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Game Design and Development BS

RIT is one of the top 10 universities for students looking to land their dream job as a game designer, according to new international rankings from The Princeton Review.

RIT has been recognized as one of the top game design universities in the nation. RIT was named No. 6 on the Animation Career Review list of Top 50 Game Design Schools and Colleges in the U.S. and No. 2 in New York state.

Chaos is the only constant in "That Damn Goat," a party, "anti-Covid" video game made by around 60 RIT faculty, students and staff. The project was led by School of Film and Animation faculty Brian Larson (creative director) and Jesse O'Brien (art director).

RIT has one of the largest and best collegiate esports programs in the nation. With around 250 players and more than 2,300 community members, RIT Esports is bigger than many college athletics programs.

RIT is partnering with Synapse Virtual Production on an in-person immersion in Los Angeles next month that will provide creatives, technologists, and classically trained filmmakers with the latest training in experiential elements for virtual production.

Jake Adams, a lecturer in RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media, mixes his backgrounds in fine arts and interactive media to create digital holographic comics, or holocomics. Using a specialized Lightfield holographic display from the company Looking Glass, the comic books become 3D holograms with sound, animation, and interactivity.

“Developing strengths in [worldbuilding] can help many types of professionals become better at what they do. Clearly, game designers, animators, and creative storytellers can benefit, but engineers, technologists, scientists, sociologists, and health care innovators, for example, can also because the process of envisioning and creating a world and all of its interactions can help test out ideas and inform solutions,” said Associate Professor (English) Trent Hergenrader, Ph.D., who will lead the new Center for Worldbuilding and Storytelling.

RIT is ranked 98th as a “National University” in the 2024 edition of U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges, jumping seven spots from last year. This list of 443 includes the nation’s best research universities that also offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master’s and doctoral programs, and emphasize faculty research or award professional practice doctorates.

Local game enthusiasts are invited to descend on the campus of RIT for the seventh annual ROC Game Fest, a daylong event committed to the best the games community has to offer.

Nearly one in six of the more than 3,300 first-year and transfer undergraduates this year received a Performing Arts Scholarship from RIT. That brings the total number of scholars to more than 1,800 in the five years since the program began. The program encourages high school students involved in performing arts to continue their passions at RIT.

RIT once again made The Princeton Review Best Colleges list. Recognized for its value and career options for its students, the Best 389 Colleges 2024 edition, newly published this month, ranks the university in two Top 50 categories—No. 3 in the undergraduate game design programs and No. 44 in Green Colleges.

Jake Adams, lecturer of interactive games and media, is interviewed by 80 Level about the production process of his digital holographic comics. Adams is an interactive visual artist and founder of Valholo, a VR and digital holographic studio.