The Gaming and Interactive Design major emphasizes the player-driven nature of games and brings unique opportunities for storytelling. Students will create design documentation that applies storytelling to game development. Students will work on interdisciplinary teams to create original game projects from start to finish following a milestone-based iterative development process.
"Rather than limit it to creating games, we wanted to keep the opportunities open as augmented reality and artificial intelligence starts to develop." Don Piper
Chair, Department of Applied Digital Media
The game design program at PBA will offer several points of unique value for students. These aim to provide both a holistic education and make students valuable contributors in the professional workplace. In addition to foundational skills that all game designers should be expected to have, our students explore unique aspects of game design that are seldom found elsewhere. One such avenue is storytelling through games. While underemphasized historically in the game industry, storytelling is central to traditional media and of rising importance in games and interactive media. Our students should be able to leverage storytelling to incorporate meaningful interactions into their work and have a more profound impact on players.
Relevant professional design and development roles for PBA graduates include:
Many job opportunities exist from the direct application of game design skills in related industries as UX/UI designers, interaction designers, multimedia designers, graphic designers, instructional designers, eLearning developers, and web developers, among other roles.
Nine distinctive schools are part of PBA. Classes related to this major will be focused here.
PBA is rightly proud of our talented faculty. Here’s who you’ll be learning from in this major.
You’ve chosen your program of study, now it’s time to get familiar with your classes.