
The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies
Queens Campus
- Home
- Academics
- Majors and Programs of Study
- Game Development and Emerging Media
Overview
The Game Development and Emerging Media program prepares you to enter the video game development field—a billion-dollar industry rich with robust career opportunities in edutainment, simulation, and visualization.
Apply Connect With Admissions
Through this innovative, practice-based curriculum, you master the creative workflows and advanced technologies that enable you to craft compelling playable media. By pushing the boundaries of storytelling genres, weaving unique interactive experiences, and engaging audiences through play, students who embark on this production track become inventive media-makers and storytellers.
In keeping with the University’s Vincentian mission, you explore the ethical considerations of gameplay development. When can simulated experiences promote healthy attitudes and empathy? How can the bourgeoning game developer cultivate a socially responsible creative practice to promote social change, one person at a time?
The Game Development and Emerging Media program is uniquely interdisciplinary; you will graduate with unmatched experience and a highly marketable résumé and portfolio. Rooted in collaborative practice, the major enables the development of immersive and novel interactive experiences across disciplinary lines, in partnership with faculty and students across the University campus.
For example, students in Game Development team with students majoring in pharmacology to create a serious game to model patient interventions. Students in Game Development collaborate with those majoring in hospitality to author simulations that explore cognitive empathy in accessible tourism. In other instances, students develop immersive simulations for a criminal justice course in police tactical decision-making; interactive data visualizations in a public relations course in crisis communications; virtual environments that allow premedical students to practice clinical skills; or author interactive forms of expanded cinema and volumetric filmmaking.
Instrumental to the success of the young developer’s pursuit to author engrossing games and content for novel platforms is the University’s array of newly minted, state-of-the-art facilities. The Media Art and Design Lab, the Technology Commons, the Advanced Graphics Lab, and the Innovation Lab house the latest technologies, providing the incubation space to spark creative and entrepreneurial thinking. Custom-built workstations enable you to rehearse key roles—the 3D modeler, the animator, the programmer, the sound artist, the experience designer, and more—so that you are primed to succeed from day one.
While many choose to pursue these well-established roles, our nimble, adaptive graduates are poised to pursue the emerging professional roles that fuse the game, television, and film industries. Exciting new ventures in visualization, performance capture, and hybrid virtual production show remarkable promise in combining game engine technology and cinematic production, as game development’s multibillion dollar growth trend wildly outpaces the television and film industries.
Equipped with best-of-breed technologies, our students thrive with ample opportunity to develop exceptional technical proficiency in manifesting imagined, immersive worlds, well positioned to become the highly sought game makers and future thought leaders of emerging media.
Admission and Program Information
For more information about admission to this and other acclaimed undergraduate programs at St. John’s University, please visit Undergraduate Admission online. Or contact us directly at the campus of your choice:
Admission Office - Queens Campus
718-990-2000
[email protected]
Admission Office - Staten Island campus
718-390-4500
[email protected]
While a portfolio is not required, we seek students whose academic and extracurricular pursuits demonstrate creative and technical potential and dedication.
- To educate future designers, developers, and thought leaders in immersive and playable media
- To catalyze interdisciplinary and collaborative research that address global challenges through games
The program requires you to acquire the following core competencies with abilities to
- Code for games and emerging media
- Write narratives and scripts that consider reader agency and leverage expressive code
- Produce digital assets for interactive experiences
- Identify the social, political, historic, economic impact of emerging media and games
- Ethically design interactive and play experiences.
- Alla Baeva, MFA, Mass Communication, Collins College of Professional Studies
- John DiMarco Jr., Ph.D., Professor, Mass Communication, Collins College of Professional Studies
- Edrex Fontanilla, M.F.A., Assistant Professor, Mass Communication, Collins College of Professional Studies
- David P. Hedlund, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Sport Management, Collins College of Professional Studies
- Mark D. Juszczak, Ed.D., Assistant Professor, Mass Communication, Collins College of Professional Studies
- Nikhil Yadav, Ph.D., Assistant Professor; Computer Science, Mathematics, and Science; Collins College of Professional Studies
- Jin Zhi, D.Des., Assistant Professor, Mass Communication, Collins College of Professional Studies
Department Contact

Edrex Fontanilla, M.F.A
Program CoordinatorEdrex Fontanilla
[email protected]
Courses
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE, GAME DEVELOPMENT AND EMERGING MEDIA MAJOR: 120 CREDITS
DNY | 1000C | Discover New York | 3 |
FYW | 1000C | English Composition | 3 |
ENG | 1100C | Literature in a Global Context | 3 |
HIS | 1000C | Emergence of a Global Society | 3 |
Language |
| Modern Foreign Language Requirement | 6 |
PHI | 1000C | Philosophy of the Human Person | 3 |
PHI | 1024 | Media Ethics | 3 |
PHI | 3000C | Metaphysics | 3 |
SCI | 1000C | Scientific Inquiry | 3 |
SPE | 1000C | Public Speaking | 3 |
THE | 1000C | Perspectives on Christianity | 3 |
THE | 1040 series | Christian Responsibilities | 3 |
THE |
| Choice of any THE elective. | 3 |
|
Math |
| Any MTH elective | 3 |
Social Science |
| Any ANT, ECO, GOV, HIS, PSC, PSY, or SOC elective | 3 |
Additional Liberal Arts
|
| Choice of any Liberal Arts course selected under the guidance of an advisor. | 6 |
Total Liberal Arts Credits = 54 Credits*
*Please note that 6 credits -- COM1001 and COM2500 – count towards the Liberal Arts requirement. With COM1001 and COM2500, the proposed Bachelor of Science degree meets the Liberal Arts 60-credit minimum required by New York State.
21 Required Credits include the following:
COM | 1001 | Introduction to Mass Communication | 3* |
COM | 2500 | Visual Aesthetics | 3* |
CUS | 1100 | Introduction to Game Programming | 3 |
VGD | 1001 | Introduction to Video Games and Gaming Industry | 3 |
VGD | 1002 | Principles of Game Design | 3 |
VGD | 4001 | Capstone I | 3 |
VGD | 4002 | Capstone II | 3 |
* count towards the Liberal Arts requirement.
Distributional Credits include the following:
3 CREDITS in Writing (chosen by the student from these two courses)
VGD | 2300 | Storytelling and Character Development in VideoGames | 3 |
-or-
VGD | 3301 | Interactive Storytelling | 3 |
3 CREDITS in Art (chosen by the student from these two courses)
TVF | 2207 | Motion Graphics | 3 |
-or-
ART | 1135 | Digital Media | 3 |
24 Elective Major Area Credits, (8 courses chosen by the student from the following):
CUS | 1115 | Computer Programming Fundamentals I | 3 |
CUS | 1116 | Computer Programming Fundamentals II | 3 |
CUS | 1126 | Data Structures | 3 |
CUS | 1179 | Data Mining | 3 |
TVF | 2211 | 3D CGI | 3 |
TVF | 3207 | Film Compositing | 3 |
TVF | 3211 | 3D Animation | 3 |
ART | 1105 | Graphic Design I | 3 |
ART | 1115 | Graphic Design II | 3 |
ART | 2125 | Typography | 3 |
DMD | 1001 | Principles of Digital Media and Design | 3 |
VGD | 2600 | Critical Issues in Video Gaming | 3 |
VGD | 3202 | Character Design for Video Games | 3 |
VGD | 3203 | Environment Design for Video Games | 3 |
VGD | 3204 | Game Engines | 3 |
VGD | 3501 | Physical Computing and Emerging Media | 3 |
VGD |
| Choice of any VGD elective | 3 |
TOTAL, Major Area Credits = 51 CREDITS