Why I chose to study Indie Game Development online

This article was written by Indie Game Development MA (Online) student Olly. 

Deciding what to study at university, and where, can be a massively daunting task, but my time at Falmouth has already made it feel worthwhile. I’m Olly Musson, an online postgraduate student in my first year of the online MA Indie Game Development course and I hope this short blog offers some valuable insight into what makes Falmouth such a great choice for online postgraduate study.

My background was in Japanese Studies, a full-time campus-based undergraduate degree, so I joined Falmouth knowing nothing about online study, postgraduate learning, or the game development industry. Thankfully, none of that held me back and I’ve felt like an appreciated part of both the University and my cohort from the very beginning.

One reason I chose Falmouth was its clear commitment to the games industry. For example, in the Princeton Review, Falmouth is recognised as the top choice for both undergraduate and postgraduate Game Design study in England and the department’s on-campus Games Academy facilities are phenomenal. Even if this isn’t something you get the chance to interact with as an online student it still shows strong dedication to the field and those sentiments certainly translate to the online realm. The teaching team is also filled with active industry professionals meaning you are constantly exposed to current tools, trends, and real-world advice and feedback — a great learning opportunity!

The best experience I’ve had on the course so far was during my first module. We were tasked with creating a small playable prototype using the theme 'Fish'. We then all came together in a weekly webinar to share our projects and bounce around thoughts for improvement. It was super fun to see how others had interpreted the theme and we easily could have spent hours in that call throwing our different ideas back and forth. 

You’ll find opportunities to address knowledge gaps and grow alongside some truly awesome peers

My game was built inside Unity and was a simple endless runner where a fish dodges sharks and obstacles for as long as possible. Others used Unreal, Godot, Game Maker, some had pixel art or low poly — there was a staggering variety actually. This is easily one of the best parts about the course: you are not tied down to any kind of tool or technique. Experimentation is frequently encouraged. I came into the course with a small amount of Unity and C# knowhow, but now I am trying pixel art and have started learning Godot and the GDScript programming language — how things change!

In general, course content moves across various sub-disciplines within the game development industry, like art direction, programming, narrative and level design, and so on. This is great because whether you’re a specialist or a complete beginner (like I was), you’ll find opportunities to address knowledge gaps and grow alongside some truly awesome peers.

In regards to online study with Falmouth, it does require a capacity for time management and reflective learning. At the end of the day, no one is waiting in a classroom for you and it’s up to you to be accountable for your learning. That said, many of my coursemates juggle full-time jobs with their study and content is delivered in a way that fits around all kinds of schedules. Communication is also constantly flowing with webinars and course forums/discussions so you never feel out of the loop.