Uni Courses for Digital Game Art/ Design?

Hey there.

I am in year 12 doing my AS courses. I am doing Graphics, 3D Product Design, Business and Photography. I would like to work in the games industry in the future on the concept art, level design, character design. More so on the creative side of game design and not really on the programming as it is not something I enjoy but I am willing to take it up if it is required to succeed (B in GCSE Maths).

I have found these courses:

Falmouth Uni - Digital Games: Art
http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/games
University of Arts London - Games Design
http://www.arts.ac.uk/lcc/courses/undergraduate/ba-hons-games-design/
Birmingham City Uni:
http://www.bcu.ac.uk/courses/interactive-entertainment-games-development-bsc

Please suggest what I can do and the best course of action.

Thank you, Konrad.

Hi Konrad,

I'm currently finishing my first year studying Game Design (Story Development) at University of East London, and I previously studied a BTEC in Games Development with an A Level in English Language.

Your A-Levels all look good and relevant. The main thing you can work on now is building up a portfolio as many university game courses ask for portfolios that show practical applications of your skills - a lot of them consider this more important than your grades so it is worth putting a portfolio of your work together.

As for which Games courses would be best to apply to that really depends on which aspect of game design you are intersted in. Game design and game art are very different, and even within them there are many different branches ie. level design, game production. 3D art, concept art etc. The best thing you can do is consider which is these disciplines you gravitate towards most and chose a uni based on that

Here are a few unis my friends go to and have highly recommended.

Game Design

Game Design (Story Development), University of East London
http://www.uel.ac.uk/undergraduate/specs/compgamesdesignstory/

OK, so this one is my course and if you decide you want to get into game design primarily then I cannot recommend it enough. This course has a heavy focus on design principles and creation of rules, mechanics and game play. There is also a creative writing module which looks at general creative writing in the 1st year, specifically creative writing for games in the 2nd year. The course teaches you how to make paper prototypes of your games in order to improve your design, playtesting and going through an iterative design process with your games and also familiarizes you with important design theories and games studies in your first year.

In terms of art, you could possibly do a join honors degree with an art course which would replace the creative writing module with an art module, however I'm not sure if future years will be able to do this as our degree structure is changing this year and it's becoming harder for students to take joint honors courses. The base course itself has some arty opportunities - we have a board game module and digital game module in the first year that require art assets, we also have a module where you have to design a HUD for a game in Photoshop which is quite artistic. In the second year we have a 3D art module, and there are also several group projects over the course of the degree where one group member could focus on being the group artist.

Game Design BEng. Staffordshire
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/course/10H85000.jsp

Staffordshire university have some really great games courses and well regarded in the industry in general. This course gives a pretty general design curriculum, I was offered a place on it but I declined it but the course has quite a lot of programming on it which I also preferred to avoid. However if you end up going more towards level design this could be a good course for you.

Gameplay Design and Production BEng. Staffordshire
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/course/10H85500.jsp

Basically the same course as above but with more of a focus on production values. So more project management, marketing and games business stuff from what I understand.

Game Design, Brunel University, London
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/arts/games-design

Another really great course. I was also offered a place here and the course is fantastic, the only reason I chose UEL is because having been to both the open days I just preferred the lecturers, facilities (we have a dedicated games lab which is a wonderful place) and approach to design.

Game Art

Game Concept Design, Staffordshire
http://www.staffs.ac.uk/course/09G62000.jsp

Don't know a lot about this one but it seems like an art-centric version of the above Staffs courses. And again Staffordshire is a great uni for games.

Games Art Design, De Montfort
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/courses/undergraduate-courses/game-art-design-ba-degree/game-art-design-ba.aspx

My friend who is on this course thinks it is amazing, he really agonized over getting on this one specifically and was ecstatic when he got a place so I guess that means its good Think this one has more of a focus on concept art so you would need some fine art/traditional art skills, and I know they require an awesome portfolio for entry.

Games Art and Design, Norwich University of the Arts
http://www.nua.ac.uk/bagamesartanddesign/

I think this one is pretty elite since a few of my game art friends who I know have amazing portfolios were interviewed here and didn't get in. I think this one has focus on both concept art and 3D and 2D digital art. I met a 3rd year student from here at the PS4 launch party and her work was really fantastic.

3D Games Art and Design, University of Hertfordshire
http://www.herts.ac.uk/courses/3d-games-art

Best uni for 3D games art specifically as far as I know. This one is also very demanding of a good portfolio.


The only other thing I would advise is not to take uni rankings too seriously when you are looking to join a game course. Most of the unis that cater game courses are the lower ranked ones because the higher ranked, more academic ones don't want to offer such a modern and vocational subject. Game developers and studios won't care about how your uni was ranked or what its rep is, they will care about the rep of your games course and the quality of your portfolio and skillset

Anyway hope some of this helped and sorry for the wall of text! Let me know if you have other questions.

- Alice

Hi there!

Thank you for this amazing piece of information! This was an amazing answer and it has really helped. I have just realised that there is a games design course in a college near me and I am doing A-levels which I highly regret. I have checked out the universities you have sent me and it looks like I have to set my game up in terms of a portfolio as these examples looks absolutely amazing. I am thinking about changing the course to BTEC Games Design, do you think that would be a good choice for my career? I could finish my AS levels and then go on making a good portfolio at BTEC.

Thanks a lot!

Hi there!

Thank you for this amazing piece of information! This was an amazing answer and it has really helped. I have just realised that there is a games design course in a college near me and I am doing A-levels which I highly regret. I have checked out the universities you have sent me and it looks like I have to set my game up in terms of a portfolio as these examples looks absolutely amazing. I am thinking about changing the course to BTEC Games Design, do you think that would be a good choice for my career? I could finish my AS levels and then go on making a good portfolio at BTEC.

Thanks a lot!

Hey bro I'm starting 3D games art in Hertfordshire this September. Have Herts as my first choice and NUA as my second. I managed to get conditional/unconditional offers everywhere I applied to. So if you want any advice on what stuff they like you can message me. I did ask them what they liked/disliked about my portfoilio at the interviews as well so I got a good idea haha.

Also don't worry about your subjects too much. Just make sure you have a good portfolio and the minimum grade requirements for the courses. As the course leaders don't care about your grades/subjects. They just want to see you have talent. Some course leaders will give you an unconditional offer if they like you and you have no way of meeting the requirements. They've done that for a lot of people in NUA.

You're welcome, glad it was a helpful answer

To be honest I really don't think you need to have studied a Game BTEC to be prepared to do a Game uni course, or even to create a good portfolio The real questions would be whether you think you will be ready to move on to uni straight after A-Levels, and whether you would have the self-discipline to create a portfolio in your own spare time independent of school/college? The first one probably seems like a redundant question but I actually know a lot of people who weren't ready to start uni at 18 and waited a few years either working or doing extra courses before they started uni, so if you think doing a BTEC in that sense will help you then go for it. The Game Development BTEC I studied was good and the content was definitely relevant to what I'm doing now, but I don't think the people on my course who did A Levels instead of BTEC are at any kind of disadvantage. The only things I (and other BTEC game students) knew that the A Level students didn't was a basic knowledge of programming and a better understanding of the game industry, but both of these could be looked up in your spare time.

As for the portfolio, it's definitely very important, but I think portfolio pieces that have been created independently rather than as part of a college course definitely have more weight with admission tutors. Plus a lot of the stuff you are specifically interested in might not be covered in the BTEC course.

That said, if there is any shadow of doubt in your mind as to whether you really want to go into game design, I would 100% recommend doing the BTEC course to really get an idea of what it's like - I'm assuming you are still at the age where college is free and only costs time. Trust me, if you are unsure at all don't spend £9k for a year at uni only to realize that you don't actually want to go into games, if you have doubts do the BTEC to work out if it's what you really want to do.

If you want to start creating things for your portfolio (I really recommend starting this summer! It's amazing how long completing a good project for your portfolio takes, and having the pieces of work to show off are also useful for your career not just uni) here are a few free pieces of software I have used for my work, at uni, college and in my spare time:

https://www.yoyogames.com/studio - Gamemaker, a very basic piece of game making software. Basically no programming if you want to avoid it.

http://www.stencyl.com/ - Stencyl is also a pretty simple piece of game making software but more complex and better that Gamemaker in my opinion. Makes you think about programming theoretically but again you don't actually have to use programming if you don't want to.

https://unity3d.com/ - I've only just started using Unity so don't really have that much to say about it. It is a much more sophisticated and complex piece of software and is an industry standard game engine. You will have to use some C# if you want to make things with Unity, but nothing too heavy going, and it is worth it.

http://www.blender.org/ - Blender is a really good free 3D engine. Handy for teaching yourself how to make 3D models and animations.

You might also want to read up a bit on different job roles in the industry, paper prototyping and level design/design documents. And if you don't already play some indie games to get an idea of the sort of things you could be capable of making!

This website http://www.digra.org/ is handy too because it has an archive of games research papers and write-ups from talks and conferences. There is a big range of papers so some of them are pretty dry and heavy going, but if you can read a few of the lighter ones it will give you an idea of what the game studies aspect of your course will be like, and what the academic field of games is like!

And in general I recommend creating a blog or a website to present your portfolio on, it just looks good and later on you can use it for networking with other game students and devs http://wordpress.com/ is my preferred site for that kind of thing.

Edit: also if you want to give yourself a crash course in programming http://www.codecademy.com/ is a good place to start.

Thanks for the answers guys! Do you guys have any exemplar portfolio? And maybe sites with some tutorials where I can improve my drawing abilities? Thanks a lot!