I think it's pretty well-established that GeekDad writers are in the target market for ID Tech camps. (See earlier posts by: Lonnie Morgan and Corrina Lawson.) With courses on video editing, game design, robotics, iPhone app programming, and more, the appeal seems natural. And when you factor in the ability to splice weeks together with an Ultimate Gaming Weekend ... well! My seven-year-old spent last week as a day student in an ID Tech summer camp at Wesleyan University, taking the "Adventures in Game Design" course, and so I thought a brief, hands-on report would be in order.
The two most important aspects of any summer camp are probably safety and whether it's fun. As to the first: full marks to Internal Drive. Even though there weren't that many campers, and even though I saw the director at every dropoff and pickup, he still made sure that I knew what the code word was before releasing my son. The student/counselor ratio was about 4-1, so everyone was well-monitored at all times. As for the second, my son had a blast, and is already lobbying to be allowed to stay overnight next year. (Um, no.)
A few specific points:
- It's a long day for a 7-yr-old. I dropped him off at about 8.45 each morning, and picked him up at 5, and he was pretty tired from all the concentrating.
- That said, it's not just computers. They played dodge ball, capture-the-flag, and other traditional outdoor camp fare.
- The camps are on college campuses, and so lunch is usually at the college cafeteria. This was *very* popular with the 7-yr-old. Day 2: "Did you know they make mac-and-cheese pizza?"
- The counselors were friendly and well-trained. Most were college students in design or programming, and the director at the Wesleyan camp has worked on visual effects for a bunch of movies you've heard of. (He's on IMDB.com.) The students all thought that was pretty cool.
- "Adventures in Game Design" is the youngest-skewing program, so the 7-yr-old didn't learn a *ton* of universally generalizable concepts, but he does comment a lot more on aspects of game play and design in his other video games. (For example, he'll notice the splash screens more explicitly these days.) So I think he learned some things.
- He did enjoy every single aspect of putting his game together, especially incorporating his favorite songs. (Licensing laws will probably be a topic for another summer.) He's also enjoyed being able to talk about building a game.
- It's worth acknowledging that the camps are somewhat pricey--although they're competitive within the education-themed camp market.
The only genuinely disappointing thing about the camp was that "Adventures in Game Design" uses ClickTeam Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer, which is a Windows-only app that generates Windows-only executables, or files that can be embedded onto web pages and viewed by Windows-based browsers. So, he can't play his video game at home right now, until I get Parallels or BootCamp set up on one of our Macs. (You can play it here, provided you have Windows and the Vitalize plugin for your browser, which I don't think anyone does.)
In sum, it was an enormously fun experience, one he's keen on repeating next year, which I hope will be possible.
Wired: Hands-on experience in a supportive, fun environment. Students use real tools--for example, the older students in some of the video editing and graphic design courses use the same software people designers and editors use in the world.
Tired: Deliverable was pointlessly platform-specific, given the relatively simple games designed by 7-to-10 year olds.
