The game arts option focuses on the creation of visual elements and assets for a wide range of game platforms. The option allows you to pursue creative interests in game arts, from designing virtual elements and lighting to animated characters and backgrounds. An innovative and adaptive curriculum prepares you for a career in the emergent fields associated with games culture while encouraging critical analysis of these fields through the dynamic general elective courses offered throughout RIT. This option is part of the 3D digital design BFA degree.
You will be exposed to the advanced technologies, interactive interfaces, and explorative processing necessary in game arts. You will explore 3D modeling, sculpting, lighting, materials, effects, real-time game engines, AR, VR, and XR, pre-visualization, and virtual production–a technique that blends visual effects, film, and game technologies, all with a tighter focus on game pipelines. While technologies constantly change, this option focuses on teaching lifelong skills of critical and design thinking and collaboration through a game arts focus.
In this option, you will have opportunities to regularly collaborate with game developers. This option complements RIT's nationally recognized game design and development BS, ranked 4th nationally among Princeton Review's "Top 50 Game Design Programs: Undergraduate Category" (2022), offered by the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. MAGIC Spell Studios, the university's state-of-the-art media production facility, is a creative hub where artists and programmers frequently work together on imaginative game projects, some of which have been published. MAGIC also invites students to engage in research to discover new possibilities in games and digital media.
You will graduate well positioned to pursue careers in the game arts industry. Alumni and faculty are the creative minds behind the environments, characters, and objects in games you know and love. Graduates have been hired by leading studios to work on games for all platforms. Hiring partners include Bethesda, Insomniac Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Workinman Interactive.
Invaluable Resources
Whether it's MAGIC Spell Studios or one of the many computer labs in the College of Art and Design, you will have access to professional-level 3D and animation software to build skills and execute projects. Further, the array of opportunities at RIT aligns with the game industry's convergence of many different fields. Programs at the university are adaptive and prepare you for lifelong learning, creativity, critical thinking, and skills in future technologies such as VR/AR/MR and virtual production, the revolutionary filmmaking technique combining computer-generated graphics, 3D art, motion capture, and real-time rendering via game engines. RIT, with support from an Epic Games grant, built a virtual production curriculum that is driven by the use of large LED walls installed in MAGIC Spell Studios.
RIT is also positioned in a city with first-hand grounding in the history of games. The Strong National Museum of Play, the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play, is located 15 minutes from campus in downtown Rochester. It holds didactic materials that can help you study and understand the origin of games, and their many forms, while you help create the future of the industry.
Industry Grade Facilities
RIT's relationships with industry facilitate unique explorations for students. Game arts professionals are also invited to RIT to lead lectures, discussions, and demos that give you added perspective of the industry.