Games Design
Games design is a creative and technical discipline concerned with the conception, structure, and construction of interactive digital experiences. It sits at the intersection of art and engineering, requiring you to think simultaneously about visual aesthetics, narrative, player psychology, level architecture, and the technical systems that make a game function. Good games design is invisible to the player: it creates challenges that feel fair, progression that feels rewarding, and worlds that feel worth exploring.
Understanding how to achieve those effects requires both creative imagination and precise technical execution.
At Teesside University you will study this programme part-time, building your skills in game creation using contemporary game engines of the kind used across the commercial industry. You will gain the fundamentals of modern game development, including scripting, asset creation, level design, and the principles of interactive design that shape how players experience a game. The programme develops your practical capability alongside your critical understanding, asking you not just to make games but to analyse why games work or fail and to apply those insights to your own creative practice.
Teesside has a long-standing reputation in game development education and strong connections to the games industry in the north of England and beyond.
Games design graduates pursue careers as level designers, game designers, environment artists, gameplay programmers, and producers in the commercial games industry, which encompasses AAA studios, independent developers, mobile games companies, and the growing serious games and simulation sector. The skills developed on a games design programme are also transferable to adjacent fields such as interactive media, virtual reality, augmented reality, digital marketing, and training and education technology. Many graduates go on to further study at postgraduate level, deepening their specialism or moving into research in areas such as player experience, procedural generation, or games and wellbeing.