Careers and Internships

Internships and post-graduate development are among the highest priorities for the Game Center. We have a sophisticated approach to the game industry, high rates of internship and career placement, faculty who are required to maintain an international profile in the medium, and an ever growing network of close-knit alumni.

The Game Center Approach

One of the most important aspects of an aspiring game developer’s resume is a portfolio of finished games. At the Game Center, each of our students will graduate with multiple finished games. The core of our approach to game design is creating high-quality work, the same skillset required in every aspect of the game industry. Combining a portfolio of outstanding work, proven ability to work collaboratively, applicable development skills, and a keen design sensibility, our graduates are prepared to make amazing games wherever their careers lead.

 We know that good work alone isn’t always enough to find the ideal job, so we have many approaches to helping students build their careers in the game industry. We provide financial support for students to travel to conferences and festivals, run resume building and networking workshops, expose our students to wide variety of career options through our Survival Skills course, and our faculty leverage and alumni networks created from years of industry experience to help our students make connections to developers and studios.

Our location in New York City is also a major asset to our students, especially when it comes time for internships and careers. We maintain close ties to the flourishing New York City game industry by hosting lectures, workshops, and portfolio reviews where our students and local developers swap ideas, feedback, and business cards. This results in a very healthy ecosystem where students find jobs and internships easily and the local industry grows, drawing on the talent from our program. We’re especially close with our Events Sponsors, who look to the Game Center first when they have open positions.

Internships

We are preparing students to create successful work in an industry with an incredible range of scales, platforms, and goals. Our students have held internships in companies that range in size from AAA game studios and major media companies like Ubisoft and Walt Disney World, to local game development shops like Arkadium and TreSensa. More than just game developers, our students are also journalists, musicians, and illustrators. We embrace this diversity and work personally with the students to find internship opportunities in whatever aspect of the industry they’re interested in. When a student wants to explore an aspect of the game industry we help them find an internship to do it. We work closely with the Tisch School of the Arts Career Development office to give our students access to a wide-ranging network of companies who regularly turn to NYU for talented interns.

Here is a partial list of organizations where Game Center students have held jobs and internships:

Ubisoft | Killscreen | Games for Change | Brookhaven National Laboratory | Blizzard Entertainment | International Game Developer’s Association | Walt Disney World | Riot Games | Creative Entertainment | TreSensa | Mokuni, LLC | Arkadium | Take-Two Interactive | Blast Theory | The Soap Factory | iNk Stories | Mind Gamers | We Play Dots | Blind Horizon Studios | Man and Coffee Games | BumbleBear Games | Grasshopper NYC | Game Pub | Sandbox Strategies | IAC | SMASHWORX | Indiecade: The International Festival of Independent Games | Shinra Technologies | Iron Wall Games | iNK Stories | Funtactix  | Creative Good | American Museum of Natural History | Scholastic | This Is Pop | High 5 Games | Amazon | Nickelodeon | BrainPop | E-Line Media, Electric Funstuff | Digital Continue | Darkwind Media | ESPN | Quest to Learn | MoMA PS1 | iD Tech Camp | Brooklyn Game Lab | Eyebeam | IGDA Japan | Strong Museum of Play | Tilting Point | Escape the Room NYC | Facebook | 2K Games | A&E Networks | Amplify | Double Fine | Fullbright | Harmonix | MLB Advanced Media | Muse Games | Naughty Dog | Sony Santa Monica | thatgamecompany | Tencent | Urban Arts Partnership

Careers

Graduates of the Game Center are AI engineers, studio founders, community managers, curators, festival organizers, independent game developers. They have received publishing deals with Microsoft, funding from Indie Fund, and features in the iOS store. A degree from the NYU Game Center doesn’t just teach you to create games, it teaches you to create the future of games.

This image gallery is a very small sample the many published games our students have worked on.

While all of our students exit the program with experience and expertise designing and developing digital and non-digital games, we see our students leaving the program and working in many different fields. We have students working not only in game design and development but in academia and education, at museums, with digital agencies, research firms, architecture firms, and more.

The Game Center Incubator

The NYU Game Center Incubator is a three-month program that gives recently graduated students the time, resources, guidance, and space to find commercial success. We team with Industry Partners including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, as well as legal, business, marketing, and game development experts to help our students transform student projects into commercial products. More information on this innovative career developing program can be found here. Not all games made at the Game Center are made with an eye towards commercial release, but for the subset of students who are interested in entrepreneurship and independent development, the Game Center Incubator is a powerful resource. More information on the games that have been in the Incubator can be found here.

Awards and Accolades

We teach with the expectation that our students’ work should be advancing the state of the art. Game Center projects aren’t a path to making world-changing games, they are changing the world already. That means our students are regularly winning awards at festivals and competitions. Here is a selection of places from around the world where our students have won awards and nominations:

The Independent Games Festival | IndieCade | Out of Index | Boston Festival of Indie Games | Indie MEGABOOTH | Indie Prize | Ludcious Zürich Game Festival | hóPLAY | Gamercamp | GDC China | Fantastic Arcade | Game Developers Choice Awards | Apple Editor’s Choice | Board Game Geek Golden Geek | Casual Connect | Alt.Ctrl @ GDC | GDC Narrative Summit | Intel Student Showcase | MAGfest | Play NYC | XOXO Arcade | AMAZE

Graduate Stories

Reynaldo Vargas studied game design at the undergraduate level through Gallatin School of Individualized study, and has continued on to the MFA program. Here are his thoughts about the Game Center.

“Being a game designer was always one of my dreams and through taking that first class with Eric and subsequently every class offered as an undergraduate class at the NYU Game Center definitely shaped me as a really well-versed designer who’s made sports, CCGs, board games, and video games, one of which won an IndieCade Award. The cross between my interest in social justice and game design has lead me to teach children game design and computer logic as a form of thinking logically and critically around the city in various after-school programs. The Game Center is also where I met the people with whom I started two game development studios, Nevernaut Games and Greater Gotham. The Game Center is also the host and the alma mater of people I really admire for intellectual advice on games and games criticism.”

For more information on our alumni, including links to their work and contact information, you can visit them on our site here.