Computer science with 'creative' options

[scoobiedoozie]

My daughter is looking at computer science degree courses, and likes the look of those that include modules in game design, web development etc alongside the hardcore stuff. We're researching online obviously and she'll go to open days, but it would be great to hear from anyone with experience - any universities/courses she should be sure to look at? Many thanks.

Have a look at the Interactive Media course at York, it combines Computer Science and the 'creative' aspects of the industry
Interactive Media (BSc) - Undergraduate, University of York
They've also just had a refurb so the facilities are amazing from the looks of it!

Thank you @xmasdealhunter

Bumping for more traffic!

Newcastle Uni CS course is the kind of thing I'm interested in, so any experiences of similar courses would be welcome.

My son is doing computer science at Newcastle loves it. However the first two years everyone does the same modules so you only specialise in a specific area such as gaming in the final year. You can do a placement year. My son is currently applying but I'm not sure what's being offered and if it's possible to do a gaming placement. Probably a question for open day.

I believe Keele and University of Sussex both offer CS with the option of specialising in a specific area. Keele also offers placement and overseas semester of year as well from memory

Creative Computing at Queen Mary's London.

She might want to consider doing a 'normal' comp sci degree and doing game design herself on the side. Has she done the 'Unity Junior Programmer' free course yet? DS did it several years back and learnt a lot, he's now doing a degree apprenticeship as a software engineer but really enjoys designing games for fun in his spare time. Whatever she decides if she does UJP and designs some of her own games and puts them on GitHub it will look really good on her uni applications.

The same goes for web dev, if she wants to be a web developer then she doesn't really need a degree and might be better off doing free courses and an apprenticeship. Have a look at places like codecademy for free courses. University is very expensive so it's important to make sure you are going to get your money;s worth IMO. There's no point paying someone loads of money to teach you what you could have learnt yourself online for free.

Plymouth uni does have both games design and web dev in their comp sci course, when we visited they had games on the screens that the students had designed - we weren't very impressed tbh. DS made a game with basic AI for his A-level NEA but there was no sign or AI in any of the games there - I would say teaching at uni on games dev and web dev are often well behind the curve and may not be nearly as useful as you'd hope.

Have a look at Oxford Brooks - they do a Computer science/ AI course - good reputation, nice Uni

Thank you everyone for your really useful advice 🤗

My colleague’s son did games design at Staffordshire. He was headhunted by a games designer in his final year and started a great job with them immediately after graduation.

U of Glasgow has a quite new and very prestigious course DMIS - digital
Media and information studies for the arts and humanities.
It's essentially a very modern librarian degree that touches on everything digital but from an arts and creative perspective rather than a "tech" perspective

Not sure if this is too late to be helpful, but there is a point of view that a CS degree should teach core concepts and the analytical skills that underpin good software engineering and design generically. These will allow graduates to pick up and apply new technologies and programming languages as they emerge (which can often be done for free online).

There should be scope to pursue special interests through projects, including extracurricular activities and work experience if more specialised modules don’t come until the third year. Look at any student-led computing society to see what they do, eg games jams. Great if the department also facilitates this, eg by supporting students to attend events and competitions. You could even think about courses with a year in industry (ask about academic fees for that year how the placements are arranged and supported).

AI (mentioned above) might be bit different as there is obviously a lot of theory and some substantial practical and ethical issues to explore.

Thanks @Leskovac that's where I am with my thinking, really useful to hear it from you. She's one term into CS A Level and really enjoying coding. So I think a solid CS degree course will probably fit.

Great! And apologies, I meant to say I agreed with @Tina159 ’s post 😊

Best of luck to your DD!

My son has a very similar profile- we're keen for him to do a sandwich degree (his dad did one as an engineer and it led directly into a good job when he graduated). He also wants to do computer game software design. Seems like CS offers a good grounding in case wants to diversify into different fields when he's older.

This might be too late to be helpful but my DS is quite similar except he has always wanted to work in games so we’ve looked for games specific uni courses. These have tended to be at non RG unis and are all very integrated with the industry. He has offers already from Abertay, Stafford and Norwich uni of arts and has an interview with Falmouth. If your DD is really interested in the gaming side it’s worth looking at the TIGA website (the games industry association) which has a section on education.

FWIW, the facilities at Stafford and Falmouth were very impressive, Norwich less so and DS felt that was very much an arts uni trying to branch into science. We haven’t visited Abertay yet but its reputation is very good and friends in the industry have told us its graduates are extremely sought after by studios.