It’s a pretty common major/focus at many engineering schools.
At RPI: http://www.hass.rpi.edu/pl/gaming
At Carnegie Mellon: https://ideate.cmu.edu/undergraduate-programs/game-design/
@gouf78 Great! a good starting point.
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Check out St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas for video game development program. It’s in a cool college town - great music and food scene. Austin also is an industry hotbed for gaming. https://www.stedwards.edu/undergraduate/video-game-development
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Becker College in Worcester MA has a well regarded program, a friend’s D is enjoying it very much.
https://www.becker.edu/becker-game-design-4-in-world/
Several concentrations, some more design, some more development.
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check the career section for major game companies this give you the direction and leads you are requesting. also gives you an idea of where you could work.
https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/careers/experience.aspx The ubisoft website has videos of what the different sections of their company do to make the games. Scroll down to “Our teams talk about their jobs.”
You could also write to a company and ask what type of degrees and certifications would make a person standout.
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@mathmom The IDEATE program at Carnegie Mellon is a minor. Students can major in anything and add this as a minor. It’s a very interesting program but no major at this time.
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Computer game design BFA at George Mason U in the College of Visual and Performing Arts:
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Honestly, I’m not sure you should major in Video Games anyway. The CS major will give you a solid background in case the video gaming doesn’t pan out.
If you are a California resident (or prepared to pay OOS for a UC), check out UC Santa Cruz -
https://www.soe.ucsc.edu/departments/computational-media/bs-computer-game-design
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Maybe I’m an old fogey but I agree with @mathmom. A CS degree with a concentration (if you like) in some aspects specific to gaming is likely to be a more solid long term basis. The tech field changes so fast that concentrating on very specific things just doesn’t make a lot of sense IMHO.
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@mathmom;@donnaleighg thanks for your views. I appreciate the comments.
@SoCratz My son is planing to apply to NYU Game Design program this year, he is preparing his portfolio. What kind of portfolio your daughter had for submission and what are your suggestions? Thanks! (Sorry can not PM you directly)
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In reality, those video game majors can actually be regular hardcore CS major with only a few video game related electives. Look at the UC Santa Cruz’s curriculum and see for yourself.
https://undergrad.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/CSGD_BS_15-16.pdf
Compare to majoring CS and choosing those few classes as your electives, you will end up learning the same but may find less job offers at the end.
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DePaul’s College of Computing is one of the largest in the nation and one of their majors is Game Design. Another is Game Programming. Princeton Review ranks DePaul #28 for Game Design majors and Animation Career Review ranks DePaul #7 nationally.
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Hi there, I work in video game design and development. I am a UX researcher at Xbox 
and I’ve worked on several major video game franchises.
There are more than two major aspects to game design. Modern video games have hundreds of people working on them in many roles. Software development is probably the biggest area and the one with the most jobs, but there are also jobs in design, production, program management, art, music, UX, narrative design, community management, marketing, and MANY more. Have your son watch the credits for his favorite video game some time and see how many people are involved in the making of a video game.
Also, as a note, art and game design are separate job fields in video games. I know that sounds weird, but game artists are the ones who actually draw the art (characters, backgrounds, environments, UI, etc.) while designers are the ones who put together the game’s major mechanics and gameplay. I work more closely with designers for example, and they do things like determine the game’s rules, design the tutorials, put together the basic economy of the game, help decide on game balance, those kinds of things. Check out the Blizzard and Ubisoft job listings someone posted above and note that art and design are separate departments with separate listings.
There are a few good game design programs (RIT is one, Digipen has another one) but you can also just major in computer science if you want to do the development/programming stuff, or in art/digital design if you want to do the design or art stuff. Producers and community managers come from all kinds of backgrounds. Narrative designers usually have majors in communications or English or something and some experience writing. Marketing folks usually have a major in business or marketing, but they can come from anything.
I agree with @mathmom and @donnaleighg . It’s better to do a program that is more broadly focused - like a regular computer science major with some classes in art or game design - than it is to do a game design major, IMO. Most of the people I work with don’t have majors in game design. They just have regular majors.
If you do choose a game design major, do make sure that it has enough depth in either programming or design (or whatever your chosen career area) to actually get a job in that field. Some game design majors have a little of either, but not enough CS to be a developer and not enough art/design to be a designer.
Of the few I people I work with who do have game design degrees, here’s where they went
Designer: USC School for Cinematic Arts, BA in Interactive Entertainment
Designer: RIT, BS in Game Design and Development
Designers: Digipen Institute of Technology, several programs
Carnegie Mellon also has an Entertainment Technology Center with a game design minor. I know a few designers who got their master’s in entertainment technology there.
That’s literally it! Most of the designers I know got regular computer science or art/graphic design/digital art degrees (and more than a few majored in something completely different. I know designers with BAs in government, women’s studies, English literature, etc.)
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Thank you so much for spending time laying all these out clearly. I appreciate.
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