The Princeton Review recently named DigiPen as one of the best design schools in North America and abroad. The education services company ranked DigiPen No. 5 on its 2023 list of the top 50 undergraduate schools, and No. 8 on its list of the top 25 graduate schools. This marks the 14th consecutive year DigiPen has placed among the top five undergraduate schools.
“I am super thrilled for our community to be ranked again in the top five game design schools,” Christopher Comair, Chief Operating Officer for DigiPen’s Redmond campus, said. “It’s a recognition of the passion and hard work of every single student, faculty, staff, and alum.”
Ignacio de Otalora, Managing Director of DigiPen Institute of Technology Europe-Bilbao, echoed his sentiments.
“The combination of academic rigor, teamwork, iron discipline, and dedicated effort, complemented by exceptional talent, often yields rewarding results. It is truly an honor to witness, yet again, our selection as one of the top 5 schools in game design for artists, designers, and developers across North America, Canada, and seven other countries,” he said.
The school rankings were the result of a 2022 survey of administrators at 150 institutions in the U.S., Canada, and abroad offering courses and degrees in game development. Schools were ranked based on responses to over 40 questions collecting data on school curriculum, facilities, research, student awards, faculty achievements, graduate salaries, alumni success, and more.
Their hard work, without a question, pays off, and they’ve got the accolades to prove it.
“Students work together to navigate the challenges of creating game and interactive media projects for the next generation,” Rob Franek, Editor-in-Chief of The Princeton Review, said of DigiPen. “Their hard work, without a question, pays off, and they’ve got the accolades to prove it.”
Indeed, in the last year alone, DigiPen students have won multiple awards at the GDC Narrative Analysis Competition, top placements in the World of Warcraft Student Art Contest, first place in the NAFIPS Explainable AI Challenge, and a range of superlatives at the global Rookie Awards. One student team recently garnered over 2 million unique downloads for their game on Steam.
Students from DigiPen Europe-Bilbao have fared just as well, bringing six of their games to Steam last year, including Han’yo, a Student Game Award finalist at the 2022 Game Development World Championship. The side-scrolling hack-and-slash adventure also received the Best Basque Video Game and Best Basque Translation awards at Game Erauntsia Sariak 2022. Recent student games from DigiPen Europe-Bilbao have also garnered accolades from BITBANG, Bilbao International Games Conference, the Quirino Awards, and more.
DigiPen became the first college in the world to offer a four-year degree in game development in 1998 with the BS in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. Since then, alumni from DigiPen’s three global campuses have been credited on over 2,000 commercial video games, including three of the 2022 Game Awards’ nominees for Game of the Year — Elden Ring, God of War Ragnarök, and Horizon Forbidden West.
For more information, you can view the full rankings and report on the Princeton Review website.