Design courses

About BA (hons) Games Design in University of the Arts London

BA (Hons) Games Design will teach you how to take the software tools of games design and create new gaming experiences. Explore skills sought by industry, such as storyboarding, coding and play testing which will enable you to translate your ideas into playable games.

Working from original concepts, you will develop ideas and test them to evaluate their experience of play. You'll not only design the players interaction with the game mechanics but also the visual feedback needed to communicate the player’s progress, the various gamestates and the behaviours of individual game objects and characters.

This concept-to-game approach is supported by the growing theoretical area of games studies.

What to expect

• You will be taught in a way that encourages you to regularly generate new concepts and to remain innovative in your practice.
• You'll learn the design and development skills necessary to put you at the forefront of this growing profession and which are sought after by leading design and software companies worldwide. Key topics covered include interactive design, the psychology of games, designing the experience of play, computer programming and 3D modelling.
• You'll learn how to write game design documents starting from the initial concept, before mastering the various stages of development.
• Put your newly acquired skills into practice as you continually build playable games throughout the course. During this process, you'll demonstrate storyboarding and visualisation techniques to communicate ideas with linear or non-linear content.
• You will also be expected to analyse gaming trends and identify unique selling points to build into the game's hooks and features; to create your own animated content, adding functionality with scripting before testing for performance and usability.
• The final major project gives you the opportunity to research an aspect of games design that is of particular interest to you and to present your findings in a dissertation.

Between Years 2 and 3 of the course, you’ll also have the opportunity to undertake the following additional UAL qualification:

Diploma in Creative Computing: An optional, year-long opportunity which allows you to develop the computational skills that are shaping the future of the digital creative industries. After successfully completing the Diploma and the final year of your undergraduate degree, you’ll graduate with an enhanced degree title: for example, BA (Hons) Games Design (with Creative Computing).

Entry requirements

• High School leaving examinations - We will consider any High School leaving examinations that are considered to be the equivalent to A-level examinations in the UK.

English language requirements

• IELTS: 6.0 - 6.5 overall, with no less than 5.5 in each component.
• TOEFL iBT: 80 - 90 overall.
• PTE Academic: 51 - 58 (with no less than 51 in each component).

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