MSc Serious Games and Virtual Reality

The Glasgow School of Art

Programme Overview

The MSc provides students with the skills to become a key part of this explosive growth, and potential to become key innovators in this exciting and rapidly developing area. The MSc offers students with prior programming/scripting experience the transferable skills to design, develop and analyse games and simulations for a range of application areas and to conduct interdisciplinary research in the serious applications of games technology, particularly in healthcare, education and training.

As Virtual Reality and interaction technologies approach mainstream adoption, new opportunities for the application of immersive games technologies in engineering, medicine and in the home are putting games at the forefront of innovation worldwide.

At the School of Simulation and Visualisation we already have years of experience working on a wide range of serious games based projects for industrial, medical, heritage and education clients, building on our research and our expertise in 3D modeling and animation, motion capture technology and software development. We are pleased to be able to share our experience and expertise with this MSc.

Digital games are firmly established as one of the most significant sectors of the entertainment and creative industries, and the technology behind today's games is being implemented in many 5 other industries beyond entertainment. Serious games are games with purpose beyond just providing entertainment. Examples include, but are not limited to, edutainment and training, health games, and games for policy and social change. The serious games field is already a significant one and still has huge potential for growth, particularly in the realm of education. Virtual Reality is likewise experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years, with a slew of new devices coming to market since 2013 (when the Oculus Rift DK1 was released). Virtual Reality is finding a new audience in the entertainment field, as well as with industrial and education sectors due to the rich immersion possible. Modern mobile phones and specialist devices have also led to an explosion in Augmented Reality devices and applications, which along with VR have created a rich ecology of ‘Extended Reality’ or XR applications. The academic sector is now responding to the growing global demand for Masters programmes in this field. Based on our expertise in 3D modelling and animation, motion capture technology, research activities of key members of academic staff in serious games, and the market demand of serious games, we developed the Serious Games and Virtual Reality pathway for the MSc Visualisation programme. This was one of the first MSc programmes in the UK to specialise in Virtual Reality

Students will also achieve PgCert and PgDip exit awards during this course.