Course summary
Become a confident and daring indie game developer. Produce vibrant and engaging experiences for gamers on this online Indie Game Development MA. Analyse the principles of the creative process, from ideation and design through to delivery and dissemination. Integrate design tools, programming languages, game engines, as well as specialist middleware and frameworks into your game development practice. Explore business models used by indie games studios to see how you could start up your own. And, if you already have a business idea, get it off the ground with help from a mentor. This Indie Game Development master's course is delivered by Falmouth's Games Academy, which has been rated no.1 for game design in England by The Princeton Review, 2023. You will: Learn to use industry-standard platforms for making games and adapt to their technical constraints Use methods from business and analytics to better understand how people engage with indie games and game companies Adopt both technical and arts perspectives as part of a design thinking process to deliver novel games Collaborate across disciplinary boundaries, an increasingly important skill in the games industry Practice digital and non-digital game design across a range of application domains, including gamification and serious games
Modules
Throughout this indie game development course, you'll learn how to produce original and creatively distinguished games based on your own intellectual property. You'll gain the ability to critically reflect upon and evaluate working methods and find the most effective ways to collaborate on projects. You'll also gain key professional skills in pitching your ideas; communicating concepts and presenting artefacts visually with clarity and enthusiasm. This course is comprised of five modules, four 30-credit modules and one 60-credit project (180 credits in total). The modules have been specifically designed to be studied in a non-linear order, with the order in which you’ll study the modules depending on when you begin the course. All modules on the course are compulsory and must be passed in order to complete the award. Development Practice (30 credits) By devising a series of small-scale creative artefacts, you'll use your existing ideas about development practice and then experiment with new approaches to challenge these ideas. This will enable you to create a personal case study, from which you can define how to expand and enrich your practice. Beyond the personal case study, you'll gain a broader sense of the contexts in which these practices are applied across disciplines. Game Development (30 credits) You’ll develop and combine skills from the art, design and programming disciplines to create your own small indie game. This will help you understand how game development draws from many different disciplines and explain the different tasks involved in making games. By the end of the module you'll have made a game yourself and produced a report that explains the cross-disciplinary context for your creative process. Co-creative Design and Development Practice (30 credits) You'll work in a multi-disciplinary team on a problem-led creative project. This will typically, but not necessarily, be a small game or creative app. You'll work together to situate, design, implement and evaluate your creative artefact. With the support of a supervisor, you'll strategically manage scope, workflow, communication roles and responsibilities. At the end, you will have pitched and produced an original artefact, based on your own intellectual property, that clearly illustrates how you can engage an audience. Indie Game Start-Up (30 credits) In this module, you’ll design and prepare to launch a small business with a focus on indie game development. You’ll investigate and assess market opportunities in an area of your choice. This could involve exploring your audience, comparing how game businesses operate, contrasting business models, and considering how intellectual property can be managed. You’ll then decide which business opportunity your indie game is responding to and devise a business plan. You’ll consider branding, cash flow modelling, enterprise planning, incorporation, seeking further investment and interrogating routes to market. This will underpin further development and launch of your indie game. Final Major Project (60 credits) You’ll work on a major research and development project, either independently or with others. This will allow you to expand and consolidate your skills of devising, developing and executing an extended development project. You can build upon your projects from other modules or develop a new concept. You should finish the course with a polished project of a publishable quality. A supervisor will act as your mentor and adviser. If you’re planning to start your own business following this MA, your supervisor can direct you to professional services staff for business mentoring.
Assessment method
Assessment provides the course team with a means of offering tailored guidance alongside advice on how to progress knowledge and skills in key areas that relate to the course Learning Outcomes. The course team will identify your strengths and weaknesses as an individual and discuss them with you throughout your time on the course. Assessments are 100% coursework, submitted in an electronic format to the virtual learning environment, and designed to reflect professional practice. Assessment methods include: Projects Portfolios Pitches Papers
Entry requirements
An honours degree or Level 6 equivalent qualification is desirable. However, candidates without a degree or formal qualification are still encouraged to apply. If you'd like to discuss our entry requirements, speak to an advisor.
Fees and funding
Tuition fees
No fee information has been provided for this course
Additional fee information
No additional fees or cost information has been supplied for this course, please contact the provider directly.
Provider information
Falmouth University
Woodlane
Falmouth
TR11 4RH