Video Game Enterprise, Production and Design - MSc
Currently viewing course to start in 2023/24 Entry.
Serious about working in games? Then enrol at the industry endorsed finishing school for games developers and artists. MSc Video Game Enterprise, Production and Design (Gamer Camp: Biz) has been created in partnership with the likes of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Codemasters, Rare and Exient....
- Level Postgraduate Taught
- Study mode Full Time
- Location City Centre
- Award MSc
- Start date September 2023
- Fees View course fees
- School School of Games, Film and Animation
- Faculty Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
Overview
Serious about working in games? Then enrol at the industry endorsed finishing school for games developers and artists.
MSc Video Game Enterprise, Production and Design (Gamer Camp: Biz) has been created in partnership with the likes of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Codemasters, Rare and Exient. It provides experience of working to deadlines as part of multi-disciplined, project team to produce playable games to a professional standard.
You will work in a simulated studio environment over full-time office hours, on real game briefs set with one or more of our partner developers.
It's a winning formula, with mentoring from industry veterans and support from leading game development teams. Recent graduates from Gamer Camp are employed by companies including TT Games, Creative Assembly, Ubisoft, Codemasters and Rockstar Games.
What's covered in this course?
If your ambition is to work as a video games designer, games producer and/or entrepreneur, you will need serious design knowledge, and managerial and business know-how to help lead a game to its completion. Although you will not be coding or creating art assets on a daily basis, it is vital that you have a comprehensive and realistic understanding of the game development process, and how all the disparate elements operate and come together. This is what makes you an effective ‘T’-Skills candidate.
On Gamer Camp: Biz you'll get specialist training, mentoring and support from our staff who all have vast industry experience as game developers, having worked in design, production, art, programming and even running their own business. Staff come from such big-name developers as Eurocom, Electronic Arts and Freestyle Games, while Programme Director Zuby Ahmed founded his own company, SmashMouth Games. The course is delivered in a series of ‘boot camps’ followed by one-to-one support, studio based game development and project delivery.
Starting with the fundamentals of video games code, art and design, you will build upon these creative skills to teach you how game development teams are managed and how complex processes, ideas and personalities can combine to create a successful games product.
Teaching takes place in a modern production studio based in Birmingham City Centre where you’ll be provided with studio space to complete projects, with access to the facilities and software you’ll need for the duration of the course. As and where possible students are also given work experience opportunities, previously these have included studios such as SmashMouth Games, Codemasters and Exient.
“I have been in the industry for almost 2 years now and the Gamer Camp Biz course definitely helped me gain the necessary experience and understanding of the role. Following the course I was able to get several interviews including getting to the final round of the Ubisoft graduate scheme before I got my position at TT Games.” Toby Jennings, Gamer Camp Biz 2014 Graduate. Junior Project Co-ordinator at Travellers Tales Games
Why Choose Us?
- The course will show you how to project manage the delivery of complex, creative and technically challenging video game products, and explain the business models available to generate income from games.
- Gamer Camp has been recognised as one of the top games courses in the UK, highlighted in the Livingstone-Hope Next-Gen report. Gamer Camp is part of the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Academic Advisory Board.
- The course has been designed to give you an understanding and experience of game development roles in design, production, and business start-up, where you will also have a window looking how programming, art and audio design work within development.
- You will learn in a realistic game development studio environment using the School of Games, Film and Animation's facilities. You will make a number of small scale games and a large scale game, on platforms such as PC, tablet/mobile and console, in collaboration with our industry partners which include Sony London Studio, Codemasters, Rare, Exient, Natural Motion and Mediatonic.
- You will gain a real qualification, leaving with an MSc in Video Game Enterprise, Production and Design.
- As you go through the course you may find opportunities to set up your own business or work at a partner company; we will endeavour to help you to get to where you want to be in your professional career.
- Graduates have gone onto to work for companies such as Rockstar Games, Creative Assembly, Sega, Codemasters and Sony.
Similar Courses
OPEN DAY
Join us for an on-campus Open Day where you'll be able to meet us in person. You'll get the chance to learn about courses in subject talks, chat to tutors and explore our campus. We'll post you a detailed event programme to help plan your day and find your way.
Next Event: Saturday 24 June
Entry Requirements
Essential Requirements
| Essential |
|---|
|
Passion for games |
|
Positive attitude |
|
Confidence to run a business and / or creative technical software development team |
|
Comfortable user of Windows or Mac OS applications |
| Desired, but not essential |
|---|
|
Experience of web or software coding (HTML, Java, C, C++, C#) |
|
Experience of art asset creation using Adobe Creative Suite, Maya, 3DS Max or ZBrush |
|
Game development experience |
|
Degree related to games, programming, art, business, management, marketing, law, economics or design. |
In addition to the above, international (non-EU) students also require:
Extra information for EU/International students
| Essential English Language Requirements |
|---|
|
English – IELTS 6.5 (no less than 6.0 in any bands) |
Fees & How to Apply
UK students
Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.
Award: MSc
Starting: Sep 2023
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Full Time
- 1 year
- £10,000 in 2023/24
- Full Time
- 18 months (including Professional Placement - see below*)
- £11,000 in 2023/24
International students
Annual and modular tuition fees shown are applicable to the first year of study. The University reserves the right to increase fees for subsequent years of study in line with increases in inflation (capped at 5%) or to reflect changes in Government funding policies or changes agreed by Parliament. View fees for continuing students.
Award: MSc
Starting: Sep 2023
- Mode
- Duration
- Fees
- Full Time
- 1 year
- £16,870 in 2023/24
- Full Time
- 18 months (including Professional Placement - see below*)
- £18,557 in 2023/24
*Professional Placement option
The Professional Placement version of the course is optional and is offered as an alternative to the standard version of the course.
This will allow you to complete a credit bearing, 20 week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Master’s Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market. Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.
You will be responsible for finding and securing your own placement. The University, however, will draw on its extensive network of local, regional and national employers to support you in finding a suitable placement to complement your chosen area of study. You will also benefit from support sessions delivered by Careers+ as well as advice and guidance from your School.
Placements will only be confirmed following a competitive, employer-led selection process, therefore the University will not be able to guarantee placements for students who have registered for the ‘with Professional Placement’ course. All students who do not find a suitable placement or do not pass the competitive selection process will be automatically transferred back to the standard, non-placement version of the course.
Personal statement
You’ll need to submit a personal statement as part of your application for this course. This will need to highlight your passion for postgraduate study – and your chosen course – as well as your personal skills and experience, academic success, and any other factors that will support your application for further study.
Not sure what to include? We’re here to help – take a look at our top tips for writing personal statements and download our free postgraduate personal statement guide for further advice and examples from real students.
Course in Depth
Modules
In order to complete this course you must successfully complete all the following CORE modules (totalling 180 credits):
The purpose of this module is to engage students in the concept phase of development of features for a discrete small-scale video game, ensuring students can follow the process of design to ask questions at the start of the concept phase of product development, to follow onto the research stage, before applying ideas within a synthesis stage before refining and finally applying their ideas.. Students will work in teams to produce concepts for small-scale games, which they must present using effective communication skills.
The purpose of this module is to bring together art, code, production and design students together into a game development team and give them the opportunity to work collaboratively to produce a releasable small-scale video game. Typically this is the type of title commonly described as an ‘indie game’ which is made in a short time frame with a small agile development team. If the completed game is at an appropriate standard the game can be submitted to relevant game stores and act as a published title on a student CV.
The purpose of this module is ensure that students can experience the challenge of completing the research and concept phase of a co-ordinated yet adaptive video game project whilst simultaneously generating ideas to become a business plan which will be presented / pitched to high level stakeholders at the end of the module.
The purpose of this module is to bring together art, code, production and design students together into a game development team and give them the opportunity to work collaboratively to produce a prototype for a large-scale game on either console, PC or connected devices.
The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practical outcome with accompanying reflective, critical and contextual material. The main consideration when choosing your topic is that it must be relevant to your programme and you should consider the relevance of this topic to your future academic or professional development.
Download course specification
Download nowCourse Structure
The MSc Video Game Enterprise, Production and Design programme focuses on professional game development so that you can work as an effective team member within the remit of games design or games production. You may even wish to investigate ways of setting up your own studio with the knowledge and skills you learn from the programme. In summary, the course offers students:
- PG Certificate- Semester One Small Scale Project- Mobile
- PG Diploma- Semester Two Large Scale Project- PS4 Console & Enterprise Development
- Master of Arts/Science- Semester Three Final Major Project - PS4 Console and/ or Placement/ Start up.
Each module on Gamer Camp is dedicated to ensuring you have the understanding and skills to tackle the challenges of professional game development. The dedicated teaching weeks at the beginning of each module will give you a broad appreciation of process and methodology, combined with regular tutorials from both our industry veteran teaching staff and also where possible our external mentors from the game industry.
This is all about you, your professional development, your pursuit of perfection and your proven application of knowledge to practice through an intense game development experience that showcases your expertise, talent and professionalism.
Classroom activities
As part of your study you will take part in a largely practical environment as a member of a game design team adhering to project briefs. These briefs are given to your team which you work together to achieve under the guidance of one of our staff as your mentor. Past students have created work that has been published on the iOS store.
Student work
Some of our past games include:
Employability
Employment Opportunities
The Gamer Camp Biz course directly answers the industry call for “T-skilled” workers in thecreative media industry, (Skillset. Strategic Skills Assessment for the Creative Media Industry, London. 2009: 20). Here professional employability is defined by proficiency across disciplines and specialist expertise within them.
The course seeks to develop students into T-Shaped art professionals complete with a keenly practiced ability who can work with others in a creative and technology constrained development team. This is the type of adaptive, reflective and capable professional the industry requires.
“There is a shortage of new people in the industry equipped with ‘T-skills’ - highly specialised in one core field, but with broad skills and knowledge to utilise their specialism across teams and platforms” - Skillset, December 2009 Strategic Skills Assessment for the Creative Media Industry. London: Skillset
Broad Attributes and Knowledge developed may include but is not limited to
- Team work and communication
- Project management and delivery
- Agile project delivery and Scrum
- Estimating
- Critical analysis and evaluation
- Reflection and adaptation
- Client handling
- Global appreciation
With this skill-set, the programme’s graduates have a huge advantage and are often employed by industry soon after finishing the course.
Typically, Gamer Camp: Bizgraduates go on to deliver professional game content in either AAA or indie game development studios.Here they continue their specialist professional development within Game Design, Production or Business & Enterprise within career-focused positions such as: Mission Scripter/Technical Designer, Publishing and more.
Feedback from Employers
"PlayStationFirst works in partnership with select universities in the UK and Europe as we see the development of new development talent in the UK crucial to the continued success of our European studios and the wider video games industry."
- Dr. Maria Stukoff, Head of Academic Development at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Placements
There are opportunities every year for students to work in game development studios. Working with our industry partners, we are able to offer a short placement* over the Easter break to selected individuals. During the final phase of your course, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake a three-month placement* as part of your Master’s by Practice.
Previous students have worked at Codemasters, Sony, Exient and Jagex, with the majority having been offered full-time positions on finishing the course.
*Please note, placements are not guaranteed and are subject to the requirements of our industry partners.
Links to industry
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), Codemasters, Rare, Exient, FreeStyleGames, Playground Games, Mediatonic, Natural Motion, MintGames, Lab42, UKIE and Aardvark Swift (recruiters) have all endorsed Gamer Camp, with SCEE kindly supplying PlayStation4 and VITA development kits for the course in the process.
Our partners also kindly offer their time by sending staff to help deliver key discipline specific lectures, sit in on milestone reviews and help mentor students to success.
International
Birmingham City University is a vibrant and multicultural university in the heart of a modern and diverse city. We welcome many international students every year – there are currently students from more than 80 countries among our student community.
The University is conveniently placed, with Birmingham International Airport nearby and first-rate transport connections to London and the rest of the UK.
Our international pages contain a wealth of information for international students who are considering applying to study here, including:
- Explore some of the good reasons why you should study here.
- Find out how to improve your language skills before starting your studies.
- Find all the information relevant to applicants from your country.
- Learn where to find financial support for your studies.
Additional information
Gamer Camp: Biz is defined by the diversity of its students and their continuing professional development in a constantly evolving, global game market. Our graduates come from backgrounds as diverse as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, India, Asia Pacific and the Americas. This is a mirror of the game industry itself, which has a global reach.
Facilities & Staff
Our School of Games, Film and Animation is based in the Curzon Building, a £63 million development, located on our City Centre campus.
We help you learn a specific discipline such as digital marketing, programming or art and put that discipline into practice by offering flexible teaching space, dedicated development studios and open access work areas for group projects, as well as course-specific facilities.
Our staff
Zuby Ahmed
Programme & Creative Director Video Game Design & Production
Zuby is a seasoned game developer and manager, with a career spanning over 20 years, 15 years of which have been focused within the Games Industry. Starting as a freelance writer for Edge, Zuby went onto work for Digital Image Design, Warthog Games, and EA Games.
More about Zuby