This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience working with sensors and other electronics to design interfaces for a live multimedia performance. Students will explore the expressive properties of sensors to control a variety of outputs such as light, sound, projection, and/or other media. The forms and uses of physical computing, computational media, and its application are explored weekly in both a hands on laboratory context, as well as weekly discussions of readings and existing performances. Prerequisites: Creative Computing or similar coursework with microcontrollers and coding.
Category Archives: Spring 2027
Immersive Experiences (IMNY-UT 282)
This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience creating immersive experiences, with a focus on designing artistic, meaningful worlds for virtual reality headsets. The class will also touch on related technologies, methods, and fields including experience design, virtual painting, augmented reality, interactive installation, and 360 video/audio. The course materials will also include readings and discussions on prior art/relevant critical texts. This class uses VR as a lens for understanding experience design in general. Some basic familiarity with programming, image-making, and time-based media is a plus, but not required. Communications Lab: Hypercinema or equivalent experience.
Introduction to Fabrication (IMNY-UT 242)
An introductory course designed to familiarize students with all the IMA prototyping shop has to offer. We will cover everything from basic hand tools to the beginnings of digital fabrication. You will learn to use the right tool for the job. There will be weekly assignments, created to develop your fabrication techniques. There will be in class lectures, demos, and building assignments. Emphasis will be put on good design practices, material choice, and craftsmanship.
Introduction to Assistive Technology (IMNY-UT 241)
Assistive technology is a term that includes a wide variety of technologies for people with disabilities. This two-point survey course is designed to provide students with an overview of the field of assistive technology. Field trips, readings, and guest speakers will provide students with an understanding of current research and development as well as processes used in determining appropriate technologies. Weekly assignments and a final research project.
Networked Media (IMNY-UT 223)
“The network is a fundamental medium for interactivity. It makes possible our interaction with machines, data, and, most importantly, other people. Though the base interaction it supports is simple, a client sends a request to a server, which replies; an incredible variety of systems can be and have been built on top of it. An equally impressive body of media theory has also arisen around its use. This hybrid theory and technology course will be 50% project driven technical work and 50% theory and discussion. The technical work will utilize JavaScript as both a client and server side programming language to build creative systems on the web. Technical topics will include server and client web frameworks, such as Express, HTML, CSS, templating, and databases. The theory portion of the course will include reading and discussion of past and current media theory texts that relate to the networks of today. **** it is HIGHLY recommended you take Front End Web Development (or have equivalent front end web development experience) to get the most out of this course. We will be going over fundamentals of HTML/CSS but it would be useful to have prior knowledge ***”Prerequisite: Creative Computing or equivalent programming experience.
Music and Gameplay (GAMES-UT 213)
Music and Gameplay is an intensive course concerned with digital games in which the gameplay is fundamentally influenced by, or oriented around a musical system. In this course, students will engage with music games in a variety of ways: through critical play, design practice, and hands-on development. This multifaceted approach will foster an understanding of how interactive game mechanics can be linked to music expression. Throughout the course, we’ll be drawing inspiration from a variety of music games across 3 major categories:
Let’s Play: Video Games on Video (GAMES-UT 413)
This course focuses on the culture and performance of video game streaming on popular video networks like YouTube or Twitch. Students will analyze certain streamers’ videos and read ethnographic research / case studies on streaming communities, in preparation for running their own schedule of weekly game streams. Altogether, this class is intended as an introduction to performing game streams and video-based game criticism, as well as an acknowledgement that academic games programs have a public obligation to critically engage with streaming culture — to promote a more respectful and more inclusive community discourse around video games.
Intro to 3D Game Animation (GAMES-UT 207)
Intro to Game Animation builds a foundation for animating in interactive media. From a basic overview to a deep dive into the animation process, this course will teach students how to craft a performance to create unique characters and tell a story. Students will be taught to look through the eyes of an animator, investigating how successful games utilize animation principles, and how these principles and techniques functionally serve overall game design. This class encourages students learn through practical experience, teaching familiarity with the animation principles in a 3D environment. This class is beneficial for an artist seeking to be an animator. This class will also benefit developers and designers by providing them a better understanding of the importance of animation and how it fits into the game development pipeline, providing a comprehensive understanding of the game industry as a whole.
Level Design Studio (GAMES-UT 162)
This course focuses on the theory and practice of level design for 3D video games. Students will develop fluency in conveying experience design goals and building 3D spaces, gaining a practical understanding of architecture, lighting, and CG texturing for digital spaces — as well as a more abstract awareness of architectural theory — culminating in a long-term hands-on level design project.
Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design (GAMES-UT 154)
Roleplaying games represent one of the most important design spaces in modern gaming. Beginning in the early 70s, these games quickly took root and influenced games far beyond their own sphere. Mechanisms like levels, classes and hit points have been adopted in a far-reaching swath of board, card, digital and mobile games. But despite their influence, the design of RPGs is largely unexamined. This class walks students through the design process from concept, to testing, to writing and production. At the same time, students engage in meaningful play with historically significant games. From week to week the students experiment with and design systems for roleplaying games with the ultimate goal of designing a complete game as part of a team.
Physics Game Studio (GAMES-UT 128)
Physics Games Studio is an advanced digital development elective combining building literacy of a genre of games and teaching the craft necessary to make an entry in that genre. It combines necessary technical skills students will have learned in their prerequisites with a literacy component like that of an arts history course, and through the technical prerequisites students will be able to analyze and critique this cross section of games, and then immediately turn the development of a critical eye toward the creation of their own work. Literacy is particularly lacking in the games industry since technology becomes obsolete at such a quick clip, a course like Physics Games Studio aims to tie directly this connection of literacy with the artistic practice of students as they finish up their degrees. This 7-week, 2-credit course which meets twice a week (once for class, once for lab) also signals a shift in the curriculum planning of the Game Center as we aim to offer a rotating selection of courses that focus on very specific literacies and skills, following the success of XR Studio: Designing Games for Headsets last semester.”
Intermediate Programming for Games (GAMES-UT 181)
What does it mean to think in code? How do you decide which features are worth the engineering cost? How do you write systems other people can understand, change, and combine with their own work? What is “architecture” for, if not communication? Intermediate Programming for Games is a hands-on studio class about programming as a way of thinking and communication as the skill that makes that thinking useful. You will build several projects in C# (primarily with Monogame, including a Unity port of a service- and event-bus-based architecture) that force you to design clear boundaries, readable public APIs, and modular systems that survive changing requirements. The work is practical, but the goal is not “more syntax.” The goal is to get better at deciding what to build, explaining how your code works to others, and structuring projects so collaboration is possible. We will treat design patterns, dependency management, and content pipelines as tools for thinking and talking.
Procedural Generation for Games (GAMES-UT 126)
“Procedural generation” describes the broad category of techniques by which elements of digital games that have traditionally been designed by hand (e.g. levels, characters, puzzles, and narrative) can be designed by automated processes. In recent years, these techniques have been a major topic of interest for computer science research as well as a core design component of many commercially successful games. The course teaches students to understand and implement these techniques and explore how to best combine procedural generation techniques with good design practice to produce interesting and novel experiences (rather than just using procedural generation techniques for technical curiosity). Emphasis is also placed on how procedural generation can uniquely harness the affordances of computers for designing games. The course is fundamentally practical. While students will study existing games and techniques, they will also produce games of their own across the three assignments.
Traditional Card Game Literacy and Design (GAMES-UT 407)
The traditional deck of cards is a device of unparalleled convenience, accessibility, and flexibility. As pocketable as a harmonica yet possessing the spectrum of a piano, this humblest of gaming platforms supports an amazing variety of games: historical classics, 20th century classics, and games by modern game designers, ranging from children’s games to the most intense mental contests, along with everything in between. Every game designer should be conversant with the basic history of playing cards, possessed of a wide selection of games that can be played with a standard deck, and comfortable with using it as a design tool that often cuts straight to the heart of a game mechanic.
Modern Tabletop Games Literacy (GAMES-UT 404)
Modern Tabletop Games are undergoing a renaissance, with designers building upon each other’s innovations at a bewildering rate. The cornucopia of concepts in modern boardgaming can be daunting to a newcomer, yet any digital game designer is well advised to familiarize themselves with this parallel world, both to expand their “bag of tricks” and their notion of what a game can be. This class aims to familiarize students with a wide variety of “gateway games”: relatively straightforward exemplars that will give the student a solid foothold when further exploring their respective genre in our extensive library of boardgames. While doing so, we will be discussing related short readings in Characteristics of Games, in order to give the design strategies being engaged a broader context.
Intro to Game Development (GAMES-UT 120)
Introduction to Game Development is a practical course that introduces students to the methods, tools and principles used in developing digital games. Over the course of the semester, students work alone to create a two digital prototypes or ‘sketches’, before building on them to produce a final polished game, using the lessons learned in the earlier prototypes. This is a hands-on, primarily lab-based course, and so the focus is on learning by doing rather than on reading and discussion.
Intermediate Game Design (GAMES-UT 151)
Intermediate Game Design is a hands-on studio class where we will be creating several game projects. The main approach we take is learning by doing, where we engage with ideas and each other through the act of making. While we will be discussing all kinds of games, most of the actual design work will be in the analog world – card and board games, social and physical games, and making presentations and documents. The class addresses many core concepts relevant to any kind of creative production, including prototyping, playtesting, and iterating; formal systems thinking; considering games as cultural and social phenomena; and how to communicate and document ideas.
Game Design: Professional Practice (GAMES-UT 152)
Advanced Game Design focuses on the practical skills that working game designers need to get a job – and what they do at a company once they are there. Over the course of the semester, students work on two full project proposals – each proposal including design documentation, production and schedule planning, and a prototype specification. In addition, students take a handful of “game design tests” – based on actual game industry tests that are part of the hiring process. Along the way, we visit a few NYC-based game companies, as well discuss issues relevant to working game designers today. The goal of the course is to work on our communication, design, and planning skills, and get a sense for what it means to be a working game designer. Required: Intermediate Game Design.
Intermediate Game Development (GAMES-UT 121)
This course reflects the various skills and disciplines that are brought together in modern game development: game design, programming, asset creation, and critical analysis. Classroom lectures and lab time bring these different educational vectors together into a coherent whole; the workshop is organized around a single, long-term, hands-on, game creation project. At the completion of this course, the student is able to: 1) Describe typical work practice in game development. 2) Demonstrate competency through actual implementation of code and assets. 3) Work with a game engine, and understand the basics of how to build a game in the engine.
Art and Social Change (OART-UT 1018)
This course challenges us to foster a tactile understanding of the relationship between art and social change. How do artists address social issues? Can art transform lives? How can art serve as a force for encouraging ethical dialogue and action within the public sphere? How do we make our ideas and revelations actually matter within our collective place and space? To better facilitate our understanding of this relationship, and in an effort to get inside these key questions and others, this course will unfold in two parts. Part I (Conversations on Art and Social Change) will be run as an interactive seminar in which we will explore how the desire to change the world has led some artists to align themselves with wider social movements. Through lectures, discussions and presentations, we will set about to engage ourselves with the work of contemporary artists who have addressed issues related to the environment, racial and cultural identity, human rights, healthcare, and social justice. We will assume that understanding the work of others is necessary if we are to appreciate the potentiality of our own impact on the world. Part II of this course (A Collective Gesture Toward) will entail challenging ourselves to participate more fully in our immediate surroundings vis-à-vis the development and implementation of a work (or works) of art.