BACHELOR OF ARTS IN GAME DESIGN & INTERACTIVE MEDIA

What makes a game really great (or a major flop)? How can you lay the groundwork for a career developing, researching, and playing games? In this innovative program, students learn the answers to these questions and more as they prepare to make their own contributions to the world of gaming.

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It’s Not Just a Game Anymore

Video games and interactive media are an integral part of many of the hottest professional fields today, including education, healthcare delivery, mental health interventions, police training, and numerous industries just to name a few. Those who engage with games, whether for professional purposes or recreation, are dependent on those with the creativity, visual skills, and conceptual thinking ability needed to design the games. Our B.A. in Game Design & Interactive Media will prepare you to pursue a career in the gaming industry.

Learn What It Takes to Turn a Game into a Reality

Through our program, you will engage in a broad exploration of how games are built — both technically and artistically. You will work individually as well as in multi-player mode, collaborating with students from other programs and colleges to build your own games. To do this you will build and level up on skills that you develop in courses that focus on narrative, writing, music, visual arts, and more. You’ll use these skills to develop stories, create interesting characters, set rules, and present challenges that prompt interaction with the user.

Game development is a multi-disciplinary field, and you must understand each of the disciplines that go into it. You will wear many hats in game development — artist, writer, music expert, and more.

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Game Design

What makes the Game Design & Interactive Media program unique is its interdisciplinary approach to preparing students for their future careers. In the program, students study gaming from vantage points provided by Art, Music, Writing, Literature, Psychology, Sociology, History, Philosophy, Computer Science, and more. By studying gaming in this way, students develop the diverse background and multidisciplinary skillsets that game designers need to succeed.

Employees in the gaming industry have diverse backgrounds and training, not just narrow expertise in a single skill, and our program aims to prepare students to succeed with this approach.

A Degree for An Open-World Job Market

Upon graduating with this degree, you will be in a solid position to pursue a career in the gaming industry in areas like game production, development, testing, design, writing, art, and music. But any industry that that uses gaming and interactive media is yours to explore, and that career territory is expanding every day.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 64% of Americans play video games and $59.3 billion (yes, with a "B") was spent on games, hardware, and accessories in 2024 - outpacing all other forms of entertainment. The video game industry is responsible for 104,000 direct jobs in the U.S., but when including indirect positions, the total figure is an impressive 262,800 U.S. jobs with an average salary of $168,600.

These are definitely winning numbers for anyone looking to enter this field.

 

Career Opportunities with a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design & Interactive Media

$100K

Special Effects Artists and Animators

1.6% Growth 2024-2034

$98K

Digital and Game Designers

7% Growth 2024-2034

$103K

Software Quality Control Specialist

10% Growth 2024-2034

The info provided is designed to show just a few of the many possible careers you could pursue with a bachelor's degree in game design & interactive-media. The data includes median national salaries and industry growth projections*. *U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates (September 2025). Salary data fluctuates frequently.

 

Selected Courses and Programs

An introduction to the study of games, gaming, and game culture. This course provides an overview and application of the perspectives, concepts, and methods of the diverse field of game studies (also called ‘ludology’) to provide students with a critical appreciation for games and associated phenomena.
This course surveys the basics of game history, game design, game engines, technical ethics, and project management. Students will have the ability to analyze games, identify game mechanics and game engines, and assemble interactive media using predefined assets and gaming modules.
A critical exploration of ethics, as an area of philosophy, and video games, as an interactive aesthetic medium. Students will cover ethical theory and video game theory; they will then focus on the theoretical intersection between the two, focusing on applied ethics and moral psychology. Students may also cover the ethics of video game design and the ethics of video game culture.
An in-depth examination of the problematic side of games, gaming, and gaming culture as well as possible solutions to those problems. Students explore the causes and consequences of important social issues as they relate to gaming contexts, like social bias, prejudice and discrimination, hate speech and harassment, and conflict between gamers.
As video game creation becomes more accessible, people without programming experience can now create their own interactive experiences-digital games that prioritize artistic expression over commercial success. In this class, students explore this emerging art form of “punk games” by creating their own original digital games and examining existing repertoire and writings in this new media. The class will culminate in a public gallery of students’ games at the end of the semester.
A foundational course in the narrative methods and storytelling aspects of games. This course will introduce students to literary, rhetorical, and narrative theories that help us to understand games as story-driven media. Particular attention will be given to the ways that games both overlap and diverge from storytelling methods in other print and visual media. Students will study the narrative aspects of many different types of games and apply what they have learned to create their own narrative game.

The University of New Haven offers a wide variety of in-depth courses that create a transformational educational experience for our students. To view the complete list of courses you'll take while pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Game Design & Interactive Media, check out the Academic Catalog:

Game Design & Interactive Media, B.A.

Game Design and Interactive Media Minor

 

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