Master of Interactive Technology (MIT) in Digital Game Development

We merge solid academics with practical, real-world products. Smu guildhall's highly ranked graduate-level game development education equips the next generation of game creators with the technical skills and instincts required to drive the evolution of gaming. 

Our more than 100 graduate game development courses are modeled after the style and pace of the industry and taught by a faculty of industry veterans.

Choose your game development track

• SMU Guildhall utilizes a cohort model, in which each admitted cycle of students will move together through the program in lockstep, with each course being a pre-requisite for the next in the sequence.

Students will:

• Smu guildhall specializations grey artsmu guildhall specializations grey productionsmu guildhall specializations grey programmingsmu guildhall specializations grey design

Choose a specialization area of study:

• Art Creation
• Level Design
• Production (only open to Master's track students)
• Software Development (Programming)

Choose a program track:

• Master of Interactive Technology (MIT) in Digital Game Development 
• (Or) Professional Certificate in Digital Game Development
• Both are full-time, two-year programs that consist of a specified, focused course sequence aligned with your specialization—including majors, minors, directed focus studies, special topics courses, and Team Game Production courses. The primary difference is that the MIT degree will also include a Master’s thesis artifact research study.

Teamwork and specialized learning are at the heart of our curriculum

• Our combined lectures, labs, and studios prepare students for the video game industry with studies in game development, industry trends, leadership, teamwork, professional development, and ethics.
• The courses we offer combine both independent work and team-centric collaborative work. Students develop their skills and instincts in specialization-specific classes while completing independent work and research to inform Master’s theses and Directed Focus Studies, and then come together to apply their specialized skills to make games together. 

Each student takes the following courses:

• 4 Cross-disciplinary Team Game Production courses
• 1 Professional development course
• Specialization-specific course sequence (9 courses for Production, and 11 courses for Art, Level Design, and Software Development)
• 1 Ethics course
• 4 Courses that focus on research to advance each of the specialization specific fields in game development (Master's students only)  

Why SMU Guildhall?

Highly Ranked & Accredited

• Our academic programs have been consistently annually ranked amongst the world's best graduate programs for game development.
• Southern Methodist University is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award Baccalaureate, Master's, Professional, and Doctoral degrees. Southern Methodist University is also an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD).

Industry Pioneers

• We were one of the first programs in the United States to be developed for game development education. We were created at the specific request of gaming industry leaders to shape the games industry, and our programs and class offerings have been built around that mission by employing world-class educators and modeling present-day industry methods in our courses.  
• To this day, we still remain the only masters game design program to offer all four of the major specializations in the game industry.