Gaming Academy comes to University of Washington

Organizers have revealed the game development camp for teens, iD Gaming Academy, will get a new location at the University of Washington this year.

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) based educational program teaches students aged 13-18 about game development, giving them hands-on development experience with industry tools like Unreal Development Kit, XNA Game Studio, Unity, and Autodesk Maya.

The two-week camp is taught at nine different University locations throughout the country, including Harvard and Stanford.

Students lodge overnight and in addition to learning about the many different fields within the game industry, tour studios, interact with industry professionals, and get tips on landing a job in game development.

ID Game Academy is also debuting a new course this summer, Game Development – Minecraft, which uses both runaway indie hit Minecraft and Eclipse for Java.

Students come away from the course with a head start on a college education as well, as the academy offers accredited Continuing Education Units through Stanford.

"iD helped me identify what it was I enjoyed," says iD alumnus Mark Grimm.

"I also realized that many people have lucrative careers in the video game industry."

Grimm went on to take a degree at MIT and landed a job at Harmonix before returning to iD Gaming Academy as a director of one of its locations.

Those interested in the program can find more information at the id Tech Camps website.