Three days earlier, the games existed only as ideas.

By Friday afternoon, they were ready to play.

From July 22-24, 20 students from Dankook University Software High School in Seoul came to the University of Utah Asia Campus for the 2026 Summer Game Development Camp. Working in teams, they learned how to turn early concepts into playable projects.

The camp was led by Utah Games faculty members Jared Bruhn, Sylvain Payen and Dae Hong Kim, with support from current Games students serving as teaching assistants. Students learned how to build game environments, create basic rules and interactions, and test whether their games worked as intended.

For many of the students, it was their first opportunity to work through the full process of making a game—not just imagining how one might work.

First-place team members Junseo Ryu, Junseo Shin and Junmin Choi came to the camp with different levels of experience, but each left with a clearer idea of what it takes to develop a game.

“I’ve always wanted to become a game developer, and this camp helped me see that career more clearly,” said Ryu, a first-year student. “It was especially meaningful to learn new development skills using Unreal Engine 5, which is widely used in the game industry.”

Learning how to make an idea work

The three-day schedule moved quickly. Students began with the fundamentals of game development before applying what they learned to team projects. Along the way, they tested ideas, solved technical problems and revised their games after seeing what worked—and what did not—during playtests.

For first-year student Junseo Shin, that process closed the gap between planning a game and actually building one.
“I had been interested in designing games, but I didn’t have the technical skills to develop and produce one myself,” Shin said. “Now that I’ve learned how to make one, my next goal is to complete and release a game of my own.”

Shin said he would strongly recommend the camp to classmates and other students who want to create games of their own.

Second-year student Junmin Choi, also a member of the first-place team, had previously attended an admissions information session at the U Asia Campus and arrived already interested in the Games program. The camp gave him a closer look at how the program teaches—and where that learning takes place.

“After working directly with the faculty and current students, I could understand why the Utah Games program is so highly regarded,” Choi said. “The professional game labs and other campus facilities were also very impressive.”

Putting the games to the test

On the final day, students presented and demonstrated their completed projects for faculty evaluation. The games were assessed for creativity, technical execution, teamwork and overall quality.

The top three teams received scholarship awards of $5,000, $3,000 and $1,000 toward enrollment at the U Asia Campus. The scholarships will be distributed over six semesters after the recipients enroll. Parents, family members and school representatives joined the closing ceremony to see the projects and celebrate what the students had built.

“Students came to this camp as people who played games, and they left having made their own ideas work,” said Francis Schortgen, associate dean of the U Asia Campus. “Completing the process from planning and development to playtesting in just three days gave them a much more concrete sense of what a future in games could look like.

The camp also gave students an early experience of the project-based approach at the center of Utah’s Games program. Students studying Games combine design, development, art and technology while building projects in collaborative teams. Graduates of Utah Games have gone on to work at companies including Epic Games, Riot Games, Nintendo, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft Gaming and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

For the high school students at the summer camp, however, the biggest step was more immediate: they arrived with ideas and left knowing how to begin building them.

Applications for spring 2027 admission to the University of Utah Asia Campus open Aug. 3. More information about the Games major and admissions is available on the U Asia Campus website.