If you have your results, you can apply directly to us now to start in September 2025.
A relevant qualification or experience in art/design/creative computing or graphic arts is required. Applicants without relevant qualifications will be asked to provide a portfolio to support their application.
If you don't meet the English language requirements yet, you can achieve the level you need by successfully completing a
pre-sessional English programme
before you start your course.
A relevant qualification or experience in art/design/creative computing or graphic arts is required. Applicants without relevant qualifications will be asked to provide a portfolio to support their application.
If you don't meet the English language requirements yet, you can achieve the level you need by successfully completing a
pre-sessional English programme
before you start your course.
Skills and qualities you need for this degree course
To get the most out of this course, you'll need one core element: a passion for games and art.
You should enjoy critically analysing games art – such as identifying their systems – in order to understand, implement, and potentially improve them.
You should also be:
comfortable discussing games and ideas in the context of games industry, culture, and art
enthusiastic about developing your understanding of the applications of art in games
eager to translate your knowledge into polished assets
With an estimated global value of $131.23 billion (£97.95 billion) in 2020, the computer games industry is a force to be reckoned with. In the UK, it contributed £2.2 billion to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019/20, and the number of workers in the field grew to 18,279 (TIGA, 2020).
As the game industry and its workforce continue to expand – especially across sectors adopting its technologies and systems – multi-skilled and specialist graduates are more in demand than ever before.
computer games development
visual effects
synthetic training for healthcare, security, and defence
simulation development
architectural/historical visualisation
marketing
advertising
Continuing your studies
You can also advance your studies to Master's level on MA or MSc courses focused on Games Art, as well as Computing courses depending on your specialisation.
After your second or third year, you can complete an optional work placement to gain professional experience and enhance your skills. It's also a great incentive for employers once you graduate.
You can work for a company, organisation or agency, or you can go self-employed and start your own business with fellow students or by yourself.
Whatever you decide – or even if you just want some employability advice – our exclusive Creative Careers team can support you every step of the way.
Creative Careers
Our in-faculty Creative Careers team has extensive recruitment experience and knows the creative sector well, making it easier for students to
find placements within the creative industries
.
They can guide you through every step of the application process, including:
Searching for the ideal job through their database of vacancies
Giving tips on how to write an interesting CV that will catch employers' attention, no matter the role
Organising mock interviews, so you can hone your technique and familiarise yourself with the recruitment environment
Writing your startup business proposal – if you're going down the self-employment route
The team will continue to give you support throughout your placement year.
Supporting your creative career
Our dedicated
Careers and Employability team
have extensive recruitment experience across a multitude of areas including the creative sector.
They can provide you with supporting and advice, including:
Searching for the ideal job through their database of vacancies
Giving tips on how to write an interesting CV that will catch employers' attention, no matter the role
Organising mock interviews, so you can hone your technique and familiarise yourself with the recruitment environment
Writing your startup business proposal – if you're going down the self-employment route
Researching placement opportunities and applying for creative opportunities
The team will continue to support you throughout your placement year and beyond, providing you with help for up to 5 years after your graduate.
You’ll practice various modeling techniques, from box modelling to sculpting. Master the art of asset creation that meets specific project requirements.
By assessing basic principles and their impact on final results, you’ll develop advanced technical skills. With your creative thinking and understanding of procedures, you'll excel in 3D roles and unlock new possibilities.
By practising texture and movement rendering techniques using analogue mediums, you’ll develop your drawing prowess.
By the end of the module, you’ll be able to bridge principles of visual communication with emerging tools for crafting emotive digital worlds.
You’ll work with different programming languages and APIs to show your understanding of technical terms. You’ll also master the control of game behaviors and data variables.
By recognising patterns in syntax, you’ll be able to write or forecast code outcomes accurately, establishing essential skills for creating functional game systems and mechanics.
You’ll test code and asset creation techniques aligned to brief specifications and actively identify and resolve product issues from visual bugs to interactive mechanics.
The collaborative context requires coherent documentation and excellent team communication.
By the end of the module you’ll be equipped with project lifecycle experience - from aligned ideation to an optimised, playable game demo.
Learn how gameplay mechanics, storytelling, and level design work together by studying successful games.
By looking at important academic sources, you’ll improve your academic writing skills and come up with original game concepts.
This module is ideal for developing your own design approach and generating marketable ideas for the entertainment industry.
In this module, you'll generate and evaluate ideas that bring narrative concepts to life.
In the design process, you'll express your vision through composition, observation, and interpretation. Experiment with software to advance your surfacing, lighting, and rendering techniques, then use your new technical and creative skills to craft an animated short through performance and visual storytelling.
With this module, you can transform a story from page to screen using 3D animation and visualisation abilities. By the end, you'll have valuable experience in creating captivating characters and animated worlds.
In this module, you’ll work with others to explore game ideas from concept to execution. Learn how to do market research, business strategy, marketing planning, and pitching with lecturers’ guidance. Work on team projects and presentations to assess the usefulness of game concepts and plan for their commercial success.
By the end, you’ll have the entrepreneurial mindset, collaboration skills, and industry knowledge to set up your own studio or prosper in one.
You’ll research, design, and develop a character and environment following an industry-standard brief. Create model sheets and mood boards to guide your 3D workflow and visualise your concepts as you take your asset from concept to finish. Finally, you will use professional real-time techniques to create a demo reel that shows your technical excellence.
This module will equip you with practical experience and key skills in creating triple-A game assets, VR/AR content, and other real-time 3D applications.
This module offers students the opportunity to participate in an optional Exchange program during either the first or second teaching block of Level 5 at a Higher Education Institution outside the UK. This experience enriches students' learning by incorporating a global perspective into their studies and equipping them with knowledge and skills crucial for the global workforce.
Through a study exchange overseas, you'll manage tasks and projects relevant to your course, working independently or collaboratively as part of a team.
The experience enables you to showcase your talents on a global stage while reflecting on your personal growth. With enhanced employability prospects, you return home with a new perspective to inform your practice.
It will help develop your practical knowledge and collaborative abilities to thrive in the film and games industries.
You’ll use drawing to capture animal forms, structure, texture, and proportions. Relating visual research to the design process, you’ll develop industry-standard workflows, put your skills into practice through industry-led briefs and create professional-quality concepts and assets.
You can immerse yourself in the production pace and pipelines of entertainment studios through collaboration in a simulated studio environment.
You’ll finish this module with real-world creative experience and a portfolio of your design talents.
Join a team of creative students and do a project together. Try new things and see how they can help you.
You’ll also grasp how to use your skills with others. Sometimes you’ll be a leader, sometimes a helper. Talk about your ideas and learn from them. You’ll make something to show what you learned and share it with others.
This module helps you gain new skills and understand other fields. You’ll be a smart and creative person, ready to solve real-world problems.
You’ll choose learning tasks that add up to 60 hours, like internships, volunteering, research, or remote study that match your career plans. Workshops will help you make meaningful goals and think about what you’ve accomplished. Through this, you’ll grow the knowledge, skills, and qualities you need to thrive in the workplace.
By looking at your growth through active participation and reading, you’ll become a perceptive, eager job-seeker who stands out.
Demonstrating project management and problem-solving skills, through critical analysis and experimentation, you'll produce a body of work that advances knowledge in your discipline.
Communicating scholarly outcomes with impact, you'll demonstrate your knowledge and abilities, drawing together your learning into a compelling self-directed showcase.
This is the culmination of your degree journey - proving your readiness for professional and academic challenges ahead.
You'll prototype concepts while negotiating roles and self-managing workflows. You'll evaluate and bring ideas to life using professional project management approaches.
This module empowers you to translate concepts into tangible prototypes, and put technical and artistic skills into practice — preparing you for the creative challenges of real-world production.
Collaborating in a group, you'll refine and optimise a real-time interactive experience based on the brief from an external client. Through analysis and critical reflection, you'll assess the processes undertaken and trade-offs made between project stages.
The module cements both technical and teamwork skills. You'll gain hands-on practice applying project management methodologies in a professional manner.
Completing this module will provide experience negotiating the realities and demands of commercial production, allowing you to emerge industry-ready.
As part of your games industry training, you will work on a project that aligns with your career aspirations. This could involve creating 3D characters and worlds, designing original artwork or animating game levels. You will have the freedom to unleash your creativity and showcase your skills by incorporating real-world elements into your game designs.
In addition, you will learn to make informed design decisions through independent study and proactive feedback, rather than relying solely on classroom instruction. By analysing professional works, you will be able to evaluate your own creations and ensure they meet industry standards.
By the end of this module, you will have built a portfolio that demonstrates your readiness to embark on a career in game development, with projects that reflect your ambitions.
You will use creative applications in game development software and Adobe Creative Suite, learn to design user experiences (UX) and user interfaces (UI), discovering the principles of interaction design.
You'll explore the ethical considerations you need to craft Creative Technology projects, and create a product to apply and demonstrate your understanding in this hands on module that puts the user first.
Through lectures and discussions, you’ll explore academic perspectives, covering analytical, cultural, and design approaches. You’ll think critically about old and new ideas, using theories such as Huizinga’s ‘magic circle’ to examine game structures, content, and players. You’ll also focus on how to research games, using various methods to understand them in context.
By the end, you’ll be able to study games academically. This knowledge is great for your final-year projects, further study, or jobs in game production, journalism, user testing, and research and development.
You’ll end up with a firm grasp of games as a cultural form, preparing you for an industry or academic career in games.
You’ll learn to use game data like player input, physics, and game states to design reactive soundscapes that adapt as you play. Explore how to create non-linear music and sounds that can be generated on the fly. Pick up industry skills in audio middleware to build systems that can mix and switch sounds dynamically.
Make and produce your own music and sound effects that work well with interactive elements. Use coding to create your own audio plugins. Show off your technical and artistic skills with an interactive audio project in a game engine.
This intense training in a specialised area will give you expertise that game studios really want.
The module also gives you valuable experience in managing projects as you turn your sound ideas into reality. Challenge what’s possible in game audio and let your creativity soar.
Delve into the latest algorithms, rendering, and development tools that drive interactive media. Use real-life examples and exercises to examine the technologies shaping the future of games, animation, and more. Get tips from leading graphics researchers and develop the advanced skills you need to be innovative — whether in business or academic work.
Once you finish, you’ll be set to use the latest graphic techniques to make your own virtual worlds. This module will motivate you to keep pushing the envelope.
In this fascinating module, you’ll delve into this enthralling next-gen realm. Explore the latest techniques for digitally capturing human motion and seamlessly applying it to 3D character animation.
Join us in our futuristic mocap studio and master the entire process — from capturing data to animating it using industry software. Experts will guide you as you critically assess different technologies and develop skills to preserve the authenticity and nuance of performances.
By the end, you’ll have firsthand experience with this powerful storytelling tool, widely used to create captivating virtual characters in films, games, and beyond. Your creativity will soar as you explore the boundless possibilities of bringing digital worlds to life.
You’ll look at basic psychology ideas, like how people think, feel, and act, and how they relate to player experiences. Delve into perception, memory, rewards, and social interactions, and how to use them to make fun gameplay and powerful stories. By testing theories and principles, you'll get better at analysing how game elements impact psychology. Most of all, you’ll find out how human psychology affects player engagement and enjoyment. This knowledge will help you make design choices based on scientific theory.
In the end, this module gives you a psychological toolkit to create amazing, unforgettable player experiences.
During this module, you'll spend 6 months working on your own business venture, then 3 months gaining industry experience. This opportunity allows you to apply what you've learned in a practical setting while exploring different career options. You'll also have the chance to develop professional relationships and expand your network.
Assess your personal strengths and weaknesses to set goals for the future. Throughout the module, you'll demonstrate increasing independence while still valuing the support of others. Gain a broader understanding of the world through real-world experiences and insights. Additionally, you'll earn valuable credits for your CV and enhance your skill set.
By the end of this module, you'll graduate with the practical experience that employers are seeking.
This experience lets you learn firsthand how to set up and run a small business. You’ll absorb professional practices and business situations that matter to your entrepreneurial goals. Make important connections while working independently within set rules. Think deeply about your strengths, weaknesses, criteria for success, and future plans.
This opportunity is useful for your career. It lets you use what you’ve learnt in your degree in the real world and helps you understand your capabilities.
After finishing this placement and the related assessments, you’ll get more credits for your sandwich degree. This practical experience is a valuable step in developing an entrepreneurial way of thinking.
You’ll spend 24–48 weeks at a chosen company, learning from professionals and helping out with actual projects. Gain confidence, knowledge, and skills by taking on more responsibility with gradually less help. As you progress, you’ll make professional connections and think about how you’re doing. Take in what you learn about how industries and businesses work.
This placement is an ideal chance to grow in your career. By using what you’ve learnt in a workplace, you’ll understand more about your own strengths, what you need to work on, and your plans after you graduate.
After this placement and the related assessments, you’ll get extra credits for your sandwich degree. This practical experience is a valuable part of your education.
Evaluating international contexts, you'll critically relate on-site activities to your disciplinary knowledge, gaining global insights. Working independently overseas, you'll complete relevant assignments, refining skills transferable to future creative studies and practice.
Upon returning, thoughtful reflection will reveal your personal growth as you process new worldviews and cross-cultural competencies. This invaluable opportunity provides a chance to broaden your creative knowledge while developing adaptability as a global citizen.
Changes to course content
We use the best and most current research and professional practice alongside feedback from our students to make sure course content is relevant to your future career or further studies.
Therefore, course content is revised and regularly reviewed. This may result in changes being made in order to reflect developments in research, learning from practice and changes in policy at both national and local levels.
During your final year, as part of your specialisation, you'll have one-to-one tuition with a project supervisor and work on briefs from real industry clients.
Our teaching staff are published, practice-based games researchers that have worked on commercial games with various studios, including:
The Chinese Room (Dear Esther)
Rebellion (Sniper Elite series)
Jagex (Runescape)
Stainless Games (Carmageddon)
Many of our staff members hold PhDs in game-related fields, attend conferences regularly, and are active in the University's Advanced Games Research Group.
If you need support with software and equipment or you want to learn additional skills (including skills not covered on your course), our creative skills tutors provide free workshops, activities and one-on-one tutorials. Skills you can learn include life drawing, film camera operation and video production.
