Students of many disciplines are seeing the potential of new and interactive media as a tool for exploring and expanding traditional fields. The MSc. in Multimedia at Dublin City University intends to facilitate these people and provides training for postgraduates in development of interactive products for many platforms. <br /><br />Modules of relevance to games development include “Dramatic Authoring for the Web”, “Multimedia Sound and Music” and “Authoring for Multimedia”. These explore character development and user engagement with narrative, soundtrack aesthetics and psychoacoustics and object oriented programming for multimedia respectively. <br /><br />Production focused modules are integrated with theory based modules which explore a wide variety of media from film to TV and games, giving the students a broad source for critical understanding of multimedia.<br /><br />Production work is done in a cross platform (PC/Mac/Web) environment using, among other programs, Director, Flash, Pro Tools LE, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Cinema 4D and After Effects.<br /><br />The course lasts 1 year and can accommodate 25 students each year. Three graduates from the course are now involved in games related research or work. <br /><br />There is a final project requirement that in the past has included proposals for networked or online games; cd-rom productions, installations and DVD based products.<br /><br />There is no part time option and the only link the course has with the games industry is by association with STeM, the Centre for Society, Media and Technology at D.C.U. who are responsible for the gamedevelopers.ie online resource. <br /><br />Essentials:<br /><br />Location: Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.<br /><br />Course: MSc. in Multimedia<br /><br />Duration: 1 year<br /><br /><br />Course Strengths: <br />Interactive design, theory of narrative & traditional media, broad media basis, object oriented approach to web programming for Shockwave and Flash.<br /><br />Course Weaknesses:<br />No study of more commonly used games programming languages (C++, OpenGL, JAVA).<br /><br />More info: <LINK><ADDRESS>http://www.dcu.ie</ADDRESS><LTEXT>www.dcu.ie</LTEXT></LINK>