roblox program that allows game developers to trade virtual currency called “Robux” for cash, Preston has found a way to earn money from his extracurricular activity.
In just over four months, Preston’s Guest Defense has collected about $5,000 through the Roblox Developer Exchange Program.
According to a Roblox executive, very popular games rack up virtual currency that can be exchanged for cash. In the past 10 months, $500,000 has been distributed to game developers worldwide.
Preston, lead developer for Guest Defense, goes by the username BuildIntoGames. The idea for the game sparked while playing games from other Roblox developers with friends, he said.
They noticed that guest players — individuals without registered Roblox accounts — were “breaking creations and annoying everyone,” Preston said. Guest Defense, which he said took two months of development, is based on registered players’ hatred of guest players.
“That kind of inspired the whole game idea,” Preston said.
The game’s premise is simple: Defend the game from “corrupted” guests that are attempting to take over.
Guest Defense was listed among Roblox’s top games of the summer. In June, Guest Defense was one of the top 15 Roblox games with more than 1.1 million player visits. The following month, it was featured on the Roblox blog.
Preston is considered one of the youngest game developers on the massively multiplayer online gaming site. To date, Game Defense has been visited more than 2.2 million times.
“It really surprised me,” he said.
Garnering that many plays in about three months made Guest Defense one of the most popular games on the site, said Brad Justus, vice president of marketing for Roblox.
“It’s a very clever game,” he said. “[Preston] knows his audience, which I think is very clever. That shows … real insight.”
A good game doesn’t stop at development, Justus said. It has to be marketed, he said.
“[Preston’s] done a really good job with that, and all the more impressive because he’s 13,” Justus said.
Preston taught himself how to program. He said enjoyed playing video games and became interested in how they were developed and marketed.
Hope Parks said she and her husband, Tyler, always told Preston that if he was going to be at the computer, “he’s not going to spend mindless hours, he’s going to do something productive.” He works on games on weekends and in his downtime, she said.
Preston has a lot of patience in coding and scripting games and is very determined, his mother said.
“It blows my mind that he knows how to do this,” Hope Parks said. “When he has his mind set to something, he’s going to follow through doing it. I think he’s been an inspiration for several kids that play Roblox.”
Since Preston debuted Guest Defense, two other games have followed — a sequel, Guest Defense 2, and the just-released Destruction Run.
Preston aspires to one day start his own development company and make professional games. He said he plans to put his Roblox earnings toward video editing software for game development, a car and college tuition.
BRITNEY TABOR can be reached at 940-566-6876 and via Twitter at @BritneyTabor.
