The curriculum in the Game Design Master of Science at Full Sail University is composed of high-level production, game design, quality assurance, usability, and leadership courses that deeply survey the game development pipeline. In this program, students will expand and advance their project and design skills through practical exercises in leadership, team management, game design, and usability in order to build the proficiencies to advance a career in the game industry. Students will generate a variety of documentation types related to design, quality and usability testing, and production, which will be applied in team and independent game development scnearios. Students will work with industry-standard technologies, including game engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity; modeling tools such as Maya, Blender, 3D Max, and Zbrush; audio tools such as Audacity and Cakewalk; and productivity tools such as Jira, Confluence, Asana, and Monday along with AI-assisted tools such as Grok, Gemini, and Claude.
The curriculum has been crafted to provide the advanced skills required in the game development field. Students will be able to observe, evaluate, and participate in the game development process, exploring the core development roles involved in an immersive game development experience. Coursework will hone students' leadership, design, and research skills in preparation for entry or advancement across roles in the game industry. As the field increasingly adopts AI-assisted tools, students will learn to apply them as a support to their design judgment. Graduates will exit with a portfolio of advanced game-design work, production work, and UX implementations, assembled to professional standards and suitable for presentation to employers and clients.
The goal of the Game Design Master of Science degree program is to provide students with the focused knowledge and understanding of game development necessary to be successful in design, production, and user-experience roles in the fast-paced environment of a game studio. Across the curriculum, students will build core technical competencies, including game design, production, user research, and usability testing, and will apply these skills through hands-on project-based work. The program’s curriculum cultivates students' design skills, project and team management abilities, leadership insight, and quality and usability testing competence while training in the varied game development methodologies used by studios across the industry. Students will also build fluency with current game design, production, and UX tools and workflows, including AI-assisted tools applied as a complement to their individual design judgment.
Please Note
- Some specific courses may be offered online. Please see course descriptions for details.