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Quinnipiac University

BA in Game Design and Development Experiential Learning

Experiential learning at Quinnipiac offers multiple opportunities to apply your knowledge through hands-on work, service and exploration, preparing you for success in 21st-century careers. With an abundance of resources, internship opportunities and career-focused guidance, you'll be equipped with the skills and knowledge that distinguish you to employers and pave the way for long-term success.

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Collaboration Opportunities

The Game Design and Development program collaborates with partners inside and out of the Quinnipiac community to bring innovative ways of teaching others to life.

Clubfoot is a congenital deformity that twists the foot inward and downward. It is one of the most common congenital orthopedic conditions globally, impacting approximately 174,000 children annually. Although treatment is straightforward and minimally invasive, ensuring lifelong correction takes time and requires significant partnership and engagement with families. Developing a tool to begin to educate family members on the importance of brace wearing could be transformational in successful outcomes.

Objectives:

  • Educate family members on the importance of brace wearing and adherence to the established evidenced-based standard.
  • Help children understand the importance and reinforce the necessity of bracing.

Email Elena Bertozzi if you are interested in joining.

Work with faculty to help create a virtual, online version of a successful educational room escape game designed help health science students practice some of the competencies of interprofessional healthcare practice.

Objectives:

  • Adapt and rework an existing room escape game to fit the digital format.
  • Allow players to work together online, potentially using an existing multiplayer platform like VR Chat or RecRoom.

Email Jonah Warren if you are interested in joining.

Professor Elena Bertozzi and a team of GDD students are working with Family Planning Center of Barbados on deploying a serious game to improve patient education about family planning.

Objectives:

  • To determine how best to deploy patient education games in healthcare settings.

Email Elena Bertozzi if you are interested in joining.

History Chip is a global online archive of true stories told by anyone anywhere to build a true people’s history of the world, illuminating shared human experience. Even short and simple stories of school, meals, clothing are important and welcome. We seek to incorporate gaming to incentivize and facilitate writing and adding stories to the site.

Objectives:

  • Make writing a story simple and fun for non-writers.
  • Make adding stories to the site simple.
  • Incentivize repeat participation - through recognition of writers’ contributions.

Email Jonah Warren if you are interested in joining.

Collaborate with Dr. Victor Francone of the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine on educational materials to teach medical students DNA replication.

Learning objectives:

  • Summarize the DNA polymerases and other proteins required for DNA replication.
  • Summarize the mechanism of DNA replication and why discontinuous synthesis is required.
  • Explain the process of telomere replication and relate telomere dynamics to aging and disease.
  • Explain DNA polymerase proofreading and the impact on fidelity.

Email Jonah Warren if you are interested in joining.

Past Collaboration Opportunities

  • Develop a VR/AR Game using Unreal at Yale
  • Prototype an Augmented Reality-Based Scavenger Hunt
  • Develop an AR App to Help Study Car Accidents
  • Create a Game About Cybersecurity
  • Create a Digital Literacy Game
  • Create a Game About Living in Poverty and Finanical Literacy

Learn more about Game Design and Development collaboration opportunities

Learning by Doing

A student who is wearing a VR headset and holding controllers tests a VR game

Game Lab IV: Team Projects (GDD 311) provides students with an experiential learning opportunity by building a game for a client or for publication. Students work in teams to build working prototypes and manage the life cycle of the game development process including troubleshooting, playtesting, usability testing and revisions.

Recently, students worked with the Regional Water Authority to create an animated 3D visualization of the renovation of Lake Whitney Dam.

Student Portfolios

Our students create portfolios to highlight the work they have created throughout their time at Quinnipiac. Check out recent examples:

Matthew Camerato ’23

Matthew Camerato ’23 is a game designer, programmer and UI/UX specialist with AR/VR development experience. His portfolio highlights his multidisciplinary skillset.

View his portfolio

Ryan O'Hara ’18

Ryan O'Hara ’18 is an artist and game developer who, since graduating from Quinnipiac, has founded his own independent game studio Artii Games.

View his portfolio

Amari O'Connor ’24

Amari O'Connor ’24 is an award-winning writer, narrative designer, and director. Her portfolio highlights her writing skills for both games and theater.

View her portfolio

Matthew Mudgett ’18, MS ’19

Matthew Mudgett ’18, MS ’19 is a digital artist and UI/UX designer.

View his portfolio

Casey Urso ’21

Casey Urso ’21 is an artist and musician who founded GDD's student-run game development club on campus.

View his portfolio

Experience the Action

A student wearing a VR headset moves hand controllers

Gain experience with an internship or apprenticeship

Game Design & Development faculty help prepare students for their careers. With connections in the industry, professors assist students with securing internships and hands-on learning opportunities. 

Internships

  • Professor Jack Wesson has sponsored more than 10 internships for Game Design & Development students with Hexicosa Inc, a consulting company making video games for unreleased hardware and tech devices for industry clients, such as Netflix, the Museum of Ice Cream, Atari, and Dave & Busters.

Apprenticeships

  • Students specializing in Game Art can partake in an apprenticeship with Peter Zoppi, lead character artist for Treyarch and an adjunct professor with GDD.
Three attendees stand in front of a table in the Rec Center, where laptops are lined up showing student work. A male student stands on the other side of the table speaking to them.

Our annual GDD Showcase is a part of the College of Arts & Sciences' Illuminate Symposium each May.

A faculty member in a patterned shirt tries out a game on a laptop. The screen shows a cartoon green alien in a purple chair and the words "Game Over."

Students participating in the games showcase have the opportunity to win awards and prizes.

A group of students sitting at a conference table, listening to a man speak while sitting at the head of the table

Each year, students have the opportunity to visit the corporate headquarters of one of the largest game companies in the world, Take-Two Interactive.

Student sitting in rows watching 3 people present

Epic Games team members hosted an Unreal Demon Day at Quinnipiac where they showcased new features of the Unreal Engine. The team also ran workshops for our students. 

A large group/packed room all looking to something off screen intently

Quinnipiac is an official site for the annual Global Game Jam, the world's larger game jam event. Participants spend a weekend brainstorming and building games, then upload and showcase the. The event is hosted in partnership with  GameDevCT.

Students sitting in comfy chairs looking up at a projector screen with a video game on it

Each year, the GDD program hosts an assembly for students to hear from professionals in the industry about their experience. Recently, Jackie Vecchitto ’07 and ’06 told the story of  of their viral hit game Trombone Champ and starting Holy Wow, their own indie studio.

A group of students and faculty test out motion capture equipment in a classroom.

Award-winning actor Roger Clark, who portrayed Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, has visited our program multiple times, participating in a 3D animation course and delivering a lecture titled Full Performance Capture: History and Applications.

A group of 15 students, some in cosplay costumes, stand in the event hall next to a standing Quinnipiac GDD banner.

Over the past few yeras, GDD students have gones to Boston for PAX East, where they show their work to attendees and professionals. Students also play a large role in planning and logistics.

Join a championship-winning team

The Quinnipiac University eSports lab.

Club eSports

Quinnipiac eSports is a competitive program that participates in the MAAC and NECC eSports Leagues. The team has won the MAAC Championships in Super Smash Bros. four years in a row (2022-2025), the Rocket League team won the MAAC Championship in 2024 and 2025, and the Valorant team won the MAAC Championship in 2023.

Learn more about eSports at Quinnipiac

Immerse yourself in funded summer research

Student sitting down and working on a laptop with computer code projected on the back wall

Take part in the Interdisciplinary Program for Research and Scholarship

Open to students of all majors, QUIP-RS provides up to $5,000 in funding for undergraduate students to conduct research or complete creative projects alongside faculty mentors. This intensive 8-week program enables students to develop scholarly skills while encouraging discussion about successes and shortcomings with fellows and mentors.

Learn more about QUIP-RS

A Course in Global Perspective

Video game design is a fundamentally interdisciplinary creative activity that includes art, narrative, programming, physics, understanding of game mechanics and imagination. Games that take inspiration from historically important places, events and people can educate players while providing them with deeply immersive memorable environments that allows them to understand history as lived experience. 

A recent section of Special Topics in Game Design (GDD 175), Assassin’s Creed II in Florence: Creating Games Grounded in Art, Engineering, and History, involved students examining the process of creating a history-based game through analysis of the Assassin’s Creed II game set in Florence, Italy. Students studied the environments, characters and storylines in the game and then traveled to Florence to consider how the game creators built on and modified historical elements to create a hugely successful game. 

Students produced their own new game idea based on elements of Florentine history that they discovered through research and travel.

Learn about additional study abroad opportunities

Spend a Semester in LA

Students hold QU flag in front of Hollywood sign

Explore LA while gaining insightful and career strengthening experiences

Quinnipiac students have the unique opportunity to spend a semester in Los Angeles learning from industry professionals and interning at leading companies in film, television, new media and more.

The Quinnipiac University in Los Angeles program gives you the opportunity to live, work and learn in the heart of America’s entertainment industry. Los Angeles is home to the “Big 5” film studios, 10 professional sports franchises, major broadcast news network bureaus — including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC — and a media market that reaches more than 5 million people daily.

Learn more about QU in LA

A Foundation for Your Future

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400+ Internships

Number of internship opportunities available to our students in the U.S. and abroad.

73% Hands-On Experience

Percentage of seniors who participated in at least one internship during their time at Quinnipiac.

Career-Building Resources

3 female students speak to a woman standing behind a career fair table

Job Market Trends

Quinnipiac students excel as interns, new hires, managers and executives in almost every industry. Gather real-world data about starting salaries, hiring trends and in-demand skills to inform your decision-making and put you on a path to success. 

Explore real-world data and insights

View all tools and resources

An arts and sciences student speaks with a career adviser in the school advising commons

Craft Your Career

With an abundance of career-focused information and resources, the career advisers within the College of Arts & Sciences support students as they expand their professional networks and attract the attention of prestigious employers.

Learn more about career development

A career advisor working with a student

Career and Experiential Learning Lab

iQ, Quinnipiac University’s holistic approach to career development and experiential learning, surrounds every individual with a personalized plan that maximizes their time at Quinnipiac. The powerhouse of iQ, our Career and Experiential Learning Lab is the physical space where students and advisers bridge the gap between college and career. 

Learn more about our Career and Experiential Learning Lab

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Contact Admissions

Our undergraduate admissions counselors are here to answer any questions you may have and help you navigate the application process.

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