Camp Overview

About This U & Maps

About Our Courses

Tours & Activities

Faculty & Instruction

Safety & Peace of Mind

Testimonials

FAQ

iD Gaming Academy at Stanford University

iD Gaming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | RESIDENTIAL ONLY | TEEN ONLY
INTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENT

Calling all teens…Got game? iD Gaming Academy, the leading summer technology program for teens in the U.S., gives students an immersive, pre-college experience in the dynamic world of game development. The two-week sleep away programs are held at elite universities and taught by faculty with proven video game development credentials. Highlights of the iD Gaming Academy:

• Discover 3D modeling, game programming and level design with industry-grade software
• Learn from elite faculty in small, personalized classes of just 8 students or fewer, guaranteed
• Tour a major game design studio
• Have a blast with our LAN gaming tournaments (not to infringe on instructional time)
• Graduate with an online portfolio (and receive an Official Transcript with Continuing Education Units (optional))
• Win GUNNAR Advanced Gaming Eyewear glasses at each session!

Students can no longer wait until college to start gaining necessary skills in the competitive field of game development. Start building your portfolio here and now. Go to Step 2 for course availability and dates.

Additional Tech Programs at Stanford University

iD Tech Camps, Ages 7-17

WEEKLONG | CO-ED | DAY CAMPS | OVERNIGHT CAMPS
COURSE TOPICS: VIDEO GAME DESIGN, PROGRAMMING, APPS, WEB DESIGN, & MORE

We’re celebrating our 13th season as the Palo Alto area’s premier summer computer camp destination. Our popular weeklong day camps and overnight camps at Stanford University boast a maximum of 8 students per instructor (you won’t find Counselors-in-Training or online tutorials at iD) and customized curriculum for beginner to advanced learners. You can register for one or several weeks of our summer camps and experience life on the beautiful Stanford campus! Live in the college dorms! Design a video game! Build a web site in Flash®, program a robot, make your own iPhone® Apps, edit your own video and more with the best brand name products from Adobe®, Apple®, Autodesk®, Microsoft® and beyond.

iD Programming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT ONLY | TEEN-ONLY | INTENSIVE PRE-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

The iD Programming Academy offers 2–week sessions of intensive study in computer science programming. Gain a deep understanding of application development–and a broader knowledge of how programming can be applied to the real world. The iD Programming Academy is perfect for students with previous programming experience who are looking to take their code to a whole different level.

iD Visual Arts Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT AND DAY | TEEN-ONLY | INTENSIVE PRE-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN FILM PRODUCTION, SPECIAL EFFECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

The iD Visual Arts Academy is a two-week, teen-only program. Learn courses in filmmaking, motion graphics, special effects and professional photography with top-tier equipment and software. All graduates leave the Academy with a portfolio and the tools to excel in the rapidly changing field of visual arts. Students will also take fun, supervised excursions and visit nearby studios to see how the pros work.

About Stanford University

NOTE: Our specific location on campus at this California summer camp, along with maps and driving directions, will be found in My Account after you register.

We’ve chosen to host our teen academic summer camps at Stanford University because it has established itself as having one of the country’s best engineering educational programs. Stanford University represents the best that higher education has to offer – and has attracted the best and the brightest intellectual minds by offering an extensive selection of studies for over a century. Nestled in the ideal weather zone between the bay and the ocean, our Silicon Valley academy at beautiful Stanford University gives students the opportunity to take in iD’s challenging program while enjoying the culturally rich, collegiate atmosphere.

The iD Gaming Academy is a one-of-a-kind offering for students seeking to get better at the art and science of game development. The program is intended for high-school-aged students ages 13-18.

General Location: The campus is ideally located on the Bay Area peninsula, a 20 minute drive from Silicon Valley and the San Jose International Airport. The San Francisco International Airport is also just a 20 minute drive to Stanford. Cal Train has a station adjacent to campus. Get off at the Palo Alto station. Students who decide to spend the weekend (most students do choose to stay) will take off-campus trips to San Francisco.

Campus Life & Meals

As part of the full university experience, students will eat in university dining halls and sleep in real dorms. All meals are included.

Big Time Gaming in Northern California

The gaming culture in the San Francisco Bay Area is rich in tradition. Many of the world’s elite programmers, developers and artists decide to relocate to the Bay Area because of the vast amount of university and industry-specific institutions dedicated to the field of game development. More and more colleges and universities are offering majors dedicated to the field of game development. The gaming industry is a bright spot in the field of technology, with lucrative jobs, room for fast advancement and major growth prospects in the industry itself. The opportunities appear endless, especially considering the latest advancements in distribution of games via the web and mobile technologies. The largest game studio in the Bay Area is Electronic Arts™ Inc. iD Gaming Academy participants will tour the facility as part of our comprehensive game development experience.

About Our Courses

Students use industry-standard applications including Autodesk® Maya®, Adobe® Photoshop®, XNA® for the Xbox 360®, Unreal® Engine 3, StarCraft® ll: Wings of Liberty™, and of course some of the latest, most popular commercial video games for instructional purposes and serious game play. This game design camp for teens is taught by top-tier instructors with demonstrated game development skills. Course Details.

Our Courses:

iD Game Studios 101
3D Modeling & Animation with Autodesk® Maya®
Level Design – Unreal® Development Kit
Programming for the Xbox 360®
Game Development for iPhone® & Android™ with Unity

Continuing Education Credits

Continuing Education Credits at the iD Gaming Academy are available from Stanford Continuing Studies (SCS).  The credits will go on file at Stanford upon successful completion of a course at the iD Gaming Academy, and a transcript will be mailed out to the participant.  Continuing Studies offers a credit awarding transcript generation service to academic programs.

What are the benefits/objectives of awarding Continuing Education Credits?

• Encourage students to utilize educational resources to meet their personal and educational goals.
• Assist with pre-college advanced placement through proof of related work.
• Demonstrate that the student has completed course content with college-level difficulty.
• Enable individuals to have an accurate source of their current CEU activity with tracked proof of completion (Certified Certificate of Completion) by an accredited University program.

Note: CEUs are not transferable as college credit.

Tours & Activities

Note: We tour a real gaming studio, but studio venues may change without notice.

TOUR: Electronic Arts – Redwood Shores

EA Redwood Shores is a dedicated video game development team inside the Electronic Arts studio family and is based in Redwood Shores, California (where EA’s corporate headquarters are). Based on the success of its blockbuster video game Dead Space, the studio was renamed and rebranded as Visceral Games to better reflect the studio’s culture, identity and focus on creating intense action-oriented intellectual properties.

Activities

Academy activities are as diverse as the teens who attend our programs. After each day's instruction, you'll take time out to socialize, relax, watch movies, play sports, catch up with friends on Facebook, or game in one of our nightly NVIDIA®-hosted gaming tournaments (with hot new titles like Team Fortress® 2). Some highlights from last summer include team-building activities, group game design challenges, human Tower Defense, kickball tournaments, trivia nights, bowling, Settlers of Catan, and more!

Stay the weekend within the session and you will also have the opportunity to tour local points of interest off campus!

Note: Students may be allowed to travel in groups within local boundaries, depending on the restrictions imposed by the university. Our supervising staff will remain in the vicinity to check in with students periodically. Academy students enjoy extra privileges appropriate for their environment and maturity levels. While we maintain standard supervision ratios, teens will feel a sense of freedom.

Gaming Tournaments at the iD Gaming Academy

What better way to learn how commercial games are created than to fire up the most cutting edge titles and play! LAN parties are a big part of what makes the iD Gaming Academy so immersive. With industry leading names like NVIDIA®, Team Fortress® 2, Portal™ 2, Unreal Tournament® 3, Counter-Strike®, Half-Life® 2, Left 4 Dead™ 2, and more, you know you are in for many incredible nights of ducking, dodging and fragging.

Our Computer Gaming Tournaments use some of the hottest and most recognized game titles on the market, and all students will have opportunities for gameplay with local tournaments. We use Valve® Steam® technology and NVIDIA GeForce® gaming cards for peak PC gaming performance. When we need to get out of our chairs for some console action, we’ll break out the Nintendo® Wii or Xbox 360®.

Gaming Tournaments are an exciting element of our teen activities, but do not replace or infringe on instructional time. NOTE: Games in our Gaming Tournaments are rated “T” for Teen and “M” for Mature and are selected at the sole discretion of iD Tech Camps staff.

Faculty & Instruction

The iD Gaming Academy fosters real game development skills, in addition to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) development. Students “learn by doing” through intensive, hands-on instruction. Our classes are small, ensuring personalized instruction and allowing students to move at their own pace.

Our instructors vary from year to year, but here are a few veteran faculty from our Stanford teen camps:

• “Coach”: Coach is a multi-year directing veteran at our Stanford camps.  Combining teaching and administrative experience, Coach is a hard worker that enjoys educating kids.  He is a 1995 graduate of the University of Washington who immediately dove into the world of education upon graduation, and has continued to teach in the state of Washington ever since.
• “Drew”: As a lifelong gaming enthusiast, Drew has worked in the game industry for companies such as Electronic Arts Tiburon and Eduweb, as well as freelancing in his spare time doing work for fulldome theaters and independent games.  He is equally passionate about digital and traditional art.  He specializes in 3D modeling using Autodesk Maya, as well as rigging and animation.
• “Brujo”: Brujo earned his degree in Game Art & Design from the Art Institute of California in San Francisco and has been a freelance 3D animator in award-winning boutique studios.  He is a retuning instructor with the iD Gaming Academy and is looking forward to starting his master’s program at Stanford University soon.  He will be designing “serious” games tackling real-world issues.
• “East Coast”: East Coast has been working in game development since attending the University of Advancing Technology.  He has worked on Xbox Live Arcade games while also working at CrunchTime Games.  He is a returning iD Gaming Academy instructor.  When not instructing, he has made projects with UDK and UT3 from Epic’s “Make Something Real” contest.
• “Toast”:  A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Toast is a game designer with a passion for teaching.  His goal is to become a college professor.  Toast currently works as the Lead Level Designer and Environment Artist for a startup company called “Meeting of the Minds.”  He is a returning iD instructor, with previous experience teaching at both Harvard and Brown.

Safety & Peace of Mind

Risk Management

Adult staff and instructors supervise all activities. iD has a policy of never using Counselors-in-Training (CITs).

American Camp Association^® Accreditation

iD Tech Camps is accredited by the ACA at multiple locations, meaning we have met over 300 health and safety requirements. All camps follow ACA guidelines.

Background Checks

We conduct criminal background checks, sexual offender background checks, multiple reference checks and identification checks on all summer staff.

CPR & First Aid

All camps have Directors and Staff that are CPR and First Aid Certified.

Testimonials From Stanford University iD Gaming Academy

What Parents Are Saying

“This is my son’s third year at iD Tech Camps…it is a great program, and I’m expecting he’ll be back. Sue C., parent, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“This was my son’s first time at an overnight camp, so I was thrilled that he felt so comfortable and entertained…we barely heard from him! That suggests to me that he was in a great environment. He seems to have channeled his abundant energy very productively. We look forward to his next adventure here… Nicola B., parent, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“My son doesn’t often comment positively about things. However, when I asked him if he would come back, he said “yes.” Well, that speaks volumes. Thank you for your time and effort on behalf of my son and all the kids who love gaming. Edie S., parent, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“Excellent organization and arrangement. We will be back! Gene E., parent, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“Usually my son does not communicate with us at all, but after his experience at iD Gaming Academy, he has not stopped talking. He had a great time, and I appreciate the experience. Amanda R., parent, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

What Academy Students Are Saying

“I had a really good time here…the instructors were PRO and I had a lot of fun. The classes were great and I learned many things. Everything was awesome, thank you. George K., student, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“This was an incredible experience that I won’t forget. My instructors were excellent…they really know what they’re doing. I made some new friends, played great games with them and thoroughly enjoyed my two weeks at Stanford. I hope I can do this again next year. Sean K., student, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“I loved it here! I felt so at home and accepted. I’m actually a little choked up that I’m leaving because I’ve made great friends and memories while being here. Thanks iD for everything! Robert G., student, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“Overall my stay at the Academy was awesome. The organization of activities and class hours were perfect and the amount of time that we got to work on our personal projects was perfect. Also the creation of our own website is really cool and engaging at the same time. Johnnie T., student, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

“This camp was, to put it simply, pure awesomeness. We learned things at iD Tech Camps that would be very difficult to learn anywhere else. It’s a place for everyone to learn skills to apply later in life. Samir G., student, Stanford iD Gaming Academy

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does this teen camp cost?
The cost for the two-week residential teen camp is US $3,499. Check our site for special promotions. Continuing Education Units are available from Stanford Continuing Studies, for an additional fee.  Age restrictions apply.  Weekend Stays are optional, but recommended, and cost $349 per weekend.  Most students choose to stay the weekend with us.

What are the dates of camp?
Our teen camps run throughout the summer.  Check Step 2 to see date availability for specific courses. You can also see what iD Tech Camps courses and dates are available at this location.

What courses are offered at this location?
Go to Step 2 to see Course Availability, Tuition & Dates.

How do I find out if the course I want is open for enrollment?
View real-time availability all courses by going to Step 2.

How do I register?
Go to Step 2 and choose your course, then continue along the steps.

What if the curriculum is too easy or too hard once my program starts?
Don’t worry – students learn at their own pace, and the curriculum is customized to fit each student’s skill and experience level.  Our instructors work closely with each student and adjust project specifications to be challenging yet fun.

Do I need to bring a computer to camp?
No, students do not need to bring personal computers to their session.  iD provides a computer for each student to use over the course of their program, along with all materials necessary for the course.

Do you offer any non-overnight programs?
Yes, other iD programs include weeklong iD Tech Camps with both day camp and overnight camp options.  iD Tech Camps courses are held at 60 universities nationwide, with topics ranging from iPhone® app development to video game design, website design and more.  The courses are divided up by age range, so you can still choose to have a teen-only experience if you wish.

What if I get sick or have summer school?
Balance payments, less the non-refundable deposit, are refundable up until 3 weeks prior to the start of a confirmed camp week/session. No refunds will be issued for cancellations or withdrawals within 3 weeks of the start of a confirmed camp week/session. All cancellations must be submitted in writing to the internalDrive Inc. office or online in My Account no later than 3 weeks prior to the start of camp. For more details, please see our Terms & Conditions.

Who should I contact with questions or concerns?
Contact our Client Services department at 1-888-709-TECH (8324) or 1-408-871-2227. You can also email us at info@internalDrive.com. And, if you’d like a brochure sent to you, please click the brochure link.

Course Tuition (Program options are found on the next step)