Bachelor of Science Game Design

The BS in Game Design prepares students to become storytellers, critical thinkers, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the field of games. Students often collaborate as part of interdisciplinary teams with programmers, artists, and musicians to master the iterative game design and development process to 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 other physical interfaces.

DePaul’s game design degree programs are nationally ranked by The Princeton Review and Animation Career Review.

For international students: this is a STEM-designated program, which can qualify you to extend your post-graduation stay in the United States.

Degree Requirements

Careers

Recent graduates of CDM’s game program have gone on to work at NeatherRealm Studios, Raven, Blizzard, Zynga, Bethesda, Zenimax, Iron Galaxy, Kongregate/Synapse, US Army, Trinket Studios, Jackbox Games, Game Create Repeat, Schell Games, and more.

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

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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 Creative Director of DePaul Originals Game Studio, located on our Loop Campus. He was formerly the lead designer and game director at Wideload Games/Disney Interactive Studio, where he worked on games like Stubbs the Zombie, Avengers Initiative and Marvel XP. A storyteller, Allen provides regular cultural performances and presentations for the Chicago Public Library and Chicago Public Schools, and has coordinated youth and adult programs focusing on literacy, role-playing activities, and team dynamics as a mechanism for developing inference and problem solving skills.
Lien Tran
Lien is an award-winning designer who has serious fun breaking down real-world complexity into interactive systems, including social justice. Her design portfolio includes online and game-based tools for organizations such as Open Society Foundations, World Bank, and United Nations and a variety of interactive and game-based tools with collaborators in health education, human rights law, and geography/GIS.
Richard Wetzel
Richard has been researching play and games in different realities since 2006 and is the director of the Hybrid Experience Lab. He is interested in how immersive technologies like augmented and virtual reality can be combined with the physical world, and how games can be used beyond entertainment, e.g. in health or educational applications.

Jarvis Student Center for Innovation and Collaboration

The Jarvis Student Center for Innovation and Collaboration is an 8,000 square-foot open space where CDM 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, innovation, and creativity.

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.

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.

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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BS in Game Design

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