Games Design and Development BA (Hons)

Course overview

You will explore the multi-faceted world of games design and development, from storyboarding, concept development and prototyping to creative development, quality assurance and testing, enabling you to translate your ideas into playable games.

You will develop all-round workflow skills and a clear understanding of the design treatment, preliminary design, development and production pipeline, enabling you to focus on a specialist area in your final year.

• Industry-led practice across all aspects of games design and development.
• Collaborative project development to understand the entire games pipeline.
• Studio-based approach to teaching and learning that emulates industry best practice.

Why you should study this course

• This course focuses on games design and development, aiming to equip you with the skills and knowledge to conceptualise, build and test your own playable games.
• The concept-to-playable prototype approach aims to give you industry applicable skills. The course aims to equip you with the skills for employment with developers of all sizes, working across various technologies and platforms. Alternatively, graduates should be able to design, produce and distribute their own games or to establish their own studio.
• Integration of logical and visual design elements means you can test graphical content in gaming environments and develop original mechanics, freeing you from the constraints of genre-specific software tools thus aiming to improve your employability.
• Real-world practices include pitching, prototyping, workable games design documents and testing.
• Industry links embedded in the course, from master classes and guest lectures to field trips² (subject to availability).

Careers and opportunities

On successful completion of this course, you may take on roles ranging from community manager, games producer, or games publisher, to gameplay designer, level designer, UX designer, Quality Assurance (QA) tester or games writer.

You should have developed an understanding of the key priorities for the games industry, such as the recent change in working patterns, equality, diversity and inclusion, talent acquisition and retention, and an understanding of cultural and commercial priorities, by engaging in real-world scenarios and collaborative opportunities and embedding theoretical and applied-practical exploration of sustainability, representation, player experience, and emerging areas of practice.