Game Design Summer Camp NYC

Game Design is our newest course this summer! With the rise of Fortnite and other popular games, we knew we needed to add a course that would help young gamers learn the behind-the-scenes action that goes into making a video game. This course takes students' love for video games and turns it into marketable skills! Our curriculum combines development and design concepts into one jam-packed course—students will be taught the technical skills to develop a game in addition to the process of designing an interesting game that people want to play. This course is great for kids because it allows them to do what they love while also being creative and productive. 

Our Game Design course is taught using the C++ coding language as well as Unity & Unreal game engine. C++ is a general-purpose language that is based on C; it has many different uses, but for this course, we will be using it to develop games. The Unreal and Unity Engines give students access to advanced developer tools to create games. These are the two most used engines in the game development world. In fact, Fortnite was built using C++ and the Unreal Engine!

Why Learn Game Design at NextGen?

Fun and Educational: Students learn best when they are interested in the topic. We designed this course to meet the quickly-rising demand for advanced learning related to video game development! This course is rewarding for both students and parents—students have fun creating their own games and parents feel satisfied knowing their children are learning valuable real-world skills. 

Large Audience: There are roughly 211 million Americans that play video games using either a game console, computer, or phone. With this large audience in mind, we teach students how to build games for all of these devices. This way, students can share their games with the world instantly, and might even gain enough momentum to be able to charge a download fee for their game. 

Ability to Create Anything: With the skills learned in this class, students will be able to create any type of game they can imagine. Students will learn how to create characters, gameplay, levels, and other generic features of a game. Students are given the control to decide which type of game they want to develop throughout the class.

New Powerful Game Engines: These newly updated game engines allow programmers to code the overview of their game and then import it into the engine, which takes over many of the remaining tasks automatically. Once the overview is uploaded, the engine then will fill in every detail of the game that the code references but is not explicitly written. These engines allow the programmers to focus on the infrastructure of the game, while Unreal and Unity to take overdetermining factors like lighting, player instincts, and graphics rendering. Using engines like these allows real programmers (and our students!) to save time while creating complete, original, dynamic games! 

Who should attend our Game Dev Summer courses?

Our game development course is designed mainly for high school students but college students are welcomed as well! There is no math or coding pre-requisite for this course.

This course is a great fit for students interested in a fun and rigorous coding course. Anyone who is interested in video games, business, technology, entrepreneurship, and design would benefit from this curriculum. The Game Design course is also great for students who are not sure exactly what their interests are but are looking to have a fun and productive summer! 

Game Dev Course Detailed Overview

This is an applied course that starts by teaching an introduction to the programming language C++. Once students understand basic programming principles we introduce the game engines and show students how to use them.

Students will learn the basics of C++ which include: syntax, variables, data types, conditionals, loops, functions, operators, and references.

Students will then develop an understanding of the game engines, including how to use each engine, the basic interface of the engines, implementing motion, creating blueprints, running simulations, adding sound, creating animations, and much more! 

Interested in Game Design but want to learn even more? Check out our Summer Code and Development Intensive, in which students learn how to develop websites and apps in addition to developing video games!