Games Design BA (Hons)

Art and Design
Learn key drawing skills, visual design skills, conceptual approaches and software so you can develop ideas into art assets for indie games development. You will learn how to approach visual problems creatively using a range of sources for inspiration and reference. You will be introduced to software, through which you will produce a digital and non-digital outcome, demonstrating your conceptual approach, drawing skills and technical understanding.

Animation
Building upon Art and Design, you’ll be introduced to key skills, conceptual approaches and software to develop ideas into animated assets for indie computer games. You will gain a solid grounding into the principles and processes of real time animation for computer games, from traditional drawing skills to animation in software, producing digital and non-digital outcomes demonstrating your technical and conceptual skills.

Interaction
This unit introduces you to the fundamental concepts of gameplay, design, prototyping (analogue and digital) and visual scripting. You will produce digital and non-digital outcomes demonstrating your technical and conceptual skills and will end up with dozens of experiments, ideas and prototypes to draw on in future practice.

Moving Image Culture: Understanding and Interpretation
With a focus on video games and the history of their theorisation, this unit introduces you to a range of key concepts central to the understanding of historical and contemporary moving image culture. You will also become familiar with the technological developments and conceptual transformations, before and after the so-called digital shift, establishing a firm understanding of the technical and intellectual changes that have influenced the development of the video game as a medium.

Games Design
Building on the skills and knowledge you gained in year one, you’ll develop your personal design, technical and intellectual interests in games through the production of a body of work. It should explore how values are communicated in games, and how we can make games to explore deep, meaningful topics and personal narratives.  You'll undertake this unit individually, and produce both digital and non-digital outcomes that reflect your design skill and ability to express yourself artistically.

Games Production
This unit introduces you to contemporary games production practices ,the roles of those involved, and gives you the opportunity to produce work as part of a group over the course of the whole year. You’ll work in a team to design two games, in an iterative fashion as you would in a contemporary games development studio. Together you’ll contribute to the design and programme elements of production, deliver pitch presentations and prototypes of your projects, and adhere to milestones where consistent progress and good time-management forms a major part of the final assessment.

Gaming Culture
Critically examining the position of computer games and gamers within culture and society, this unit explores concepts and issues central to the historical, theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of the gaming practice. You’ll explore gaming’s relationship to gender, ethnicity, conflict and capital, before turning a critical eye inwards to discuss ludology and its attendant concepts, including immersion, procedural rhetoric and cyber-individualism.

You'll also take part in follow-up practical prototyping exercises based on the themes of your lectures, to demonstrate creativity, generative capacity of critical and contextual knowledge, and to encourage quick, experimental development practices.

Study Abroad (Optional)
This optional unit will allow you to spend a period of time in an overseas educational institution. If you choose this route your time abroad will replace the second half of 'Games Production' and all of 'Gaming Culture'.

Final Major Project - Pre-production
You'll begin this unit by developing a project proposal through which you will define the concept, scope, audience, and purpose of your Final Major Project. You will present this through a pitch to your tutors and peers. Alongside this proposal, you will produce a detailed games design document and production schedule committing to project milestones (a significant milestone will be the conclusion of this unit before progression to ‘Final Major Project’).

Final Major Project
The culmination of your studies at UCA will see you build upon the work you have undertaken in the previous unit to produce a polished, finished release, as part of a team.  You’ll demonstrate your creativity, skill, knowledge and understanding of the craft of games design and aptitude for your chosen career path upon graduation.

Dissertation
This unit consists of a substantial period of sustained, individually-negotiated research on a subject that is likely to be related to your chosen area of practice. You will produce a structured written argument in the form of a well-researched, long-form essay where you will evidence your clarity of argument, depth of critical thought, and research skill.

This course offers the opportunity to study abroad for part of your second year. To find out more about studying abroad as part of your course please see the Study Abroad section:

• Study abroad information

Rochester is ideally located in the South East of England proximate to 48% of the UK games industry, we’re 45 minutes from London Victoria through which the capital’s indie games and technology start-ups can be accessed.

With the UK games market being the fifth largest in the world and growing at a record pace, career routes are plentiful in the computer games industry. According to the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, the UK video games revenue is expected to overtake total spend on books by 2020 – the sector was valued at a record £5.11 billion in 2017 and is predicted to grow by £8 billion over the next four years.

London and the South East comprise 47% of the UK games industry, and with 82% of games companies are looking to expand their workforce, there are more career opportunities in gaming than ever before.