Computer Games Development with Foundation

University of Westminster, London

Our degree courses with foundation year offer the opportunity to prepare you for advanced study before you progress onto a full honours degree at the University of Westminster. Whether you do not feel ready for degree-level study, don’t have the right qualifications, want to change your subject specialism or return to study after an absence from education, we aim to encourage a broad range of students to undertake our Foundation year in order to progress onto their full honours degree with us.

The foundation year is designed to give you the opportunity to explore new ideas, opening up new perspectives on the key debates within your chosen field. During the foundation year you will explore a range of creative disciplines and get a chance to develop in your chosen field, benefiting from workshops in our high end facilities and working with leading academics who will encourage you to become a confident and creative thinker. Core modules accelerate your academic and professional development and you will also take modules within your chosen field, giving you the chance to develop a cross-disciplinary perspective on your course.

On successful completion of the foundation year, you will be able to move on to study for the Computer Games Development BSc Honours over a further three years study.

Our Computer Games Development course combines technology and creativity in a multidisciplinary way. The games industry is an expanding and challenging sector with continually evolving ideas and cutting-edge technologies. It requires practitioners to exercise more flexibility in software specifications and functionality, through adapting their approaches to design and management while keeping abreast of broad changes to technology.

This course covers all major technical aspects of the games development process, from design to production. It aims to prepare you for a career in software development with a particular emphasis on computer games. The course provides you with a solid understanding of game technologies, including programming, applied maths, computer graphics and game engines. You'll develop a broad range of knowledge and skills including mobile and web application development, 3D modelling and animation, and human-computer interaction. To enhance student employability, the course offers a number of talks from the creative industry and will support your participation in prestige game competitions and digital fairs, as well as industrial placements and internships.

The primary language you'll learn is C++, but you'll also have the opportunity to engage with other languages and software, such as C#, Python (Machine Learning, Algorithms), JavaScript and Swift. For character development we use Adobe Maya, Photoshop, 3DS Max and 3D Coat.
Career development
On graduating, you will have a maths/games-orientated programming degree, which is highly sought after by the computer games industry.

The course was created in response to the acute shortage of game programmers and designers within the industry and is designed to meet the industry requirements outlined by industrial panels such as TIGA and Skillset.

There are frequent opportunities for students to gain work experience on the course, which in the past have included games testing opportunities at local studios, such as Bossa and King, summer internships at companies such as Natural Motion, and placements in a range of software engineering and mobile companies that include:

Bossa Studio
Microsoft
Natural Motion
Sega
Sumo Digital
Job roles
The course prepares you for roles in a range of sectors including:

Game developer, designer and tester
Mobile app developer
Multimodal Interactive Applications (VR, AR, XR)
QA consultant
Software developer (including artificial intelligence gaming, mobile, algorithm