Game Design & Technology Master's Programme

Games have become a massive part of our global entertainment economy. The gaming industry produces more revenue than the music industry and the movie industry combined. It is a rich, complicated field where there is ample opportunity to combine creativity and technical skills in meaningful and satisfying ways. Whether it is in the innovative design of game mechanisms or the implementation of subsystems within a high-powered gaming engine – gaming is a topic that has room for everyone’s imagination.

And that’s where this Master’s programme comes in.  

Within this degree we teach a blend of topics that cover the range of skills needed to work in the industry. We’ll show you how to build a game engine and the design considerations that need to be taken into account. We’ll talk about how to analyse the ways in which a game fits together and how you can develop your own more effectively. We’ll talk about cutting edge game design trends, and bleeding edge technical trends. At the end of this programme you will be equipped to design and develop robust, interesting games that people actually want to play. Through project-based assessment you’ll build a portfolio that shows employers exactly what you can do.

Watch our video about the programme

This Master’s programme though is not just about building yourself a career in games, but also about how to build games into a whole range of other careers. The skills needed to create a game in Unity or Unreal are the same skills you can use to create interactive simulations, animations, and virtual reality environments. The tools you will discover for designing gameplay are the same ones you can use to create compelling user experiences in non-game contexts. Learning how to optimize the rigorous and competing demands of a game engine means you can optimize almost anything. Our focus is primarily on video games, but you’ll also be encouraged to explore the design lessons in everything from board-games to role-playing games to mega-games.    

This is what the Game Design & Technology master's offers its students. We hope to count you among them!

Combining Theory and Practice for Advanced Skills

Within the Master’s programme in Game Design and Technology we believe that practice should be informed by theory, and theory informed by practice. You will develop your technical skills in a variety of areas and make use of industry-relevant tools. All of our game-specific courses have a strong focus on building experiences that a player will enjoy… and understanding the reasons when that’s not the case. Our approach is based on four key pillars – analysis, design, implementation and evaluation. Our approach is also cyclical – when you’ve built on each of these pillars you take the results, refine, and start again.

Courses such as Introduction to Game Research; Gameplay Design; Game Engine Architecture; and the Game Development Project give you grounded, concrete experience with techniques important to each of these key areas. Through lectures, labs, and tutorials you’ll be supported in this all the way through the program. We have a strong focus too on authentic project-based learning where individual supervision ensures you get the best experience for your own particular needs.