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| Type | Graduate school |
|---|---|
| Established | 2003 |
| Director | Gary Brubaker |
| Postgraduates | 1100 |
| Location | ,, |
| Campus | Urban |
| Website | Official Site |
SMU Guildhall is a graduate video game development program located at theSouthern Methodist University (SMU).[1] It was one of the first graduate video game development programs in the United States. SMU Guildhall has claimed a Top 10 ranking for 15 years in a row in thePrinceton Review's[2] Top 25 Graduate Schools for Game Design, including#1 for multiple years. They were also ranked #1 in the world bygameschools.com.
SMU Guildhall offers over 100 graduate courses dedicated to game design, and is the only program of its kind withspecializations in all four cornerstones of gaming — Art Creation, Level Design, Production, and Software Development (Programming).
Students create a minimum of 3team games — a 2D tablet game, a 3D multiplayer game, and a 3D original "capstone" game. Student capstone games are regularly published on Steam and Epic Game Store. Collectively, their games have received over a million downloads onSteam and many have ranked in Steam's Top 100 Games.
Students have completed2124 directed focus studies and 647 theses, which include independent research, development, and analysis on industry trends and topics, solving critical issues in order to demonstrate mastery of their specialized crafts and to fulfill stringent graduation requirements. Unity, Valve, Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, Dell, Oculus Rift, and America’s Army have sponsored student research projects through grants, scholarships, and technology.
Originally located at the SMU'sPlano, Texas facilities, Guildhall relocated to SMU's main campus in central Dallas at theGerald J. Ford Hall for Research and Innovation in 2020.[3][4] The master's program wascreated in 2003 from a specific request by gaming industry leaders in the United States, who saw a need in the industry to equip game creators with the skills required for the future.
The program has graduated 1100alumni, who have worked at 350 studios on hundreds ofgame titles.
Faculty are all hired directly from industry, and have worked on more than 300 professional games at 40+ game studios.
Games, student projects, and research teams have also won awardsat competitions including: Game Developers' Conference Game Narrative Review, Intel University Games Showcase, SMU Research Day, TechTitans Edge Computing Grand Challenge, Certain Affinity Portfolio Competition, MoMoCon Indie Game Competition, Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPrize, DICE Summit Intel Scholarship and Diversity Award and Randy Pausch Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Scholarship, SXSW Indie Gaming Competition, E3 College Game Competition, Red Bull Clash Course, HackTX, 20 over 20 Hackathon, Industry Giants Student Art and Animation Competition, GDC Online Narrative, Blizzard Entertainment's Student Art Contest, Indie Game Challenge, STEM Video Game Challenge, Independent Game Festival Competition, Intel Game Demo Contest, Texas Instruments DLP Products Next Generation Gaming Projectors Competition, and the Make Something Unreal “Educational Category”.
Over $10M inresearch funding and awards including federal (NSF, DoE, DoJ) and non-profit grants. Works by both students and faculty have been featured in papers, publications, interviews, articles, and talks, with 20+ publications at top Academic Gaming Conferences includingACM AIIDE,IEEE Conference on Games,IEEE Serious Games and Applications for Health, andFoundations of Digital Games), plus biomedical, chemistry, and education journals and conferences. Guildhall research has been used for:discovering drug treatments for diseases,fighting human trafficking,VR training to prevent sexual harassment andReducing Victimization Among Adolescent Girls,reducing bias in AI facial recognition,improving adult literacy,VR surgical training for cancer treatment, andmore.
SMU houses theM3, one of the fastest supercomputers in the nation, which is used for computational research.
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