{"id":369,"date":"2025-05-27T15:29:26","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T19:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/data-science-program\/?p=369"},"modified":"2025-06-05T13:47:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T17:47:48","slug":"game-design-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/data-science\/game-design-track\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Design Track"},"content":{"rendered":"
Professor Elliot Epstein<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
GAME 025 – Game Design Fundamentals<\/summary>\n

This course serves to introduce the various aspects of game design for those intending to work as part of management, production, and\/or design teams. The student will begin with an analysis of gaming, with consideration of various platforms, game genres, playability, objectives, rule dynamics, and overall quality. Further, the student will learn the elements of production including game conceptualization, story development, and interface, character, and soundtrack, and level design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Course Designation\/Attribute:<\/strong> AP<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Spring<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GAME 190 – Game Programming with Data Structures<\/summary>\n

This course focuses on the subject of game programming using a third party 3D game engine to provide a uniform integration for audio, 3D visuals, and device input. Students will learn various data types, structures, and collections as well as simple analysis of algorithms while developing with various game libraries to be implemented in multi-platform engines such as Unity and Unreal to produce platform independent code. Students will also have the opportunity to interact with the online game programming community to further develop their skills.

Prerequisites:<\/strong> GCPT 020 – Computer Programming Practices for Games<\/a>\u00a0

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GAME 255 – Game Studio<\/summary>\n

This course is to be taken by Game students enrolled in a Game Studio: Art, Audio, Design, Production or Programming section. The course is centered on an instructor guided project which may include serious games, simulations, artistic installations, entertainment, or new technological exploration. The course will provide a hands-on development environment for a formal interactive title to be released. Students will gain experience working as part of a game studio team with various departments, leads, development infrastructure, and real-world demands. Students are required to take this course multiple times during the course of their degree program. May be repeatable for credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prerequisites:<\/strong>GAME 025 – Game Design Fundamentals<\/a> or GAME 030 – Examining Play<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall & Spring<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GAME 260 – Serious Game Project<\/summary>\n

This course is the capstone course for the Context component of the interactive media curriculum and is thematically connected with the experience component. Students are required to link their humanities and social science work with their interactive media studies. Teams of students work on game projects that are designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The \u201cserious\u201d adjective generally refers to applications that have been designed for use by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, and politics. These projects draw heavily on the outcomes students have mastered as a result of their general education courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prerequisites:<\/strong> Two semesters of GAME 255 – Game Studio<\/a> or Permission of the Instructor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall & Spring<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GAME 265 – Artificial Intelligence for Games<\/summary>\n

This course provides an overview of the field of artificial intelligence with special attention to uses in the electronic gaming field. Students will develop logic grids for intelligent agents, discuss how learning and communication are integral elements of artificial intelligence. Philosophical discussion of such concepts as intelligence, cognition, learning, and the Turing test will be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prerequisites: <\/strong>GCPT 020 – Computer Programming Practices for Games<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0CSCI 121 – Data Structures<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GAME 270 – Game Analytics<\/summary>\n

The course will discuss optimization of 3 phases of game design development and production – marketing (how do we acquire the users?), retention (how do we keep and convert users to players?) and monetization (modeling the game changes to get the optimal monetization). The course will also discuss the Stochastic approach, introduce students to relational databases, statistical software and other analytical tools used in Game Analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prerequisites: <\/strong>GAME 025<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

GCPT 220 – Data Analytics and Modeling in Games<\/summary>\n

This course introduces students to strategies and methodologies to design, implement, and utilize in-game data collection points for analytics, statistics, and research data gathering. We discuss data modeling, research data collection, and data collection-design in relation to interactive media specifically, where understanding the goals of the final game analysis informs the development of the in-game collection as well as the selection and evaluation of the resulting datasets. Students will investigate and evaluate game title case studies, create datasets, design game variable suites based on research and model needs, while also learning how to implement data collection in game software and analyze collected data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prerequisites: <\/strong>GAME 255 – Game Studio<\/a>\u00a0or GAME 010 – History of Game Development<\/a>\u00a0or CSCI 121 – Data Structures<\/a>\u00a0or DSCI 125 – Introduction to Data Science<\/a>\u00a0or Permission of the Instructor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anticipated Terms Offered:<\/strong> Fall and Spring<\/p>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how to use data analysis to improve game mechanics, user experience, and overall game design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-major-elective-tracks"],"yoast_head":"\nGame Design Track | Data Science | Clark University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/data-science\/game-design-track\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Game Design Track\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learn 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