Online Game Design Courses
Curriculum Details
120 total credits required
Lindenwood’s online game design degree requires the completion of 120 total credit hours, including 54 major courses. There are also 21 credits of game design courses and an art and design capstone.
Core Courses (54 hours)
This course teaches the formal elements and principles of design, color theory, perception and problem solving as applied to a two-dimensional surface.
This course introduces students to programming logic in a structured web centric environment. Topics include language syntax, semantics, data types, program organization, pseudo code, flow-charting, algorithm design, and basic programming constructs. Lab fee may be required.
This course offers an exploration of three-dimensional space and design. Problems in the additive and subtractive processes will be presented including: open and closed space, mass, and volume. Basic fabrication skills will be covered. Sketchbooks required. Studio fee required.
This hands-on course provides students with the skills needed to design 3D models, materials, lighting, and animation using a popular 3D software application. Rendering techniques, camera usage, and surface-mapping will be covered in an effort to have students capable of producing photo-realistic images. Lab fee may be required.
Arts/Human Diversity This course is a historical survey of Western art and architecture from Prehistoric times to the end of the Middle Ages in 1300 with an emphasis on the relationship between art, society, culture, religion, and politics. Major works of art and architecture will be discussed from the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece-Rome, and finally the Middle Ages. This course is open to all students and required for all majors within the department of Art and Design.
Arts/Human Diversity This course is a historical survey of Western art and architecture from the Renaissance to the present with an emphasis on the relationship between art, society, culture, religion, and politics. Major works of art and architecture will be discussed as a survey of major artistic movements from the fourteenth to the late twentieth century across Europe and America. This course is open to all students and is required for all majors within the department of Art and Design.
This course introduces students to basic concepts of game development including a review and critique of game genres and the basics of the psychology of play. Students will create paper prototypes and play test other’s designs for balance and most importantly fun.
Major Elective (21 hours)
This course is a study of drawing techniques and fundamentals of anatomical structure as related to the human form. Most work is completed from direct observation of the nude human figure. Studio fee required.
This course helps students capitalize on their creative and artistic skills in a competitive marketplace. Students apply principles of business to careers in arts and entertainment. Concepts include developing business plans, fundraising, budgeting, project management, personal branding, accounting, and monetizing content.
Supervised work experience for the advanced student which requires the application of principles, skills, and strategies within the discipline. Requires signed internship agreement by student, faculty of record, and supervisor representing host organization. This course may be repeated up to a maximum of 12 credit hours and is graded on a Pass/Fail basis.
This course will explore the history of video games from their influences and precursors to contemporary gaming on various platforms. Major game genres and technological developments shall be discussed within their appropriate socio-historical contexts, as well as the application of critical theory to the discipline.
This course will investigate the Classical myths of ancient Greece and Rome in their cultural context. An overview of the principle myths shall be treated in order to discuss the relationship between myth and literature, and then the rather different relationship between myth and art, so as to understand better the nature of the sources for the myths and their use in Greco-Roman religion and epistemology.
This course introduces you to the essential concepts of writing and developing treatments and structured narrative elements for games. We will focus on narrative and plot structure for linear and open-world game concepts, writing episodes, segments, and cut scenes for digital games, writing protagonists based on the archetypal figure of the Hero’s Journey, writing memorable secondary characters, writing dialogue that advances character and storyline, writing to develop emotional connection between the gamer and the story/characters, and other aspects of story-building. By the end of the course, you will have developed a portfolio of writing samples that are directly related to your interests in game design more broadly, and that can be used to supplement your professional portfolio.
This course builds on concepts covered in Game Development I introducing students to industry standard software and game design practices.
Capstone
In this capstone experience course, students will research and complete a comprehensive project and present it in the format appropriate for the field.
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