Master of Arts - Games Art and Design

The MA Games Art and Design degree meets the need of the gaming industry. This industry has developed dramatically from the days of the solo practitioner to become a global market where large teams of artists work in unison to create content for the next generation of interactive game technologies.

This course supports students who want to specialize in areas such as character design, hard-surface modelling, environment design or lighting and texturing as well as those who want to be generalists. The University supports all the standard software packages used in the industry and is constantly updating the range of technical instruction it offers. The MSc award fuses technical knowledge of real-time rendering with the aesthetic decisions and traditional skills learners will need as game artists. 

On this course, students will also explore thinking about the cultural resonance of their work and about the audiences it is made for, about the nature of creativity, and the role of the cultural industries in a modern knowledge economy. Enquiry, research and clear communication being key elements that underpin this course.

Induction, seminars and social events for students mean that while studying and after they graduate, they'll be part of a friendly and supportive postgraduate community, which includes film makers, musicians and professionals working in other areas of creative media. Senior research staff and internationally renowned professionals also work with postgraduate students, helping them to develop an original individual approach. 

The University of Hertfordshire is ranked 1st in the UK as Top Games Development School (10th worldwide) and 1st for Games Design & Development Production Excellence (Rookies World School Rankings® 2020). There are work related learning opportunities on this course, all students complete a live external brief provided by a major games studio as part of their coursework.

The MA Games Art and Design graduates work for most major gaming companies including BAFTA winning UK games studio Creative Assembly, Frontier, Splash Damage, Guerrilla Games, Epic Games and Rare.