Advanced Diploma

Game Design and Production - CIP Code 50.0411

Game designers are the visionaries and evangelists for a game development project. They thrive on new ideas and are always thinking about how users will interact and enjoy the experience that they’ve created. A great game designer possesses a combination of technical knowledge, artistic skill and most importantly, the ability to communicate and understand people.

Game designers spend significant amounts of time writing detailed documents specifying game mechanics, environments, playable characters and the game’s nemesis. This detail extends right down to how a particular item might behave, be animated and sound.

Game Design is a two year, full-time course written by experienced game designers, in consultation with local and international studios, to produce innovative graduates who will lead the next generation of game development.

Course Content

Stage One

The first year of the course begins by covering grounding in terminology and mechanics and roles of designer. Students will work on visualising ideas, prototyping, learning the fundamentals of 3D content creation and game programming as well as designing game levels, creating user interfaces and crafting game play experiences.

Towards the end of the year, game design students will work with programming students to develop projects with game design, production and quality assurance.

Stage Two

Second year focuses on the psychology of games, market research, exploring thinking and decision making processes along with understanding the producer’s role in managing and coordinating game projects. Students will be making more game prototypes around a range of different game types, genres and platforms.

During the major game project, game design students will collaborate with game art and game programming students to create an innovative original game to showcase their capabilities.

Students graduate at the end of Year 2 with an extensive portfolio with several games they have designed and produced, mechanical prototypes, large amounts of documented design ideas expressed in visual and written form.

Major Game Project

In second year of this course game design students will work together with game art and game programming students in development teams to design and produce a playable game. This project closely mirrors the real-world production cycle in an industry development studio, covering the entire process from pitching the game idea, through writing game design documents, evaluating technical requirements, managing workload, meeting deadlines, delivering commercial quality artwork and animation, bug-fixing, QA testing and market analysis of the game.

Subjects

Subjects you will study

Stage One

Introduction to Game Design
Health and Safety in the Office
Level Design Fundamentals
Design Prototyping Fundamentals
Narrative Design
Testing and Quality Assurance
Production Planning
Production

Stage Two

Psychology and Economies
Time to Make a Game
Designing the User Experience
Production for Clients
Proof of Concept
Sustainability
Major Production
Online Professional Portfolio

Software

Software You Will USe

Students utilize industry standard software and resources such as:

Unity, Unreal Engine, Twine, GameMaker — Game engine and development frameworks
Maya — 3D game asset creation
Perforce, Sourcetree — Project management and version control
Adobe Photoshop — Visualisation
Visual Studio, MonoDevelop — Programming tools
Microsoft Office Package

Careers

Your Career Opportunities

Game Designer
System Designer
Narrative Designer
Level Designer
UI Designer

Graduates can be found working in some of the worlds leading game companies and smaller independent studios.

Game design graduates are also sought after in the growing field of ‘gamification’ as well as managing interactive initiatives for training, simulation, customer engagement and advertising.

Pre-requisites

Portfolio Requirements

A portfolio for the game design and production program can include any creative work you have produced by yourself as well as that you’ve created as part of a team. We’re interested in everything – stories, movies, animations, games, illustrations, websites, advertising – if it can be designed, we want to see it. We are particularly interested in understanding the process you took to reach that design goal and the role you played in bringing the idea to life.

Designers and Producers are responsible for documentation in order to communicate their ideas along with managing projects and staff. Please bring along some written work you have done in the past be it instructional, informative or entertaining. We will accept either digital (e-mail/DropBox/Flash Drive/etc.) or physical copies. Please contact us directly with questions.

Learning Objectives

Students Will:

Learn the roles of designers and producers and their role in team-based production envrionments.
Develop skills in designing gameplay systems, mechanics and the creation of industry quality game documentation.
Work on visualising ideas and project prototyping best practices to create a range of different game types and genres across multiple platforms.
Learn the fundamentals of 3D content creation and game programming.
Leverage game engines to create levels and produce user-centered gameplay experiences.
Develop across multiple platforms including PC, Console, VR/AR and mobile.
Develop skills in testing and quality assurance.
Explore the psychology of games, analyze and implement market research.
Manage and coordinate game projects using agile production methodologies.
Coordinate teams, hone communication skills and how to pitch projects.
Build an extensive portfolio of games you’ve designed and produced, functional prototypes and documented design concepts expressed in visual and written form.

Fees

Our Fees

PROGRAM	TOTAL TUITION FEE Cohort Commencing 2023
Advanced Diploma of Professional Game Development - Game Design	$49,200

For more information on our tuition fees please visit our FEES page

Payment Plans

AIE appreciates that for many students payment of fees in full prior to the commencement of study can be difficult. For this reason, students may be offered the option of paying fees via a payment plan, which allows for students to pay their fees via installments. Please contact an AIE Campus for more information about Payment Plans.