COURSE CURRICULUM

The Game Studies and Design degree at the University of North Texas prepares students with the creative, technical, and collaborative skills needed to succeed in the rapidly growing global gaming industry, which generates more than $188 billion annually. The program combines hands-on game development with academic study of games, storytelling, design, and interactive media, giving students practical industry experience while allowing them to specialize in areas that match their career interests. Students benefit from course visits and guest lectures by professionals from well-known game studios in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Gearbox Software and id Software, helping them gain insight into real-world game production and professional industry practices. Faculty members bring extensive experience from across the gaming field, including creating game art, designing narratives and gameplay systems, building game worlds, and publishing research and books about games and gaming culture. Throughout the program, students work in small collaborative teams to design, develop, and publish original games on platforms such as itch.io and Steam, allowing them to build professional portfolios and gain experience releasing games for global audiences. Students can choose concentrations that help them develop specialized expertise in areas such as narrative design, programming, art and animation, audio design, or game studies, preparing them for targeted industry roles. Classes are structured similarly to professional writers’ rooms and development studios so students learn both the technical skills and collaborative production processes commonly used in the gaming industry. Graduates can pursue careers as narrative designers creating stories and characters, game designers developing gameplay systems and mechanics, level designers building interactive spaces, game artists designing visual assets and interfaces, programrs coding game systems and environments, producers managing development teams and schedules, researchers studying gaming culture and player behavior, or journalists covering the gaming industry and interactive entertainment. Coursework includes subjects such as Game Production Pipeline, Game Studies: Games, Play and Stories, Advanced Narrative Design for Gaming, Digital Asset Creation and Animation, Video Game Histories, and Introduction to Visual Scripting for Games, all of which help students build strong creative, technical, analytical, and teamwork skills essential for modern game development and digital media careers.