Advanced Diploma in Game Design & Game Art

Backstage Pass’s ‘Advanced Diploma in Game Design & Game Art’ Program is designed to develop skills in 2d & 3d asset creation, game production, production modeling & texturing, character animation, level design, storytelling, game mechanics, project management, developing game design document. Each of these specialized classes is based around the same workflow processes found at professional game companies.

Objective

Our goal is to provide students with the focused knowledge and understanding of level design, game production, team management, technical art, gameplay and game design document. Completion of the Game Design program will greatly enhance the student’s ability to work in the fast-paced environment of a game studio in an entry level role. The students can qualify for entry-level positions in the game industry as game designer, level designer, game producer, game artist and technical artist.

Game Design

Game Design is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, and storyline, characters during production stage. Game Design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills. Various topics involved in Game Design are mentioned below.

Fine Arts

The foundation in traditional art is very important for a game designer. Our curriculum is built on the skills, concepts, and techniques that will enable students to understand the overall gaming process. Students will learn how to manipulate the elements of art to create designs that work in the gaming world.

3D Modeling/Texturing

The modeling foundations will help the students draw a parallel between traditional art and modeling/texturing techniques. Students learn to model/texture the way objects, and environments look in real life. Students are also introduced to Character Modeling/Texturing. The course helps students to understand the constraints of geometry and textures in a game engine.

History of Games

The Game History Course examines the history of game development, the changes in game systems, the evolution of genres and interactivity elements. Students will learn about influential and innovative titles and what impact they had or continue to have on the games of today.

Game Mechanics

The Game Mechanics Course explores the theories and styles which differ from one game to the other. Students will learn the theme and game play involved in the board games and then will move on to understanding more complex games. Through this course, students will have a better idea about how to better sync gameplay decisions to a specified target audience.

Story Telling

The Storytelling Course introduces students to the history of storytelling from ancient mythologies. Students will learn the techniques of storytelling from the Game Design perspective. Students are also introduced to the importance of points of view, interactive characters, character conversations and writing good characters for storytelling games.

Prototyping

The Prototyping provides students with the theory and practices used to design and execute a testing process to both validate and improve a game during the pre-production phase of development. The prototypes helps in the refinement of a game as well as reducing both costs and risks associated with the actual development cycle.

Level Design

The level design course teaches students to transform the concepts into extensive documentation, environment modeling, and the placing of game specific entities (actors), usually with the aid of a level editor. Students learn to analyze game levels and break them down into their basic components. The course also teaches students to create a level based on game interactions and features.

Game Design Document (GDD)

The game design document is a tool to help guide the development of a game. The purpose of a game design document is to describe the game's selling points, target audience, gameplay, art, level design, story, characters, UI, game controls, assets and sound & music. The GDD course introduces students to incorporate game design document from the initial game pitch. Design document remains a living document throughout the game development.

Final Project Creation

During the course, the students from Game programming and Game Art join with Game Design students to team up and work together to design and produce an original game project from start to finish. This collaborative environment will help the students learn to deliver content on a deadline as well as how to work within guidelines set by a real-world production team. It is an advantage of coming out of school as a designer who has already worked on a fully functional game, which will help students in entering into the industry as a game professional.