Who might apply for the course?

The course welcomes applications from a wide variety of candidates. Not everybody will have come from an art or a computing background and that’s OK we don’t expect you to. What we do expect is an enthusiasm for designing games. So whilst some candidates might be studying traditional art and visual courses such as art, graphics or design others might be studying courses in multimedia, IT and web development. Even if you are not studying one of those courses it doesn’t mean that your experience is invalid and some of our successful graduates had little or no art and design education before starting the course.

It is also important to note that we welcome applications from people who may be out of Further Education and are seeking to return to study. Prior experience, professional experience and personal study can be considered in your application. If you have any doubt please feel free contact the course team and discuss your options.

Application and Interview

Every applicant, UK or International has to apply through UCAS (www.ucas.ac.uk) The application forms and procedure can be found online at the UCAS site.

Every application we receive is offered an interview, and we strongly encourage our applicants to take advantage of this offer. An interview is a great way to impress us with your enthusiasm, explain your work and get a chance to meet staff and students if you have not had chance to visit on one of our open days.

The interviews are informal and give you a chance to hear what we have to offer as well as ask questions. When we interview a candidate we are looking for evidence of visual design skills, questioning skills and an imagination to develop great game ideas. Remember that we all love playing games, and we’ve played them since we were kids too, so think about what you want to tell us about yourself that makes you stand out from the crowd.

We interview students individually and may interview several in a day. From this interview we are then able to decide to make you an offer based upon your work and performance at interview. The offers can range from Conditional offers where we might expect you to achieve certain grades in the courses you are currently studying (expressed as a point score on the UCAS tariff); to Unconditional offers where we think you are ready to start the course regardless. (Even though you might receive an unconditional offer we do recommend you complete your studies as we don’t want to be harassed by irate college lecturers!)

UCAS University Code
C30 University of Central Lancashire

UCAS Course Code
Games Design WG24

The Folio

For interview we ask for a folio of work, this folio can contain absolutely anything you might think is relevant to your application. Some examples include…

College work - Paintings - Drawings - Models - Sculpture - Graphic Design Multimedia - Web Sites - Fan Art - Game Mods - Level Designs - Character Design Digital Modelling - Game Concepts - Photography

So you can see that we are open to a wide variety of work you may have, quite often work done in your own time can say more about you than college work!

Folios are often physical collections of visual work; it is OK to bring photographs of models, sculptures and 3D work rather than struggle with bringing them here. A folio can also be digital on a disk or a web site, but remember that we may not have a PC available to use at the interview so bring along a reliable lap top or similar if you wish to show your work in that way. It is also important to remember that your folio of work represents where you are now, not as a graduate. Please do not get discouraged and think your work is not good enough, the idea of coming and studying with us is to help you develop your skills in order to achieve your aspirations!

International Applicants

Quite often it would not be convenient for an international applicant to attend an interview in person. So if this is the case we are happy to look at folios of work on web sites or sent to us on disk. If we need any further information we can always correspond by email to expand on your application

Any Further Questions?

If you have any other questions about the application procedure or what is required then please do contact us and we will endeavour to answer your questions as quickly and as accurately as we can.