Pretty soon you'll be able to get a BA in game design at NYU

New York University announced plans last week to start offering bachelor's degrees in game design, starting in January 2015. The new program seems like a notable milestone for NYU's game design education initiative. The university founded its NYU Game Center in 2008 with a mandate to foster game design education, and the eventual goal of offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 2012 it began offering master's degrees in game design, and earlier this year it launched an incubator program to help student developers bring their games to market. Now it's launching its undergraduate program, which is expected to accept 20 students in January 2015 and 20 more in the following fall. The curriculum is expected to draw from both NYU's Game Center and its Polytechnic School of Engineering in order to approach game design from both a cultural and practical perspective. NYU Game Center director Frank Lantz will oversee the program alongside six faculty members, including developers like Clara Fernandez-Vara (The Last Symphony) and Bennett Foddy (QWOP), and the Center hopes to bring on eight more professors of game design in the next four years. When the program launches, NYU will become one more of the many North American universities that now offer undergraduate degrees in game design -- including traditional institutions like USC and MIT as well as newer schools like DigiPen. Prospective developers who are interested in enrolling can find more information on the NYU Game Center website.