Computer Games

University of Essex

This is a degree in world-making. You craft stories, characters and plot in order to build imaginary worlds that a player can journey through. Our work is driven by creativity and imagination as well as technical excellence; at Essex you master both game design and computer programming, giving you total control over the worlds you want to create. Our course gives you the skills to design and specify complex, non-trivial games through focusing on the following areas: - the mechanics of a game, including gameplay elements and the relationship with story - the concepts and techniques of computer game programming - real and virtual worlds - artificial intelligence behaviours for non-player characters - 2D and 3D graphic effects and game objects (e.g. weapon systems) At the end of your course, you will be able to create the outline design specification for a computer game of your own design and implement a game using industry-standard techniques. Our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering is a community of scholars leading the way in technological research and development. Today's computer scientists are creative people who are focused and committed, yet restless and experimental. We are home to many of the world's top scientists, and our work is driven by creativity and imagination as well as technical excellence. Both for entertainment and for more serious purposes such as virtual reality training, computer games, gamification and games intelligences are increasingly important in today's world.

Teaching someone to programme is about opening a door. In your first year, you will be introduced to programming using Python. We assess your ability to think in a programmatic way during the first week of term, and if you need additional support we offer classes to boost your programming skills and confidence.