Master of Arts in Games

at Norwich University of the Arts United Kingdom

Take your practice to new heights, refine your technical skills and explore the cultural and historical context of your work on our Creative Skillset accredited MA Moving Image and Sound Masters degree course.

Challenge your audio-visual practice and strive for originality through experimentation with concepts, issues and materials relating to moving image and/or sound design.

Collaborate

As a postgraduate student at NUA you’ll join a community of practitioners and researchers with diverse specialisms, giving you valuable opportunities to work collaboratively as well as individually.

Through intensive study and comprehensive technical workshops, you’ll develop the practical and conceptual skills required to create original and innovative work to exacting professional standards.

Specialise

Depending on your specialism, you’ll have the chance to engage with a wide range of audio-visual methods. These include: 2D Digital; CGI and stop motion animation film and moving image production; motion graphics; scripting and narrative; pre-production and post-production skills and techniques; sound design.

However you choose to shape your study, you’ll graduate with a deeper understanding of your own practise and a broader appreciation of how to apply your skillset in a variety of professional settings.

Taking Year 0 at the beginning of your degree course will get your studies at Norwich University of the Arts off to a flying start. The extra year of study will help you explore creative ideas and begin to develop the practical skills, research techniques and ways of thinking that are essential to undergraduate success.

You will explore the mechanics of playful interaction on our BSc (Hons) Games Development degree as you develop skills in prototyping and user testing.

You are a games designer, developer, or coder who wants to learn the end-to-end process of making games and prepare for a successful career in a dynamic and rapidly-evolving industry.

You will work with different technologies and platforms, including console, web, mobile, PC, augmented and virtual reality.

How you think, make decisions, and develop ideas will evolve as you learn to code games that give users an exceptional experience. And you will be part of the NUA Games community, interacting and collaborating with your peers on our sister course, BA Games Art and Design.

Workshops, technical demonstrations and live briefs will help prepare you for a career in the games industry.

NUA Games is a member of the Sony PlayStation First Academic Partnership Programme, and was ranked as the UK’s best educational institution in 2017. The Rookies, a global panel of games industry experts, ranked NUA in the world’s top 50 in 2020.

Games development – your way

You will be exposed to a variety of industry-standard platforms and technologies – including virtual, augmented, mixed and extended reality – but will always focus on your own personal and professional interest.

Applying computer science, and knowledge of emerging technologies to the creation of prototypes, you’ll create different types of game for different audiences, based on evidence gathered through research, observation and practical experimentation.

You’ll evolve how you think, make decisions, and develop ideas, to ultimately code games that give users an exceptional experience.

Taking Year 0 at the beginning of your degree course will get your studies at Norwich University of the Arts off to a flying start. The extra year of study will help you explore creative ideas and begin to develop the practical skills, research techniques and ways of thinking that are essential to undergraduate success.

Our BA (Hons) Games Art and Design degree has an international reputation for producing graduates who excel in a constantly evolving industry. The Rookies ranked NUA in the global top 16 for Concept Art and Illustration and in the top 50 in its world rankings — thanks to the reputation of the Games course.

The course is a member of the Sony PlayStation First Academic Partnership Programme and is accredited by ScreenSkills and the games industry body TIGA, which also crowned NUA the best educational institution in 2017.

Connecting your passions and unique perspective to the world of professional photography is at the heart of our BA (Hons) Photography course, recognised by the Association of Photographers. You will develop your own approach at NUA – not a standard house style

You will learn how to apply your creative vision to a range of industry briefs, from fashion to advertising and editorial photography.

Whatever your aspirations, your work will be unmistakable as you emerge as a professional practitioner with a distinctive portfolio.

Thinking beyond the frame

We will encourage you to think about client needs and expectations.

We want to see you produce stand-out work that could wow creative teams in whatever industry drives your interest.

But it will always be your vision.

You’ll also be part of a community of photographers – collaborating with other students and taking part in peer review and cross-year critiques to give and receive feedback

Designed for the future

Studying at NUA will give you access to a wide range of industry-level photographic and lighting equipment.

You will have access to tools to produce imaginative and original images to the highest standards.

There will be opportunities to work at the cutting edge of digital photography; exploring the possibilities of moving image and computer-generated images (CGI).

Taking Year 0 at the beginning of your degree course will get your studies at Norwich University of the Arts off to a flying start. The extra year of study will help you explore creative ideas and begin to develop the practical skills, research techniques and ways of thinking that are essential to undergraduate success.

Our BA (Hons) Fine Art degree course encourages ‘thinking through making’ and you will explore the breadth of fine art with workshops in painting, print, sculpture, mixed media and video. You will use project spaces and external venues for performance, display and curation.

You will shape your own distinctive career path as an artist on our BA (Hons) course and join generations of graduates who have achieved national and international success.

Our graduates are renowned for their unique voice and vision, leading them to Turner Prize nomination and inclusion in the UK’s annual New Contemporaries exhibition.  

Taking Year 0 at the beginning of your degree course will get your studies at Norwich University of the Arts off to a flying start. The extra year of study will help you explore creative ideas and begin to develop the practical skills, research techniques and ways of thinking that are essential to undergraduate success.

Your creativity and professional craft, creative expression and problem-solving skills will grow at NUA as you explore interior design as a way of addressing human needs and social challenges.

Our BA (Hons) Interior Design degree will encourage you to consider how people react to spaces as you gain experience of designing for a range of interiors: from homes and housing projects to hotels and shops, restaurants and offices.

Professional and design skills

Working in our Interior Design studio and workshops, you will explore how scale, light, colour, materials, texture and their acoustics affect human reactions as you consider the social implications of design.

And with the support of our expert academics and technicians, you’ll master a variety of techniques and visualisation methods, including:

• Sketching by hand
• Industry-standard 3D digital platforms
• Collage
• Photography
• Model-making

As you grow your expertise in critical aspects of communication design you’ll have the chance to explore areas including graphic design, graphic communication, illustration, information design, interactive communication, multimedia and typography.

Refine your communication design skills
From moving image and sound to questions of brand management and publishing, you’ll stretch your skills and ambition as a postgraduate student at NUA. As you develop your own voice and practice through experimentation, you’ll also have the chance to critically examine key design and communication issues such as sustainability, new technology, new audiences and markets, inclusivity and ethics.

Our BSc (Hons) in User Experience Design is rooted in NUA’s traditional strength in graphic design, design thinking, and creative problem-solving.

The User Experience Design degree gives you the essential skills to become a successful UX designer – shaping how people engage with digital products and services.

Your learning will focus on applying user experience and digital design principles that are highly prized in today’s fast-changing design industry.

You will use industry-standard technologies and prototyping techniques to develop professional solutions for a range of contexts.

In each case, you will move from research to the creation of user journeys to the design of user experiences that work across multiple digital environments: from desktop to mobile.

Responding to one of the fasting growing sectors of the visual communications industry, this course will allow you to use design, problem solving, research and psychology to test and create better digital products and services.

You are curious about how design can influence human behaviour – guiding people’s actions and decisions.

You are eager to learn how to test your ideas and work through versions towards the most effective creative solution to whatever problem you’re trying to solve – whether you’re designing an app, website, or physical product.

You’ll learn research and analytical skills that will help you to understand how people react in the face of different design experiences online and in the physical world.

Combine creative flair and technical skill on the MA Games Masters degree course at the UK’s Best Educational Institution (2017 TIGA Games Industry Awards).

As a postgraduate student at NUA you’ll collaborate with likeminded peers and be guided by subject specialist staff. You’ll enjoy interdisciplinary sessions with students from across our range of MA courses as you work towards your ambition of a career in the games industry or wider creative sector.

Refine your industry-ready skillset

Ensuring you graduate ready to meet the demands of a rapidly-evolving industry, this course will accelerate the development of your games design skillset.

Alongside broader research into the social, technical, economic and cultural context in which games are produced, you’ll specialise in one of three areas, following a clearly-defined path of study in Concept Art (and Sequential Narrative), Asset Production or Indie Development.

Our new BA (Hons) Fashion Marketing and Business degree course will offer you an insight into the commercial fundamentals, marketing strategies and core brand development techniques that are used to run the fashion industry today.

You’ll create dynamic marketing campaigns, retail concepts, buying proposals and business plans that will allow you fully understand and operate within successful fashion businesses.

As you build your knowledge of fashion marketing, you will develop skills that are sought after by employers, including:

• Marketing and Promotional strategies
• International Fashion Branding
• Fashion Retail and Visual Merchandising
• Fashion Buying and Merchandising

And you will follow in the path of graduates from our sister course, Fashion Communication and Promotion, who are set-up for successful careers after work experience and internships at brands such as Vivienne Westwood, Jimmy Choo, Net A Porter and Adidas.