Bachelor of Science Game Design

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The BS in Game Design prepares students to become storytellers, critical thinkers, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the field of games. Students collaborate in interdisciplinary teams with programmers, artists, and musicians to master the iterative development process and create polished experiences. Students build a portfolio showcasing their skills developing AAA, indie, and art games, as well as transformative play experiences on established and emerging platforms including augmented and virtual reality, tabletop, and physical technology.

DePaul’s game design degree programs are among the best in the country, according to 2024 rankings from the Princeton Review and Animation Career Review.

Degree Requirements

Careers

Recent graduates of CDM’s game program have gone on to work at Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, NeatherRealm Studios, Owlchemy Labs, Firaxis, Wargaming, Phosphor Games, and many others.

Several grads have gone on to form their own gaming companies, including Young Horses, whose indie hit Octodad was developed at DePaul.

Game Design Student Reel

DePaul CDM Film Student Reel 
 

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  • Mike DeAnda

    In his research, Mike studies the communication of queer lived experiences and modes of knowledge production through games. He uses game design as research praxis, and designs games that comment on structures of gender and sexuality, envisioning possible interventions to the social injustices uncovered through his research

  • Brian Schrank

    Brian is the author of Avant-gardeVideogames: Playing with Technoculture, and the director of the Virtual and Augmented Design Lab. Most recently, he co-curated the “Hey! Play! Games in Modern Culture” exhibit at the Chicago Design Museum.

  • Allen Turner

    Allen is the former Lead Designer and Game Director at Wideload Games/Disney Interactive Studios. He is a faculty mentor for the Game and Graphic Design programs, a partnership with the Chicago Housing Authority, and the co-director of DePaul Originals Game Studio.

  • Anna Anthropy

    Anna, our Game Designer in Residence, is an independent game designer of both digital and tabletop games, writer, and game historian. Her published books include Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, A Game Design Vocabulary (co-authored with Naomi Clark), and ZZT.

Jarvis Student Center for Innovation and Collaboration

CDM's Jarvis Student Center for Innovation and Collaboration is an 8,000 square-foot open space where students and faculty come together to ideate and innovate. The Center focuses on multidisciplinary professional learning and industry partnerships fueled by emerging technologies and projects dedicated to societal needs and innovation.

students in a computure lab checking out others work 

DePaul Originals

The Jarvis Center is home to DePaul Originals Game Studios, where students work on small portions of a bigger game over quarters, emulating a large studio experience.The studio produces and publishes work that is shipped to platforms like Steam, Xbox, PS4, and Switch. CDM students participate in this interdisciplinary lab as designers, producers, and programmers, with many having used their produced work in a portfolio that lands them a job in the industry.

Assistant Professor Allen Turner serves as the lab’s creative director.

a student using VR 

Emerging Technologies

An emerging tech room in the center is equipped with state-of-the-art technology that students can use for their projects. In this space, students collaborate across degree programs to create new and ground-breaking experiences with augmented and virtual reality, spatial computing, motion capture, and artificial intelligence.

presentation with video gaming company logos on the screen  

Industry Events

The center hosts events, including the Jarvis Speaker Series and showcases, that regularly feature industry experts and researchers across game development and other design topics. Recent guests have included Alex Seropian (founder of Bungie), Young Horses(Octodad, Bugsnax), and Chelsea Blasko (Co-CEO of Iron Galaxy).

 

Japan Study Abroad

This biennial trip takes students to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya on tours of Japanese game and animation studios, galleries, and cultural sites.

 

Virtual and Augmented Design Lab

Our Virtual and Augmented Design Lab (VAD) hosts classes and projects to research and develop experimental games on emerging platforms. Current lab works includes AR development with Apple pushing the affordances of the ARKit on iPhone, and a VR game project exploring deformable virtual surfaces via hand and foot trackers.

Students working on a whiteboard  

Matters at Play

Matters at Play (M@P) is a transdisciplinary design lab focused on partnering in the creation of interactive advocacy solutions for positive social transformations - especially regarding social justice, health, and environmental issues. M@P both incubates and launches projects for real-world impact as part of a faculty-student collaborative as well as in the classroom context. Partners include advocacy, government, non-government, and/or academic organizations looking to use interactivity in both digital and analog contexts with the goal of informing and transforming society and its people.

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