Program Overview

Game Development Program

The Game Development program at DePaul University offers a comprehensive curriculum that covers the principles of game design, development, and production. The program is designed to provide students with a strong foundation in game development, including game design, programming, art, and sound.

Course Descriptions

The program offers a wide range of courses that cover various aspects of game development, including:

• GAM 102: Mechanics of Game Design: This course introduces students to the design and implementation of core mechanics and game loops for real-time digital games.
• GAM 180: Unreal Engine Workshop: This course focuses on teaching students the fundamentals of Unreal Engine, including building a small game from scratch.
• GAM 181: Unity Workshop: This course focuses on teaching students the fundamentals of Unity, including building a small game from scratch.
• GAM 200: Play: This course explores the concept of "play" from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, literary and theater studies, and the arts.
• GAM 201: History of Videogames: This course provides an overview of the history of modern interactive entertainment, starting with the early developments of the late 1940s up until the present day.
• GAM 205: Games Literacy: This lecture course introduces students to the evolving forms, uses, and design of games, including the relationship between game design and play.
• GAM 206: History of Games: This course examines particular games and game genres in their historical context, using a case study format.
• GAM 208: Virtual Worlds and Online Communities: This course introduces the fundamentals for the interdisciplinary study of cyberculture and online social behavior.
• GAM 224: Game Design for Non-Majors: This course approaches the study of computer games from three angles: as examples of media that can be analyzed and critiqued, as complex software artifacts, and as a cultural artifact.
• GAM 226: Fundamentals of Game Design: This course provides students with a practical foundation in game design, focusing on concept development, design decomposition, and prototyping.
• GAM 228: Ethics in Computer Games and Cinema: This course concentrates on analyzing the impact of digital entertainment on individuals and society, including the implications of certain values embedded in games and movies.
• GAM 229: Presentation and Communication: This course focuses on effective written and oral communication for designers in the professional world, including the basics of writing design documents and teaching various presentation formats and techniques.
• GAM 230: Intro to Game Production: This course introduces the production methods used in the game industry, including the role of the producer, scheduling tools, collaborative software, project management, and quality assurance.
• GAM 231: History and Design of Role-Playing Games: This course covers the history of role-playing games and the process of world-building, including the design and development of games that advance the genre.
• GAM 240: Playgramming: This workshop introduces computer programming to artists and game designers, focusing on basic concepts and techniques of computation.
• GAM 244: Game Development I: This course provides students with additional theory and practice in game development, emphasizing game design and storytelling for games.
• GAM 245: Game Development II: This course focuses on the development of a 2D digital game, including teamwork, development pipelines, and the creation of assets and systems.
• GAM 250: Game Sound Design I: This course introduces the principles of digital audio and the methods employed to create, edit, and deliver sound for video games.
• GAM 312: Playtesting: This course teaches students how to identify design goals, form hypotheses, develop research questions, plan and conduct playtests, and evaluate playtest data.
• GAM 315: Game Sound Design 2: This course expands on topics covered in Game Sound Design I, including recording techniques, editing, and mixing, as well as audio implementation using Unity.
• GAM 316: Scoring for Games: This course introduces elements of music and ways to create a musical style that enhances video games, including understanding the function of the score and its relation to texture, color, and drama in music.
• GAM 317: Game Sound Design and Scoring Studio: This course provides practical experience in audio production for video games, including the creation of quality materials for a demo reel or portfolio.
• GAM 325: Applied 3D Geometry: This course reviews the mathematical foundation and techniques needed for the development of 3D graphics and game systems.
• GAM 326: Games with a Purpose Pre-Production: This course introduces students to the growing field of Games with a Purpose (GWAP) and its application areas, including health, education, social and personal change, activism, journalism, politics, and advertising.
• GAM 329: Physical Prototyping for Games: This course approaches the study of game design with a focus on breaking designs into manageable elements and prototyping those elements to refine play.
• GAM 330: Advanced Game Production: This course builds on the fundamentals covered in earlier courses, providing a practical, hands-on context for students to learn the tools and techniques game producers use to manage and organize assets, workflows, tasks, bugs, resources, and personnel.
• GAM 333: The Business of Games: This course gives an introduction to the business aspects of the game development industry, including development, publishing, distribution, and marketing.
• GAM 334: The Business of Indie Games: This course explores how to successfully run an indie game company, including writing a game design document, building and maintaining relationships with the media, and understanding how indie games fit into the game industry as a whole.
• GAM 340: Practical Scripting for Games: This workshop introduces game scripting to artists and game designers, focusing on reading, modifying, and authoring scripts that generate and affect various game elements.
• GAM 341: Introduction to Level Design: This course explores topics including architecture, flow, pacing, and puzzles, using a 3D level editor to investigate technical design issues.
• GAM 342: Advanced Level Design: This course builds on topics covered in earlier courses, focusing on creating believable worlds for video games, including designing large exterior environments, advanced mission scripting, and integrated storytelling.
• GAM 350: Physics for Game Developers: This course concentrates on Newton's Laws of Motion, kinematics, and kinetics, applying theory to problems that a game programmer must understand, such as collisions between objects and projectiles.
• GAM 351: Expressive Audio Scripting in Games: This workshop is for game designers, sound designers, and programmers to learn how to creatively use audio in game engines, developing skills to effectively shape and manipulate game audio.
• GAM 353: Tool Programming for Game Development: This course focuses on the parsing and conditioning of game-related assets for real-time game engines, including topics such as the content pipeline, processing standard file formats, and integration of external tools.
• GAM 355: Solo Game Development Project: This course allows students to independently create a complete short video game, serving as its designer, programmer, and artist, with a focus on core gameplay loops and game feel.
• GAM 362: Making Deep Games: This workshop investigates the process of designing games about the human condition, focusing on the potential of games to tackle profound and abstract ideas through metaphor and analogy.
• GAM 365: Advanced Game Design: This studio course has students work in teams to design and develop slices of polished small-scale gameplay experiences, focusing on developing team-based creative and technical processes.
• GAM 368: Augmented Reality Game Design and Development: This workshop has students cultivate the skills to design, program, and develop augmented reality (AR) games, learning about the unique affordances and design opportunities inherent to the platform.
• GAM 369: Virtual Reality Game Development: This workshop has students cultivate the skills to design, program, and develop virtual reality (VR) games, learning about the unique affordances and design opportunities inherent to the platform.
• GAM 370: Rendering and Graphics Programming: This programming class presents the rendering pipeline and basic shader creation, having students create their own graphics package using a high-level graphics API.
• GAM 372: Object-Oriented Game Development: This course teaches principles and techniques needed to build robust and efficient large-scale game software systems, emphasizing object-oriented modeling, design, implementation, and testing.
• GAM 374: Game Engine Programming I: This course has students develop a basic 3D game engine, focusing on the implementation challenges and interdependencies between systems such as asset management, rendering, simple collisions, input/output, and alarms.
• GAM 376: Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: This course introduces basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emphasizes applications of AI in various genres of computer games, including decision trees, pathfinding, neural networks, and script-driven game object behaviors.
• GAM 377: Game Engine Programming II: This class continues to explore C/C++ game engine programming, focusing on 3D keyframe animation systems and 3D model asset conversion.
• GAM 378: Strategy Games Programming: This course covers turn-based and real-time strategy games, including game themes, presentation, and ethically responsible content.
• GAM 380: Console Game Development Environments: This advanced programming course has students gain hands-on experience writing and porting code for game consoles.
• GAM 382: Serious Games: This course explores the role of computer games and simulations for education and training, including the science of learning, analysis of games for different purposes, and assessment of learning.
• GAM 386: Game Programming for Mobile Devices: This course introduces major mobile hardware platforms and their operating systems, including issues related to game design for handheld devices and game programming for a handheld device with a wireless internet connection.
• GAM 391: Game Performance Optimization: This game programming class focuses on developing software to efficiently use the fixed CPU power and resources found in today's console and mobile devices.
• GAM 392: Game Modification Workshop: This course has students develop skills in game design and development through the construction of a "mod" of an existing game, emphasizing the game development life cycle and effective project management practices.
• GAM 394: Game Development Project I: This course has students work in teams to design and develop a videogame that demonstrates their mastery of game design and development, including reflection on ethical decision-making and professional ethics in the game industry.
• GAM 395: Game Development Project II: This course is the continuation of Game Development Project I.
• GAM 397: Topics in Game Design: This course covers specific topics selected by the instructor, varying with each offering.
• GAM 398: Topics in Game Programming: This course covers specific topics selected by the instructor, varying with each quarter.
• GAM 399: Independent Study: This course allows for independent study supervised by an instructor, requiring an independent study form and potentially repeatable for credit.

Graduate Courses

The program also offers graduate-level courses, including:

• GAM 420: Creative Computation: This course introduces students to the affordances of computers and digital technology as a medium, using foundational texts from the discipline of digital media and introducing programming.
• GAM 424: Game Design Workshop: This course is an introduction to both the theory and practice of game design, exploring fundamental elements of game design and putting these concepts to work in designing, prototyping, playtesting, and developing games.
• GAM 425: Applied 3D Geometry: This course reviews the mathematical foundation and techniques needed for the development of 3D graphics and game systems.
• GAM 426: Game Sound Design 2: This course further develops students' knowledge of recording techniques, editing, and mixing, as well as audio implementation using Unity.
• GAM 427: Scoring for Games: This course introduces elements of music and ways to create a musical style that enhances video games.
• GAM 428: Game Sound Design and Scoring Studio: This course provides practical experience in audio production for video games, including the creation of quality materials for a demo reel or portfolio.
• GAM 430: Art Games Bootcamp: This course has students learn to appreciate and advance games as an artistic medium, making work that is avant-garde in its formal aesthetics or sociopolitical force.
• GAM 440: Games with a Purpose Bootcamp: This game design bootcamp focuses on the rapid yet deliberate creation of short games with a purpose beyond entertainment.
• GAM 450: Physics for Game Developers: This course concentrates on Newton's Laws of Motion, kinematics, and kinetics, applying theory to problems that a game programmer must understand.
• GAM 451: Expressive Audio Scripting for Games: This workshop is for game designers, sound designers, and programmers to learn how to creatively use audio in game engines.
• GAM 453: Tool Programming for Game Development: This course focuses on the parsing and conditioning of game-related assets for real-time game engines.
• GAM 462: Ritual, Myth, and Games: This class focuses on the intersection of ritual, myth, and games, drawing on philosophy, anthropology, sociology, spiritual practices, psychotherapy, game design, theater/performance study, and fabrication to develop an interdisciplinary, creative framework.
• GAM 470: Rendering and Graphics Programming: This programming class presents the rendering pipeline and basic shader creation, having students create their own graphics package using a high-level graphics API.
• GAM 475: Game Engine Programming I: This course designs and implements a custom real-time game engine, developing real-time graphics systems to transform and render scene graphs.
• GAM 476: Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: This course introduces basic concepts of AI, emphasizing applications of AI in various genres of computer games.
• GAM 486: Game Programming for Mobile Devices: This course introduces major mobile hardware platforms and their operating systems, including issues related to game design for handheld devices.
• GAM 491: Game Performance Optimization: This game programming class focuses on developing software to efficiently use the fixed CPU power and resources found in today's console and mobile devices.
• GAM 499: Topics in Computer Game Design and Development: This course covers variable topics in computer game design and development, potentially repeatable for credit.
• GAM 520: Game Design Proseminar: This foundational seminar course exposes students to significant written works that examine the medium of games in historical, cultural, and social contexts.
• GAM 530: Games Studies Proseminar: This seminar class introduces students to a broad range of historical and current topics in game studies, aiming to support creative practice by expanding the theoretical foundation.
• GAM 540: Game Development Practicum: This course introduces the creation of a term-long project in teams, requiring students to make games about a specific topic or theme proposed by faculty.
• GAM 550: Incubation Studio: This course has students situate their creative practice within historical, aesthetic, and social contexts, including an introspective analysis of why they want to design games.
• GAM 575: Game Engine Programming II: This class continues to explore C/C++ game engine programming, focusing on 3D keyframe animation systems and 3D model asset conversion.
• GAM 576: Game Engine Programming III: This class continues to explore C/C++ game engine programming, focusing on advanced game engine issues such as tool development and runtime coordination.
• GAM 594: Gaming and Entertainment Technology Capstone: This course gives students an opportunity to utilize knowledge obtained in the degree program to develop a computer game from conceptualization to implementation.
• GAM 597: Topics in Game Design: This course covers specific topics selected by the instructor, varying with each offering.
• GAM 598: Topics in Game Programming: This course covers specific topics selected by the instructor, varying with each quarter, potentially repeatable for credit.
• GAM 599: Independent Study: This course allows for independent study supervised by an instructor, requiring an independent study form and potentially repeatable for credit.
• GAM 600: Thesis Studio: This course has students demonstrate their abilities as professional contributing artists in the field of games through the completion of a thesis project.
• GAM 690: Game Development Studio I: This course has students work in small teams to design and implement a computer game, requiring consecutive enrollment in Game Development Studio II.
• GAM 691: Game Development Studio II: This course is the continuation of Game Development Studio I.
• GAM 695: Master's Game Research Study: This course allows students to work with a faculty member on a research project, including system development, empirical studies, or theoretical work, potentially repeatable for up to 8 credit-hours.