Computer Gaming Certificate

The School of Computing and Informatics offers a computer gaming certificate. The 18-credit hour certificate is open to any student at ASU (undergraduate, graduate and non-degree seeking) and is designed to provide a comprehensive game development skill set that the student can apply to his or her major. The goal is not to teach the student to create recreational video games, but to apply gaming technology to domain-specific problems. The certificate can also be used as one of the areas of concentration for the BIS degree.

The computer gaming certificate teaches skills that not only make the student attractive to the rapidly-growing video game industry, but also to a variety of other enterprises, including business, medicine, geography, education and biotechnology.

Students completing the computer gaming certificate will take 6 semester hours of core courses, then specialize in one of three tracks (9 credit hours), each of which will culminate in a capstone project (3 credit hours):

• Programming: In this track, students focus on how game engines work and writing software to work within the game engine. This concentration has direct industry applicability in a number of areas. For example, a student might create a game architecture to help patients with physical therapy or design a game platform that incorporates geographic information systems.
• Art: In this track, students focus on the visual aspects of game design, including 2D/3D modeling, animation, and texturing. Real world applications might include creating an interactive virtual world for corporate training, inventing a surgical simulation to educate medical students or creating content for the film industry.
• Education: In this track, students discover how to apply game design skills to achieve educational goals, learning to build virtual worlds that complement an educational setting. For example, a student might build a game that teaches linear algebra by incorporating trigonometric rules into the game design, or a game that teaches correct sentence construction to early English learners.
  

 

Courses

Core Courses: (to be taken by all students)
CPI 111 Game Development I
CPI 211 Game Development II
CPI 441 Gaming Capstone

Programming Track:
CPI 311 Game Engine Development
CPI 411 Graphics for Games
CPI 412 Cognitive Systems and Intelligent Agents

Art Track:
CPI 321 Fundamentals of Game Art
CPI 421 Modeling and Texturing
CPI 422 3D Animation and Rigging

Education Track:
EDT 329 Games, Simulations and Virtual Environments
RDG 440 Computer Gaming Learning and Literacy
DCI 451 Design Research and Educational Gaming

 

More Information

Students must be enrolled in the computer gaming certificate in order to take classes. For more information on the computer gaming certificate, students can make an appointment with an advisor by calling the SCI Advising Center at 480.965.3199 or sending an email to sci.advising@asu.edu. Students interested in adding the computer gaming certificate can fill out the undergraduate certificate form and submit it to the SCI Advising Center, BYENG 208. BIS students can contact their BIS advisor for assistance in adding the computer gaming concentration.