The Media Summer Camp has hosted 85 students in a three week period. The first two weeks were for high school students, who could practice recording music, designing video games, producing TV or creating short films. The middle school camp, held through Friday, focuses on video game design. The campers spent Tuesday morning brainstorming the kind of game they would design if they had no budget or technology constraints. They divided themselves into groups of three or four and were given four cards, assigning them a protagonist, a location and two objects to include in their games.

“Always remember no idea is bad in the brainstorming process,” said Peter Diaz, a telecommunication, information studies and media graduate student specializing in serious games. “Anything can turn into a blockbuster game if you’re creative enough.”

One group got a schoolteacher, an amusement park, a flashlight and a hammer as their cards. John Hood, 12, of Novi Middle School, threw out the first idea.

“What about a schoolteacher goes into an amusement park with a flashlight to scare the ghosts and she has to find a hammer to get out of the amusement park?” he suggested.

Olivia Nalon, 14, of Lahser High School in Bloomfield Hills, said the game should include elements of the films “Silent Hill” and “The Happening.” Viditya Voleti, 13, of Princeton, N.J., objected to that idea.

“‘The Happening’ was a horrible movie. Don’t relate this game to that,” he said.

Brody Brown, 12, of Waverly Middle School, offered an idea of why the schoolteacher was in the haunted amusement park.

“He’s getting off work and he’s going by an amusement park and he sees his daughter who’s been missing for 10 years,” he said.

Joe Fitzgerald, a telecommunication, information studies and media graduate student specializing in serious games, said most children come in not knowing video games take years to develop.

“Their scopes are like, ‘We’re going to develop the biggest game ever,’ and we’re like, ‘OK, you have two and a half days,’” he said. “I played games when I was in middle school and I had no idea how games were made.”

Fitzgerald said he and Diaz both taught the camp last year and would provide the kids with pre-coded behaviors for their characters in an E-rated shooting game. E-rated games are acceptable for everyone.

“Obviously we’re not giving them gory stuff,” he said. “It’s not anything like the bad games they’re not allowed to play at home. These games that they’re brainstorming now are not going to be the games that they’re creating.”

Jillian Winn, the outreach coordinator for the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media, said it was the first year the camp included middle school students.

“I think that we’ll probably do the middle school camp again,” she said. “I think it’s working great.”

Winn said for the camp to accept many more students there will have to be more sections; the hands-on focus works better with small groups.

“By the end of the week they do have something that they made,” she said. “They’re actually learning to use the same software that we use in our college courses.”