Program Overview

Game Design (MFA)

The MFA in Game Design program is intended for creative visionaries intent on producing socially, culturally, and emotionally substantial work. While games are often perceived as pure entertainment, the MFA takes a deeper look, exploring games-as-art as well as games-for-a-purpose. This degree prepares students to advance the frontier of games by exploring emerging theories and applying them to practice. Throughout the program, students will create games that are challenged by peers and faculty in critiques. Graduates will be prepared to invent the future of games and adapt to the ever-changing composition of conventions, tools, and platforms. As the terminal degree in the field of game design, an MFA also opens doors to teaching at the university level or entering an academic tenure-track career.

Program Requirements

• Degree Requirements: 64 quarter hours
• Total hours required: 64

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to:

• Situate their creative practice within historical, aesthetic, and social contexts; design and develop games that are significant in those contexts.
• Leverage the affordances of games to intentionally evoke specific emotions and experiences, purposefully communicate ideas as well as have the desired social impact.
• Critique games from a variety of perspectives including historical, aesthetic, and social.
• Iteratively build projects up from simple prototypes to increasingly complex systems.

Degree Requirements

Course Requirements

No Introductory Course may be substituted for any other course at any level.

• Course List:
  • GAM 420: Creative Computation (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 424: Game Design Workshop (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 430: Art Games Bootcamp (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 440: Games with a Purpose Bootcamp (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 520: Game Design Proseminar (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 530: Games Studies Proseminar (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 540: Game Development Practicum (4 quarter hours)
  • GAM 550: Incubation Studio (4 quarter hours)
  • Select 20 credit hours of focus area electives
  • GAM 600: Thesis Studio (12 quarter hours)

MFA Thesis Proposal and Development

In parallel to taking Incubation Studio in Winter quarter of their second year to prepare their Thesis proposal, students must solicit a Thesis committee consisting of 2-3 members. At the end of the Incubation Studio, each student's Thesis committee assesses their progress and provides feedback and guidance on the Thesis proposal. By the beginning of Spring quarter, the Thesis committee will have given feedback, and students will have had the opportunity to revise their Thesis proposal. With their Thesis committee's approval, candidates can enter Thesis Studio Spring quarter to begin their Thesis project. Candidates continue Thesis development through Thesis Studio courses taken in the Fall and Winter quarters of their third year.

MFA Thesis Showcase and Defense

Candidates will turn in a final draft of their completed Thesis project by the end of the Winter quarter of the third year and be required to publicly show their work in the annual MFA showcase or exhibit their work in a juried venue. The candidate will defend the Thesis before the Thesis committee, who will review the Thesis project to decide whether the candidate should be awarded the degree. If the committee does not deem the project ready for approval, the student will be given notes and asked to resubmit their project. Students may resubmit up to three times. If a student's project is not deemed passable after the fourth time, the student will not receive the MFA. Students have eighteen months from the submission of their first draft to obtain the committee's approval or the degree will not be awarded.