Interdisciplinary and Experiential Learning
IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY GAMES ECOSYSTEM
Northeastern’s programs aim to transform students into critical makers with the ability to create high-quality, innovative, and inclusive across a broad array of media, communities, and contexts.
Bachelor’s Programs
Bachelor of Fine Arts | Game Design
Designed to provide students with the skills to communicate ideas and emotions through interactive media. The focus of the BFA degree is exploring games as an aesthetic and expressive form through critical analysis and creative, reflective practice.
Bachelor of Fine Arts | Game Art and Animation
Focusing on the science of game development, students have an opportunity to learn the design and technological skills needed to build a game and develop a deep understanding of playability and analytics that make products successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Bachelor of Science | Game Design and Music with Concentration in Music Technology
The Game Design and Music combined major with a concentration in Music Technology prepares students to manage all aspects of music and sound design integral to the creative process in Game Design. Students focus on the digital sound technologies, audiovisual integration techniques and collaborative skills.
Program Website —Course Catalogue
Bachelor of Science | Computer Science and Game Development
The computer science and game development combined major focuses on the specific skills needed to succeed in the highly competitive game industry. Students will engage in building and developing games and playable media experiences while completing courses in computer science and specialized game technology and design. Interdisciplinary courses enable students to develop their creative and entrepreneurial abilities, as well as create a strong portfolio of game pieces.
Program Website —Course Catalogue
Minors
Game Art
Program Website — Course Catalogue
Game Design
The game design minor allows students in other areas of study to become familiarized with the basics of game design. Game design minor students can collaborate with students in the game design major, as well as the combined majors in game art and animation and computer science and game development. Students make games and create portfolio pieces. Students will also be encouraged to apply principles from their own discipline to the game designs they create.
Certificate Programs
Graduate Certificate in Game Design
Master’s Programs
MS | Game Science and Design
Focusing on the science of game development, students have an opportunity to learn the design and technological skills needed to build a game and develop a deep understanding of playability and analytics that make products successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
PhD Programs
Interdisciplinary Design and Media
The PhD provides a rigorous, globally aware, practice-based, and human-centered approach to advanced scholarship. It aims to cultivate researcher-designers with a versatile repertoire of methods and a passion for applying those skills to the emerging epistemic perspective of integrated human, technological, and data frameworks within creative collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.
Program Website — Course Catalogue
Course Spotlight
Games and Social Justice
This course analyzes games from a social justice perspective, encouraging students to consider issues of social stereotyping, normalization, exclusion, and inequity as they apply to games from all sectors of the industry. This course discusses and analyzes games using a variety of social theories from a diverse set of fields, including gender studies, critical race theory, and LGBTQ studies. Provides a studio setting in which students have an opportunity to engage in critical making of playable experiences that are based upon and deeply integrate social justice theories in their design.