Games is one of three majors in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, alongside Computational Art and Design. These three majors offer distinct paths through creative work with digital technologies: Computational Art focuses on computation as a material, method, and subject for artistic practice; Design focuses on visual communication and graphic design with digital tools; Games focuses on games as a creative, technical, and cultural medium.

The Games major at UCLA provides a uniquely challenging and rewarding adventure into the world of games––one of today’s most influential artistic media forms. The program invites students to explore games as a rich creative practice and an increasingly impactful cultural medium. Students develop the practical and critical skills to make games and game art that reflect their own voice and vision, working with leading artists, technologists, and scholars in a research-based studio environment. Students graduate from the program prepared for life-long learning and empowered to pursue a variety of creative, professional, and educational pathways.

The program is grounded in an arts-first perspective, practice, and philosophy, with an innovative and experimental approach to game design and development. Unlike some game programs that approach games through computer science or industrial design, this program takes advantage of its position within the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts to offer a variety of complementary technical, artistic, and conceptual methods for studying and making games and game art.

For example, throughout the program students will create about twenty different games, from quick and short to yearlong, from individual do-it-all-yourself to group collaborations, from technically advanced digital to crafted analog, from traditional to experimental. Our program is broad, rigorous, and highly supportive. Students learn how to code, how to design systems, how to create many different forms of game art, how to write for games, how to analyze games through history and theory, how to collaborate, how to create worlds, how to play critically, and how to imagine and build the future of where this amazing medium can go.

Students make and play games together to learn from each other and to grow as people and artists. The program presents exhibitions of student work to inspire each other, promote constructive art critique, and public-facing feedback. Students also have access to the UCLA Game Lab, a collaborative research center where they work alongside faculty, students, guest researchers, artists, and industry professionals on experimental projects. The lab provides a venue for visiting artist talks and workshops that introduce students to people, projects, and ideas in the larger game art community.

More broadly, the Games major provides a home base for further exploration of the many resources and opportunities provided by UCLA–the top-ranked public research university in the US–and the Los Angeles area. Southern California offers a globally influential ecosystem of cultural venues and commercial studios, software development, emerging technology, entertainment, and media culture. In short, this program presents a top-tier, affordable education and an ideal place for students to expand their academic, artistic, and professional horizons.

The Games major begins with a comprehensive series of lower-division courses, with some courses shared across all three DMA majors. These courses form the technical, formal, and critical foundation for making and studying games. Each of these courses covers a different core proficiency: computer programming, 3D modeling, digital image making, animation, critical game studies, media theory history, graphic design, and digital fabrication.

From this foundation, students pursue upper division core courses in Game Design, Game Engines, Worldbuilding, Interactive Animation, Collaborative Game Studio, Experimental Game Studio, and a broad range of elective studio and theory courses to choose from culminating in a two-quarter-long Senior Capstone Project and Senior Exhibition. This project reflects the culmination of all the critical and creative development of a student during the program.

Nearly all of our courses are taught as small studios of 15 to 20 students, which encourages individual growth and allows for strong mentorship from our faculty, who blend their broad array of artistic and technological expertise with personal encouragement and support. This includes hand-on guidance in using the latest hardware, software, and other resources to make games, such as our 3D rendering and VR labs, digital and analog games libraries and play spaces, print lab, digital fabrication and electronics lab, live gaming performance spaces, audio lab, cameras and shoot rooms for photography and video, and more.

Preparation for the Major Lecture Course
DESMA 7- Critical Game Culture

Preparation for the Major Lecture Course (1 REQUIRED)
DESMA 8- Media Histories
DESMA 10- Design Culture

Preparation for the Major Studio Courses (ALL REQUIRED)
DESMA 21- Digital Image
DESMA 22- Fabrication and Materials
DESMA 27- 3D Modeling
DESMA 28- Interactivity

Preparation for the Major Studio Courses (CHOOSE 1)
DESMA 24- Video and Motion
OR
DESMA 25- Typography

Core Lecture Course
DESMA 107- Game Histories and Analyses

Core Studio Courses (ALL REQUIRED)
DESMA 110- Tangible Media
DESMA 125- Game Design
DESMA 126- Game Engine
DESMA 127- Interactive Animation
DESMA 128- Worldbuilding
DESMA 129- Collaborative Game Lab
DESMA 130- Experiments in Virtuality

Elective Upper Division Courses (CHOOSE 2)
DESMA 101- Media Arts: Introduction
DESMA 104- Design Futures
DESMA 111- Art and the Internet
DESMA 112- Performing User
DESMA 113- Generative Art
DESMA 114- Arts Research and Practice
DESMA 115- Art and Science Collaboration
DESMA 116- Sonic Media
DESMA 140- Word and Image
DESMA 141- Web Design and UI/UX
DESMA 142- Design Systems
DESMA 143- Disability and the Web
DESMA 144- Type in Motion
DESMA 145- Design Research
DESMA 146- Ecological Arts and Justice Practice
DESMA 150- Professional Practice
DESMA 160- Special Topics in Design Media Arts

Senior Project
DESMA 159A- Senior Praxis
DESMA 159B- Senior Capstone Project

Please note that requirements are subject to change prior to the start of the 2027 - 2028 academic year

More information regarding the new Fall 2027 application process will be available soon