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Metropolitan State University (Home)

Game Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

College of Liberal Arts / Technical Communication and Interaction Design
Undergraduate major / Bachelor of Arts

About The Program

This major prepares students for a wide range of careers in professional writing and interaction design. It enables learners to write for professional and technical contexts and produce multimodal and intelligent content. In addition to completing a core curriculum, learners choose to specialize in one or more of these emphases: technical communication, science and medical writing, user experience design, and game design. 

Game Design Emphasis:
The Game Design emphasis helps students produce interactive and static writing artifacts that showcase their ability to write creatively, technically, and consistently across complicated technological environments. Using principles and strategies utilized in the video game industry, this concentration allows students to create innovative game worlds; write compelling storylines, characters, and mechanics; create and maintain design documentation; and work with a variety of different team members and in a variety of different roles in a production team. Students who choose this emphasis do not need any prior programming knowledge.

Other available emphases

Technical Communication Emphasis: 
The technical communication emphasis enables learners to write and produce multimodal and intelligent content for technical problem-solving. Learners write technical documentation and ensure that such documentation is usable, accessible, and compliant with regulations. 

Science and Medical Writing Emphasis:
The Science and Medical Writing emphasis enables learners to produce content for science and medical writing situations in research, government, technology, and other contexts. Learners apply rhetorical theory to create effective science and medical writing deliverables for a variety of audiences. They analyze how power and knowledge iterate within science and medical writing. 

User Experience Design Emphasis:
The user experience design emphasis enables learners to analyze, design, and evaluate the user experience of content. Learners use various methods and tools to analyze users and contexts and construct the user experience. 

Student outcomes

  1. Analyze the audience and context of rhetorical situations
  2. Use digital technologies to create effective technical and scientific communication artifacts
  3. Write and design interactive content that is engaging and rhetorically effective
  4. Create and edit for ethical, inclusive, and accessible content
  5. Evaluate communication artifacts for effectiveness, usability, accessibility, and compliance

Related programs

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your Game Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your Game Design emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Core Requirements (20 credits)

This class begins with students self-assessing their digital skills in several areas, including design for print and digital documents; web tools; visual tools; and project management tools. Students work with the instructor to create a learning contract with the goal of acquiring tools in a certain number of these areas. In order to acquire knowledge of these tools, students complete online tutorials. Only offered S/N.

Full course description for Digital Tools for Writing and Communication

Content strategy encompasses the creation, management, testing, and governance of content, whether that be a website, printed document, social media, or other forms of information. In this class students will gain a comprehensive understanding of content for contemporary information-intensive organizations as well as hands-on skills to create effective, user-friendly, and culturally sensitive content.

Full course description for Content Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in workplace writing and communication practices. This course offers a basic understanding of core concepts relevant to AI writing tools. Students will be prepared to use AI writing tools in responsible, ethical, and productive ways for technical and non-technical audiences. Students are introduced to generative AI tools and learn to design effective prompts to help with the writing process.

Full course description for Workplace Writing with Generative Artificial Intelligence

This course covers editing principles and techniques. Topics include how readers use and comprehend texts, the editor's role in the publication process, the writer/editor relationship, and editing for organization, format, style, grammar, punctuation, usage, consistency and accuracy. Students edit a variety of texts, including technical documents and newsletter articles in print and online.

Full course description for Editing

This course introduces students to the principles, processes, and techniques of front-end Web development. Students gain solid knowledge and practical skills in HTML, CSS, website genres, design patterns, Web writing, and usability. Students will analyze and build websites. Students must already possess basic satisfactory digital literacy, such as managing files and folders, and adding and removing programs.

Full course description for Writing and Designing for the Web I

Game Design concentration (18 credits)

This course is an introduction to the vast and interdisciplinary field of game studies and game design. Students in this course will explore how games can be art, math, story, identity, political systems, ethical systems and more. Topics covered may include the history of video and tabletop games; the current landscape of the video game industry; future projections for game industry; an introduction to Game and Narrative Design; toxicity in the games community; race, gender, and identity in games; game design schemas, and an intro to theories of interaction design. Students will demonstrate this knowledge through creating a paper prototype of a tabletop game as part of a development team. No programming knowledge assumed.

Full course description for Introduction to Game Design

This course explores the concept of race, racism, and identity in the games industry, games community, and game studies. Because of games' role in both reflecting and creating cultural, racial, and identity norms, they are a rich source for investigating the ways interactive and immersive technologies influence cultural and social perspectives. In this course, students explore topics through a lens of race such as the history and evolution of video games, values in play, avatar identity, visualizing racial characteristics, analyzing gaming communities, and interrogating racism in the game industry. Intersectionality is used to explore how race and racism impact digital and nondigital bodies. No prior programming knowledge is assumed.

Full course description for Race and Identity in Video Games

In this course, students will learn strategies for analyzing and creating game worlds, levels, and characters that are consistent, compelling, and fluent. Students will focus on what makes compelling and engaging video game dialogue, settings, backstories, and more. This theory- and writing-focused course will let students create and/or expand on all the writing that goes into a good video game story as well as explore games as a humanistic field. There will be a particular focus on creating characters, stories, and scenes with an anti-racist perspective in response to the industry¿s history representing marginalized characters, stories, and lore. No programming knowledge is assumed.

Full course description for Game, Level, and Character Design

In this course, students will learn the unique style of writing and storytelling used in an interactive environment. In this production-focused course, students will produce a video game (or slice of a video game), interactive story, or interactive website prototype by the end of the course. Students will focus on creating a continuity of experience across a system, writing compelling prompts, writing and thinking in decision trees, and anticipating audience input. Students will conduct usability testing/playtesting and revision of their constructed environments. No programming knowledge is assumed.

Full course description for Writing in Interactive Environments

This theory-based course dives into the role of fun, play, and games in society. Students will look at ancient theories of fun as well as learn about some of the earliest games ever played and examine their influence on modern games. Current tabletop and video games will also be analyzed by students through theories learned in class. Major topics covered may include: the magic circle, game rules, social games, definitions of fun and play, playing to order, edugames, serious games, chocolate-covered broccoli, cheating, spoilsports, variable ratio rewards, timed rewards, loot boxes, games for change, dark play, uncertainty, and more!

Full course description for Theories of Fun and Play

This course is an introduction to Unity, one of the most important tools in the Game Industry. Students in this course will learn to create a game through visual scripting, the visual representation of programming logic that allows the game designer to create playable games without deep programming knowledge. Students will create games with the usability, disability, and varying ability levels of the user in mind. Some topics covered include flow and state graphs, live editing, debugging and analysis, nesting, reusability, and variables. This course assumes no prior programming knowledge.

Full course description for Game Design in Unity

This production-focused course explores aspects of publishing, marketing, and sales that are crucial or unique to successful video and tabletop game launches. Topics covered include game-related marketing strategies such as: community building, crowdfunding, basic social media marketing, game pitches, gaming for good, indie studios, game journalism/ethics, review copy protocol, live game events, player sponsorship, and Twitch. Group work is a major part of this course, though exceptions can be given.

Full course description for Publishing and Selling Your Game

Choose one of the following

This course is designed to provide an introduction to Learner Experience Design, which brings together principles of design and learning to create effective interactive training and learning experiences. The course draws on fields such as instructional design, user experience design (UXD), and learning and development. Students learn concepts and techniques to prepare them to analyze learners and learning situations and to choose appropriate strategies in order to create interactive, engaging, and effective learning experiences

Full course description for Foundations of Learner Experience Design

This course focuses on usability and user experience for technical and information products. Students learn concepts, principles, processes, and methods of usability and user experience. Students work in teams and conduct a usability study systematically to improve an information product. Topics also include usability in business and organizational settings, usability workflow and governance. Students will also interact with user experience professionals.

Full course description for Usability and User Experience