Background

The computer games industry is strong and thriving, and the continuing expansion of the home entertainment market is expected to continue this trend for the foreseeable future. This course has been developed in close consultation with industry representatives and provides a challenging but enjoyable programme of study.

Within the UK games development industry there are several roles, the key two being "programmer" and "artist". Many games-related courses of study in other universities are "broad and shallow", teaching aspects of programming, art and design in equal measure. The course at Northumbria focuses strongly on the "programmer" role, while giving an understanding of the role that artists and game designers take in game development, with the aim of better equipping graduates to take up programming roles within the industry.

The course foundation is built upon developing competency in programming, maths, systems architecture, multimedia technologies, human-computer interaction, 3D graphics, animation, and multimedia complemented by a strong appreciation of the software design and management processes and principles. The school has a lab equipped with Nintendo GameCube development kits, and students gain extensive first-hand experience with this industry-standard development environment.

Career opportunities:
This programme of study is intended to equip students for careers in computer games software engineering. Graduates from this degree would also be particularly well suited to scientific computing and physical modelling situations, but will be able to succeed in most areas of general computing, as a broad grounding in software engineering principles is given.