This MA responds to the pressing need for a high quality postgraduate degree serving the computer games and entertainment industries. The emphasis is on games design, art and animation, and will also develop the fundamentals of computer programming, entrepreneurship/business, and your own practice. You'll also be able to work with industry partners.
The computer games and interactive entertainment business is a fast-growing multi-billion dollar worldwide business, with games platforms from handhelds and mobiles including iPhones, iPads and Android phones, through consoles such as the Playstation 4, Xbox One and Nintento Wii U, to PCs and massively-multiplayer online games involving tens of thousands of people.
This MA will produce graduates who are well-positioned to have a career in this exciting worldwide industry, meeting the strong demand for graduate computer games designers and artists in the UK and abroad. The programme is delivered by a mix of professionals from the games and effects industries and from the research world.
Potential employers include EA, Ubisoft, Sony SCEE, Creative Assembly, Microsoft, Cinesite, Framestore, and many others.
The influence of computer games is spreading to other digital industries, with gamification and games-based learning, social machines and interactive visualisation of scientific and financial data all exploiting techniques from computer games, and all fields where graduates from this MA could make their mark.
We work closely with industry leaders to shape the course content and to offer industry placements at studios including:
The skills you will learn throughout the programme will have a focus on games design, art and animation, in addition to gaining the fundamentals of computer programming, entrepreneurship/business and practice.
You will study the following modules:
You will also study:
Industry Seminars Series (shared with the MSc in Computer Games and Entertainment course)
We expect that you will leave this programme with strong creative skills, production experience and management capability, giving you the potential for senior roles in the computer games and entertainment industries.
This MA builds on the success of the MSc in Computer Games and Entertainment, and will develop your skills in game design, art and animation. You'll have the opportunity to work with students from this industry-recognised programme on placements and final projects. Through these creative collaborations with artists, games designers and developers we hope that many exciting and innovative projects will emerge. This mix of students also replicates the typical mix of workers in games development and special effects studios.
It's likely that this will encourage exciting and innovative projects to emerge, through creative collaborations
You'll be well equipped to pursue a career in the computer games industry, covering mainstream computer games for mobile, PC, tablet and console platforms, through to gamification and 'serious games'.
Or you could choose to work in the broader entertainment industries – including advertising, special effects, television and web/design studios.
Graduate employment destinations of our computing programmes include:
Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths.
Want to take your career to the next level? Raise your game with our Master’s in Games Development. Designed to build your understanding of advanced game development techniques, extend your knowledge of the games business, and enhance your transferable skills, this course is the ideal next step for ambitious games graduates.
Games are serious business. The industry needs professionals with in-depth technical games knowledge and creative vision combined with business know-how and marketing expertise. The University of Bolton’s MA in Games Development offers you the chance to grow your skills and confidence in all these areas, gaining experience as a developer, and graduating with at least one credit on a published game to your name.
Designed around team-based development projects, the course involves you working with other students to form and run ‘indie’ style teams. Our highly-experienced games team will support and encourage you as you learn to plan, design, develop and publish games.
We will work to further extend your already substantial understanding of game development concepts and production methods, helping you master an arsenal of advanced tools and techniques to create compelling and inventive experiences.
Alongside these games-specific skills, we offer commercial and business knowledge for the creative sector; for instance, business planning, client negotiation, pitching for projects, responding to project briefs, intellectual property licencing and marketing campaign planning. Our academic team will provide critical support while helping you hone your project management and other transferable skills, ready to progress your career in the industry.
For more information, please visit http://www.bolton.ac.uk/postgrad
Meeting industry demand for games designers with a combination of creative flair and technical skill, this degree offers the opportunity to develop, innovate and explore your own games design ideas while gaining essential professional skills.
Based within an art school rather than a computer science or technology department, this course encourages a creative approach to games design alongside the development of technical skills – a combination that is sought after by the games industry. You’ll learn to create graphic assets and develop your own games using a variety of tools and programming skills. You’ll also gain a comprehensive understanding of current issues in games design, and the essential business and marketing skills to help you advance your career or take forward your own business venture. The course is taught by active researchers with professional experience and specialist expertise in expanding fields such as serious games (the use of gaming in areas such as health, education and business). They work with colleagues from the University’s world-renowned computer science team through the interdisciplinary Games Design Hub, and bring the latest research findings to your learning. Lectures and workshops with top professionals and visits to game companies will give you insights into today’s sector and help you grow your networks.
This course is ideal for graduates with an art or design background who want to pursue a career in games design and related industries. It requires some prior knowledge of programming and design software packages.
The MA Games Design and Art will provide you with a combination of creative, technical and business skills that will be attractive to potential employers. You’ll be in a good position to find a job in games development, in roles such as programmer, concept artist, developer or games animator. You’ll also have the skills to take forward your own business venture.
This MSc is aimed at students with a passion for computer games and a strong interest in programming. It is designed to develop your career in the games industry. The course will help you build on your undergraduate degree (which should be in a numerate subject with substantial computing content) or help you update your skills after a time in industry as a computing professional.
The Computer Games Technology MSc will help you to develop:
This course is accredited by TIGA, a non-profit UK trade association representing the UK's games industry. This course is also accredited by the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, as fulfilling the academic requirement for registration as Chartered IT Professional (CITP) and partially fulfilling the requirements for Chartered Engineer (CEng) or Chartered Scientist (CSci), subject to re-accreditation in 2017.
As a postgraduate student on a Computing and Information Systems course, you will have the opportunity to complete up to six months of professional experience as part of your degree.
Our longstanding internship scheme gives you the chance to apply the knowledge and skills gained from your taught modules within a real business environment. An internship also provides you with professional development opportunities that enhance your technical skills and business knowledge.
Internships delivered by City, University of London offer an exceptional opportunity to help you stand out in the competitive IT industry job market. The structure of the course extends the period for dissertation submission to January, allowing you to work full-time for up to six months. You will be supported by our outstanding Professional Liaison Unit (PLU) should you wish to consider undertaking this route.
The teaching and learning methods we use mean that your specialist knowledge and autonomy increase as you progress through each module. Active researchers guide your progress in the areas of Games Development, Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Audio, which culminates with an individual project. This is an original piece of research conducted with academic supervision, but largely independently and, where appropriate, in collaboration with industrial partners.
Taught modules are delivered through a series of 20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of tutorials/laboratory sessions. Lectures are normally used to:
Tutorials help you develop the skills to apply the concepts we have covered in the lectures. We normally achieve this through practical problem-solving contexts.
Laboratory sessions give you the opportunity to apply concepts and techniques using state-of-the-art software, environments and development tools. In addition, City's online learning environment, Moodle, contains resources for each of the modules - from lecture notes and lab materials, to coursework feedback, model answers, and an interactive discussion forum.
We expect you to study independently and complete coursework for each module. This should amount to approximately 120 hours per module if you are studying full time. Modules are assessed through written examination and coursework, where you will need to answer theoretical and practical questions to demonstrate that you can analyse and apply computer games technology methods.
The individual project is a substantial task. It is your opportunity to develop an autonomous research-related topic under the supervision of an academic member of staff. This is the moment when you can apply your learning to solve a real-world problem, designing and implementing a solution and evaluating the result. At the end of the project you submit a substantial MSc project report, which becomes the mode of assessment for this part of the programme.
The programme is composed of eight taught modules - seven core modules and one elective module - plus a final project.
The modules provide you with a firm grounding in computer games technology, including mathematics, programming, and game engines and architecture along with specialist topics in computer graphics, physics, AI, and audio.
The project component gives you an opportunity to carry out an extended piece of work under the supervision of one of our specialist academic and research staff, at the cutting edge of games technology, in an industrial or academic context.
This MSc will equip you with advanced knowledge and skills in a range of topics in games technology in preparation for a career in computer games development.
Alumni of the course are working in companies including:
City has a dedicated incubation space, called City Launch Lab that is specially designed for student entrepreneurs from City, University of London who want to get their idea off the ground.
By studying this Masters, you’ll be well placed to join one of the most performance-driven applications of computer science – the multi-billion pound global games industry. As a graduate, you will work at the top-end of the games industry and will develop computer graphics on high-performance platforms, or write engines for the next generation of games.
Developed in collaboration with a prestigious steering group, this course will build on your computer science knowledge to specialise in computer graphics, where programmers must push computing resources to the limit, using deep understanding of architecture and high-performance programming to generate new levels of graphical realism and visual effects on cutting-edge hardware platforms.
You’ll gain proficiency in low-level programming, a thorough understanding of multi-core and many-core programming techniques, game engine and tool development techniques, and fundamental insight into graphics and the practical techniques used in games.
Designed to meet the needs of industry
You can be sure that what you learn will be the technical skills required by industry as this course has been developed in collaboration with a prestigious steering group from industry comprising:
Members of our steering group will contribute to the delivery of the course ensuring that you learn the latest industry developments. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage directly with the games industry, through:
We are also a member of Game Republic, which is an industry-led professional games network that supports and promotes the Yorkshire and Northern England games sector. We hope that students of this course will take part in the Game Republic student showcase.
Specialist facilities
You will use workstations with high-end GPUs to act as DirectX12 and Vulkan games development platforms and have access to other specialist hardware including the latest Virtual Reality headsets for experimenting on. For learning games engine design and exploring new rendering techniques, students will be working with the source code of a leading game engine, Epic’s “Unreal Engine 4”.
Casual games studios now make up a high percentage of the UK games industry, producing games that are easy to pick up and play through websites, social networking sites, mobile phones, tablets and games consoles. Subject matter is typically non-violent, and gameplay often incorporates puzzle solving or an exciting twist on a simple mechanic.
This games design course gives you the business, theoretical and practical skills needed to succeed in this rapidly growing industry. You learn to develop compelling games with exciting mechanics and strong gameplay, both as an individual and as part of a team. While the main focus is on casual games design, the skills we teach also apply to roles within the broader games industry. As well as developing core theoretical and practical design skills, you also develop your entrepreneurial abilities to equip you for work as an independent developer in the social, casual and mobile games field.
There are two routes you can choose from to gain an MA Game Development:
You advance your knowledge and understanding of business, design theory and technical issues within the field of computer game design and related industries. In lectures and seminars you examine the specialist skills necessary to design and construct strong games pitches, demos and prototypes, as well as advanced creative and business solutions to the problems involved in independently developing computer games.
Course structure
Core modules
Modules offered may vary.
How you learn
You experience a number of different approaches to learning and teaching including:
Critical reflection is key to successful problem solving and essential to the creative process. To develop your own reflective practice at an advanced level, you test and assess your solutions against criteria that you develop in the light of your research.
How you are assessed
The programme includes a variety of assessment methods including presentations, peer review, critique, reports and production of artefacts.
From the beginning of your programme, we prepare you for a career in industry. In addition to your taught classes, we create opportunities for you to meet and network with our industry partners through events such as our ExpoSeries, which showcases student work to industry. ExpoTees is the pinnacle of the ExpoSeries with over 100 businesses from across the UK coming to the campus to meet our exceptional students, with a view to recruitment.
Advanced practice
There are a number of internship options, including:
This unique course offers critically-engaging themes and technologies, providing skills in immersive storytelling to reflect rapid changes in the games industry.
Whether you are looking to build retail or museum installations or you want to use games to tell cinematic stories, this program explores how to craft deeply compelling, critical games and interactive work both for clients and creative practice.
The MA in Independent Games and Playable Experience Design focuses on developing aesthetic awareness, creating compelling mechanics and the ability to craft innovative narratives in games and immersive experiences. Students will be given the skills needed to run a small business and produce quality design on a highly professional level.
Visiting guest lecturers, researchers and artists from around the world will stimulate your critical thinking while inspiring your creativity. Skills based workshops in the latest fabrication and production methodologies will empower you to build stunning installations.
This program will provide access to education and skills new creators will need to be successful in the marketplace.
Why this course?
As technologies have integrated into our everyday lives, elements from games have been woven into everything from the way museums educate the public to how scientists do cancer research. With the rise of mobile, console creators no longer hold a monopoly on gaming platforms. This new found freedom has resulted in an explosion of independent games creating new genres of play. From putting players in immersive augmented worlds to telling transformational personal narratives, these new experiences are redefining the rules of play. Games are now just part of everyday life. As a result, markets that were dominated by traditional media have begun to leverage the ability of games to tell stories, share the news, generate knowledge and educate the public. An explosion of games and apps has created a new breed of entrepreneur which uses small teams to create projects that are accessible to millions. This rising market has become a driving economic reality within the UK.
Core modules
You will study the following modules:
Additionally, a selection of optional modules to the value of 15 and 30 credits will be provided from an annual list for each term and will be made available by the department.
The current list of optional proposed modules for 2017-2018 is:
Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.
Option modules
Create your own story at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Creative Arts!
