SMU Guildhall

SMU Guildhall is a graduate video game development program located at the Southern Methodist University (SMU). It was one of the first graduate video game development programs in the United States. SMU Guildhall has claimed a Top 10 ranking for 15 years in a row in the Princeton Review's Top 25 Graduate Schools for Game Design, including #1 for multiple years. They were also ranked #1 in the world by gameschools.com.

SMU Guildhall offers over 100 graduate courses dedicated to game design, and is the only program of its kind with specializations in all four cornerstones of gaming — Art Creation, Level Design, Production, and Software Development (Programming).

Students create a minimum of 3 team games — a 2D tablet game, a 3D multiplayer game, and a 3D original "capstone" game. Student capstone games are regularly published on Steam and Epic Game Store. Collectively, their games have received over a million downloads on Steam and many have ranked in Steam's Top 100 Games.

Students have completed 2124 directed focus studies and 647 theses, which include independent research, development, and analysis on industry trends and topics, solving critical issues in order to demonstrate mastery of their specialized crafts and to fulfill stringent graduation requirements. Unity, Valve, Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, Dell, Oculus Rift, and America’s Army have sponsored student research projects through grants, scholarships, and technology.