Video Game Design Camp

Video game design is the skill, where anyone with a computer and a bit of creativity can design their own video game. The video game industry is famous for its low cost-of-entry, with small, indie developers creating world famous games, including Minecraft and Flappy Bird. Game Design consists of computer programming, art design, and storytelling. Lately, many game engines including Unreal Engine, Stencyl, Unity, and others are increasingly lowering the cost to build your own game, which has resulted in a recent explosion of interest in video game design.

As parents already know, kids love video games. At Vision Tech, we believe why not harness their interests into helping them learn technology. Video game design allows students to learn complex concepts they might not otherwise learn, including programming, 3D modeling, animation, storyboard, User Interface design, user experience testing, and project management. At Vision Tech video game camp, game design provides a fun, engaging platform for students to practice these skills without even realizing that they are learning technology!

Vision Tech offers several game design courses, including Coding & Video Game Design with Tynker, Role-Playing Game Design, Mobile Video Game Design for iPhone & Android, Level Development with Unreal Engine 4, 3D Game Design with DOTA 2, & 3D Level Development with Team Fortress 2. In addition, our Game Development with Python Programming and Java Programming camps feature some game design.

2D Game Design focuses on the use of “sprites”, or 2D images in games. Such games can be complex or simple and include games such as Flappy Bird, Terraria, and Candy Crush. Our Mobile Video Game Design with Tynker, Role-Playing Game Design, and Coding & Video Game Design with Tynker courses focused on 2D Games, along with the game design segments in Game Development with Python Programming and Java Programming camps. These games are often conceptually simpler for students to understand and design for, with characters moving only up, down, left, or right. In 3D Game Design, games are built using 3-dimensional models, in a 3D world, including games such as Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, & the Halo franchise. Our 3D Game Design camps include Level Development with Unreal Engine 4, 3D Game Design with DOTA 2, & 3D Level Development with Team Fortress 2. 3D Game Design is conceptually more difficult and is suited for older, or more advanced students.

For a beginner, both 3D Game Design with Minecraft, or our more general 2D Game Design camps, such as Mobile Video Game Design are appropriate, so parents may freely choose the camp that is more suited to their child’s interests. In terms of concepts, the 2D Game Design courses are more suited to learning programming and art, while the Minecraft game design camps are more suited to learning about level development and user experience.

Absolutely! At the end of camp, students will take their game or game project home to continue working on at home.

Most games built in our game design camps can work on both PCs and Macs. However, many of these games require this to be set during the game design process, so ensure that students are aware of what type of computer they have at home.

We use professional grade software for all our video game design camps. For our 3D Game Design camps, we use Unreal Engine 4, and the Source Hammer Engine for level development in our TF2 and DOTA game design camps. For our Mobile Game Design camps, we use Stencyl, and the Apple XCode Development Kit, along with the Android Developer Kit to build our games. For specific software used per camp, please visit our individual camp pages.

At our video game design camp, kids have a structured curriculum that they work on, with set goals & expectations. The only times that kids can be freely playing is during break time. During the rest of camp, students are guided to work on their game design projects and rewarded for achieving these goals.