Program Overview

---

This is a degree in world-making. You craft stories, characters and plot in order to build imaginary worlds that a player can journey through. Our work is driven by creativity and imagination as well as technical excellence; at Essex you master both game design and computer programming, giving you total control over the worlds you want to create. Our course gives you the skills to design and specify complex, non-trivial games through focusing on the following areas:

• The mechanics of a game, including gameplay elements and the relationship with story
• The concepts and techniques of computer game programming
• Real and virtual worlds
• Artificial intelligence behaviours for non-player characters
• 2D and 3D graphic effects and game objects (e.g. weapon systems)

At the end of your course, you will be able to create the outline design specification for a computer game of your own design, and to implement a game using industry-standard techniques. Our School is a community of scholars leading the way in technological research and development. Today’s computer scientists are creative people who are focused and committed, yet restless and experimental. We are home to many of the world’s top scientists, and our work is driven by creativity and imagination as well as technical excellence. Both for entertainment and for more serious purposes such as virtual reality training, computer games, gamification and games intelligences are increasingly important in today’s world. Programming at Essex Teaching someone to programme is about opening a door. In your first year at Essex you will study a module that introduces you to programming using Python. We assess your ability to think in a programmatic way in the very first week of term and if you require additional support, we offer classes which will boost your skills and confidence with programming.

Professional accreditation

Accredited by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional. Accredited by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for Incorporated Engineer and partially meeting the academic requirement for a Chartered Engineer. Accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partially meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer. Why we're great.

• You'll join a community of scholars leading the way in technological research and development.
• 94% of our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering graduates are in employment or further study (Graduate Outcomes 2023).
• We are ranked 6th in the UK for research power in computer science (Times Higher Education research power measure, Research Excellence Framework 2021).

---

Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course. Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised. If you spend a full year abroad you'll only pay 15% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year. You won't pay any tuition fees to your host university

---

Placement year

Alternatively, you can spend your third year on a placement with an external organisation, as part of one of our placement year degrees . The learning outcomes associated with this programme focus on using the specialist technical skills acquired in the first two years of the course and developing communications skills with customers. Students are provided with support to secure a placement. Recent placements undertaken by our students have been with ARM, Microsoft, Intel, Nestlé, British Aerospace, and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, as well a range of SME software and hardware companies. If you complete a placement year you'll only pay 20% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year.

---

Our expert staff

The University of Essex was the birthplace of the ‘virtual world’. Multi-User Dungeons (MUD) – multi-player, real-time virtual worlds – were created by our students, including Richard Bartle, who still teaches Computer Games here today. Richard was also included in Geek.com’s list of the most influential game developers of all time. Our research staff also includes Dr Adrian Clark, who works on computer graphics and augmented reality.

---

Specialist facilities

• We have six laboratories that are exclusively for computer science and electronic engineering students. Three are open 24/7, and you have free access to the labs except when there is a scheduled practical class in progress
• All computers are dual boot Windows 10 and Linux. Apple Mac Computers are dual boot MacOS and Windows 10
• Software includes Java, Prolog, C++, Perl, Mysql, Matlab, DB2, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and Project
• Students have access to CAD tools and simulators for chip design (Xilinx) and computer networks (OMNet++)
• We also have specialist facilities for research into areas including non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, intelligent environments, robotics, optoelectronics, video, RF and MW, printed circuit milling, and semiconductors.

---

Your future

We have many graduates in senior positions in the computer communications industry, as well recent graduates working in IT and computer companies. Our school has a large pool of external contacts, ranging from companies providing robots for the media industry, through vehicle diagnostics, to the transforming of unstructured data to cloud-based multidimensional data cubes, who work with us and our students to provide advice, placements and eventually graduate opportunities. Read more about computer science and electronic engineering career destinations here. Our recent graduates have gone on to secure impressive roles, including as a Java/Actionscript Developer for Playtech and as an Associate Software Developer for Sky. “I had some of the best years of my life at Essex: a mixed bag full of joy, freedom and hard work. Since graduating, I have been running my own business which focuses on web and open source technologies. I still look back to some of the modules that I studied which help me in my business operations; studying at Essex changed the way I approach my work.” Dlair Kadhem, BSc Computer Games and Information Technology, 2005