Purdue’s undergraduate game development program ranked 17 out of 50 schools, and its graduate program ranked 17 out of 25 schools by The Princeton Review. In the Midwest region, Purdue was ranked third and second for its undergraduate and graduate programs respectively.
The Princeton Review released its 16th annual ranking of undergraduate and graduate schools for game design studies in March 2025. It evaluated programs from seven regions: Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast, South, Southwest, West, and International. Most listed institutions are in the U.S. Two are in Canada and four are abroad.
“We are for sure ranked number one in Indiana,” said Christos Mousas, associate professor and director of the Virtual Reality (VR) Lab of the Department of Computer Graphics Technology (CGT). “This is a significant achievement considering CGT's games program is about 10 years old.”
The game development major focuses on project-based education with experienced faculty members so students can be industry ready on day one.
“Students create games from the very moment they begin as freshmen while experimenting with common game industry roles including game design, game programming, game art and project management,” said Rob Howard, an associate professor of practice in the department. “The games faculty at Purdue have worked on award-winning video games that have sold millions of copies worldwide.”
Howard worked in the AAA games industry as a game designer, including on Bioshock Infinite, an Associated Press Game of the Year. He has published two books about the game industry and game design, with a third book releasing in August 2025.
Faculty for the game development program have delivered presentations at industry conferences, including the Game Developers Conference and MDEV, and academic conferences including CHI Play and the Foundation of Digital Games (FDG). Multiple faculty members have published game development books for major publishers.
David Whittinghill, an associate professor in the CGT department, started the game development program at Purdue’s Polytechnic Institute in 2014 with just nine students. He was a senior programmer on Saints Row 2022 and founded Fledgling Media, a public-private game studio operating from Purdue that gives students an experiential learning experience in a game studio. In just ten years the game development program has grown to over 225 students in the incoming freshman class alone.
“We have a distinct games industry orientation that teaches not only the individual subdisciplines of games—art, design, programming—but we focus heavily on team integration and standardization with game industry enterprise tools and processes,” Whittinghill said. “Our faculty have deep roots in the games industry and leverage that in our courses and in steering our graduates toward enduring industry careers.”
Purdue game development alumni work on AAA—or Triple-A—commercial games, film and media and other related fields. Alumni have also worked on several notable games, including The Last of Us 2, League of Legends, the Borderlands franchise, DOOM, Marathon, Destiny I & II, the Saints Row franchise, the MLB: The Show franchise, and more.
“We are part of a computer graphics department rather than computer science, so we have close integration with UX, animation and VFX, web development, and scientific visualization,” Whittinghill said. “This makes for a more well-rounded education and trains students for careers in games but also many other technology related careers.”
Whittinghill is currently leading the Saudi GFX program, a study abroad program funded by the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. The program’s cohort of 15 up-and-coming game developers will come to Purdue for a month in Summer 2025. Industry veterans from around the country will teach hands-on training sessions in the Games Innovation Laboratory. Saudi GFX is the result of a $750,000 grant to build greater ties between the American and Saudi professional game development communities.
Whittinghill says the program’s faculty members—including Dan Triplett, Jeff Kesselman, Stephen Baker, Tim McGraw, and Christos Mousas—have attractive credentials and experience that enrich the student experience. The above faculty have over a dozen game credits, not counting a variety of effects credits in blockbuster films and authorship in both aforementioned books and accredited research journals.
The game development program has risen in the rankings every year alongside its enrollment numbers. Whittinghill says it is the second largest major in Purdue Polytechnic behind cyber forensics.
The Princeton Review's 2025 rankings of top schools for game design were based on the company's survey in 2024 of administrators at 150 institutions offering game design courses and/or degrees. The 50-question survey covered four areas: academics, faculty, technology, and career topics. More than 40 data points from the survey were factored into the ranking tallies. Information about the survey and ranking methodology is here.
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