A Major for the All-Around Game Lover:
The BFA in Game Design at NYUʼs Tisch School of the Arts in New York City approaches the study of games as a serious art form. This major gives you a broad background in game culture, including video games. It lets you focus on various areas from 3-D animation techniques to digital storytelling strategies.
Find out what inspired two NYU game design students to study games. And then play the games they created as part of their major!
“Laserboy” by Nick Carbonara
“Besides being fun to play, games are fun to study. They encompass many of the subjects Iʼm passionate about, like writing, design, and visual arts. Individually, these fields are fascinating. But putting them together in game design is especially exciting.”
Play Nickʼs 2-D platformer game, Laserboy, which he created in the Introduction to Game Development class during his first year in NYUʼs Game Design program. Nick had some assistance from fellow BFA student Junege Hong.
“Morning Makeup Madness” by Jenny Jiao Hsia
“Games are an exciting medium. They allow us to tell stories in ways that movies, books, and music cannot. Games are systems built out of rules that allow us to interact with them and generate an experience. That’s one of the aspects I like most about them.”
Play Morning Makeup Madness, a game Jenny created as an undergraduate at NYU. Since graduating, Jenny has worked as a freelance game developer and showcased her work at the L’OUJEVIPO exhibition in France and Fantastic Arcade, an annual video game festival in Austin, Texas.
Academic Programs for the Artist, Tech Geek, and Everyone In-Between:
Interactive Media Arts (IMA), a major you can pursue at both the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City and NYU Shanghai, combines engineering with art-making. As an IMA student, youʼll learn how to use technology and graphic design to create projects that go wherever your imagination takes you—from games and robots to virtual reality.
Integrated Design and Media (IDM), a major at the Tandon School of Engineering in New York City, teaches you hands-on production techniques in areas like digital filmmaking, 3-D graphics, game design, and digital audio to create media projects relevant to todayʼs society. This maker-centric program encourages you to research and develop your own work through class projects and internships.
In the Interactive Media program, offered as both a major and a minor at NYU Abu Dhabi, students learn how to design and develop virtual reality experiences from concept to prototype. Youʼll acquire skills in electronics, programming, design, and digital media and examine the latest technological developments that are changing the future of games as we know them. Interactive media students have access to the NYU Abu Dhabi Interactive Media Lab, where they find all the tools they need to bring their projects to life.
A Minor for the Programmer Obsessed with Building Games:
If youʼre a game enthusiast with a computer science background, Tandonʼs Game Engineering minor will give you the skills you need to become adept at the technical and engineering sides of games and simulations. Youʼll build games from the ground up, take studio art–style courses, and add electives on topics like human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and interactive computer graphics.
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