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Salary and Career Info

Game Design and Development BS

Nationally ranked as a top school for video game design by The Princeton Review, you'll be prepared for a dynamic career within the professional games industry or a related field such as simulation, edutainment, or visualization.

Program skills

By the end of the 2nd year, students will have worked individually and collaboratively in C#, Unity, and C++, developing a portfolio of games and prototypes. Students continue in their 3rd and 4th years using and building game engines using a variety of tools and programming languages. Courses cover game physics, tools development, graphics APIs, software practices, mobile development, advanced systems concepts, console development, production, and other specialties that students can choose.

Program facilities equipment

Students can access facilities found throughout the College of Computing and the MAGIC building. These labs are equipped with a variety hardware from Alienware® to ensure a mix of several processor types, hardware configurations, the Adobe® and Autodesk® production suites, the Android Studio IDE, MacOS computer hardware, the Xcode IDE, graphics boards from competing vendors in a true development and testing environment, and other industry standard development tools.

Program job titles

Associate Front End Engineer; Associate Game Designer; Associate UI Engineer; Developer; Engineer Programmer; Game Designer; Game Developer; Junior Software Engineer; Level Designer; Mobile Developer; Programmer; Quality Assurance Engineer; Software Developer; Software Development Engineer; Software Engineer; Tech Artist; UI/UX Designer; Web Developer

Select program hiring partners

Activision/Blizzard; Amazon; American Greetings; Carrier; CHESS Health; Collins Aerospace; Electronic Arts; Epic Games; IBM; iD Tech; JPMorgan Chase & Co; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; MITRE Corporation; Northrup Grumman; Oxide Games; Peapod Digital Labs; PUBG Corporation; RIT MAGIC Spell Studios; Sapient Nitro; Schell Games; Twitch; Unity Technologies; Wayfair; WB Games; Workinman; Zenimax Online Studios

85.2%

Outcome Rates for Game Design and Development BS

Total percentage of graduates who have entered the workforce, enrolled in full-time graduate study, or are pursuing alternative plans (military service, volunteering, etc.).

72.40%

Knowledge Rate

Total percentage of graduates for whom RIT has verifiable data, compared to national average knowledge rate of 41% per NACE.
Outcome % of Students
Employed 81.50%
Full-time Graduate Study 3.70%
Alternative Plans 0%
Outcome % of Students
Employed 81.50%
Full-time Graduate Study 3.70%
Alternative Plans 0%

Experiential Learning

Cooperative Education

What’s different about an RIT education? It’s the career experience you gain by completing cooperative education and internships with top companies in every single industry. You’ll earn more than a degree. You’ll gain real-world career experience that sets you apart. It’s exposure–early and often–to a variety of professional work environments, career paths, and industries.

Co-ops and internships take your knowledge and turn it into know-how. Your computing co-ops will provide hands-on experience that enables you to apply your computing knowledge in professional settings while you make valuable connections between classwork and real-world applications.

Students in the game design degree are required to complete two blocks of cooperative education experience.

Creative Industry Day

RIT’s Office of Career Services and Cooperative Education hosts Creative Industry Day, which connects students majoring in art, design, film and animation, photography, and select computing majors with companies, organizations, creative agencies, design firms, and more. You’ll be able to network with company representatives and interview directly for open co-op and permanent employment positions.