Sam Smith, Spacepants developer, living the dream at 12 years old

SAM Smith is only 12 years old and he’s already living the dream. He left school three years ago and now makes money doing what he loves.

SAM Smith is only 12 years old and he’s already living the dream.

Instead of going to school, he makes video games.

The youngster from the South of England is the creator of Spacepants, a Flappy Bird-style mobile game recently named one of the best new games by Apple’s App Store.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Sam reveals he was pulled out of school by his parents three years ago.

He describes how he found the environment difficult to cope with. “I fell asleep in class at points,” he told VentureBeat. “Eventually, I just started hiding under the table a lot of the time.”

His home schooling education included a healthy dose of programming from his father, himself a computer programmer.

Spacepants is a brutally tough “endless runner”.

After playing around with various programming languages, his dad introduced him to GameMaker:Studio, which he used to create Spacepants.

Too young to get a job, his initial goal was to make just $9. He’s apparently “smashed” that goal, making enough from the $2 game to buy his younger brother a PlayStation 4 and himself a Wii U.

While he hasn’t ruled out going back to school at some point, game development will remain his focus for now — apparently the next one will even have robots.

Go play Spacepants if you have an iOS device. It's brutally hard but great fun. It's like the Dark Souls of infinite runners. @Boxfacegames

— Sean 'Oxy' Oxspring (@OxyOxspring) June 8, 2014

Originally published as Sam Smith, Spacepants developer, living the dream at 12 years old