I'm a game designer now, but I definitely wasn't back then; instead, I got my start playing with scripting in RPG Maker. Kids, I think, don't want to make new engines or mechanics; they mostly just want to create content to use with their favorite pre-existing mechanics.<p>It didn't really ground me much into the why or how of what the game engine was doing, though; today, I'd recommend playing with a genre-specific game framework written in LÖVE—not least because learning Lua will actually count toward your resume in the games industry, and because it's easy to distribute on multiple platforms with no fuss.