Undergraduate Program
Art & Design: Games & Playable Media (AGPM) is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in the Department of Performance, Play, and Design at UCSC.
Students in AGPM obtain a degree focused on the creation of games as art and activism, focusing on wildly original, creative, expressive games including board games, role-playing games, immersive experiences, and digital games. Students make games and art about issues including climate justice, Black aesthetics, and queer and trans games. Students study interactive, participatory art, with a focus on learning about intersectional feminist, anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ games, media, and installations.
The AGPM major focuses on the following areas of study – students interested in the major should expect courses and curriculum centered around these topics:
- Digital and analog games as art, activism, and social practice
- Feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQ games, art, and media
- Participatory or performance-based games such as role-playing games, urban / site-specific games, and theater games
- Interactive art including VR and AR
- Exhibition methods for games in traditional art spaces and public spaces
Program Learning Outcomes
Aesthetics. Students demonstrate understanding of aesthetic fundamentals through sustained and intentional application of a range of visual arts and design practices, both physical and digital.
Designing Experiences. Students critically engage with audience feedback to iterate and revise an interactive project in a way that preserves the artist’s creative and political goals.
Games as Art. With a foundation in existing artworks, students design, develop, and create a series of interactive artworks.
Games as Activism. Students develop a creative practice, and critical study, of games and interactive media by generating critiques of game systems through a lens of power and oppression, and utilizing these critiques in their artwork.
Play as a Radical Endeavor. Students explore and create a series of playful experiments towards expressive goals that embrace risk and build upon failure. Students analyze play as a vehicle for disruption, resistance, and joy.
Sense of Self As Artist. Students begin to establish and explore their unique sense of artistic identity and areas of intention and interest, demonstrated via a portfolio of artwork and written work, exhibition, or performance, that expands definitions of games, interactive art, and play.
Program Learning Outcomes
The foundation of the program is the creation of games as art, with students learning to make games from faculty who are practicing artists who present games in museums and galleries, and designers who make games for deep educational experiences. Students also learn about how the history of art, from conceptual art, performance, feminist art and environmental art, lead to interactive media and digital art, which led to games as visual art. In this major, students design games, interactive art and participatory art, individually and in groups. Our courses are often cross-listed with Theater, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies to create vibrant opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Study and Research Opportunities
- Research opportunities with graduate students/faculty including:
First-year (Frosh) Requirements
Students interested in entering the program as frosh are urged to make interactive artwork — from paper game prototypes to text based choose your own adventure stories. Developing an arts practice in any medium is also helpful, including theater, drawing, writing, music, sculpture, filmmaking, and others. Finally, deepening your understanding of technology can help, if that is your interest, including computer programming, participating in maker groups, or whatever else grabs your interest.
Find more information on freshman requirements
Transfer Requirements
This is a screening major. In preparation for transfer to AGPM, students are required to demonstrate proficiency in programming, visual art, and game design.
See the Transfer Information and Policy section in our program statement for more information.
