New York University has announced that the NYU Game Center, one of the world’s leading academic game programs, will offer a new Masters of Fine Arts degree beginning in Fall 2012.

NYU Game Center to Offer MFA Degree in Game Design Beginning Fall 2012

New York University has announced that the NYU Game Center, one of the world's leading academic game programs, will offer a new Masters of Fine Arts degree beginning in Fall 2012. MFA students will explore games as a creative art form as they design and develop games within a context of rigorous scholarly study in the two-year program at the NYU Game Center.

The curriculum includes game design, game programming, visual design for games, and game criticism. The program is distinctive in looking at games across a wide variety of media, from consoles and PCs to smartphones and social networks. Over the course of two years, students will find their voices as creative practitioners working on individual and group projects, as they study the theoretical and cultural aspects of games, all within the thriving community that is the NYU Game Center. For more detailed information, visit: http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/academics/graduate.

"Games are the defining cultural form of this century and the NYU Game Center MFA is dedicated to exploring their potential," says Director Frank Lantz, "There are places to study the technical and business aspects of games, but the Game Center MFA has a unique creative focus on games for today’s platforms."

The NYU Game Center features a roster of world-class faculty, including:

  • Director Frank Lantz, well-known game designer and successful entrepreneur, an instructor at NYU for nearly two decades
  • Katherine Isbister, acclaimed researcher whose work on players was cited in Forbes, Wired, Scientific American, and NPR’s Science Friday this year
  • Jesper Juul, leading game scholar and theorist whose most recent book was selected by New Yorker magazine as one of the 5 essential books on games
  • Eric Zimmerman, veteran game designer who recently exhibited work at MoMA and co-authored the most widely-used textbook on game design

The NYU Game Center, located in the Tisch School of the Arts, houses one of the world's largest collections of videogames, and offers a busy schedule of exhibitions, tournaments, and lectures, including the annual PRACTICE: Game Design in Detail conference.

The NYU Game Center MFA was created by the Tisch School in close affiliation with NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development; and Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Together with efforts like the Games for Learning Institute and the NYU Poly Game Innovation Lab, the Game Center MFA makes NYU a global leader in games.

Deadline for application for the fall 2012 term is March 1. To apply, visit: http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/academics/graduate.

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Richard Pierce
Richard Pierce
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