National Film and Television School expands games offering with new animation and indie development courses

The National Film and Television School (NFTS) is expanding its video games offering to include two new courses, an MA in Animation for Film and Games and a certificate in Indie Games Development.

The former builds upon the school’s existing prestige when it comes to animation, but “dives into the core of training the next generation of creative technologists”.

Meanwhile, the Certificate in Indie Games Development is aimed at creators who are looking to set up their own games business, with introductions to areas such as game design, technical development, and marketing and distribution.

“Our MFA students in Games Design & Development already collaborate extensively with other departments, including screenwriting, VFX, composing, and sound design to create games with distinctive personality and character,” the NFTS’ head of Game Design and Development, André van Rooijen, explained.

“This cross-disciplinary approach is a hallmark of the NFTS. By growing our digital offerings, we aim to build a robust ecosystem where students contribute to each other’s projects. The benefits are mutual: games students gain access to bespoke content, while animation and other specialists see their work integrated into real-world production pipelines.

“These new course developments align with the upcoming expansion of Beaconsfield Studios – the home of the NFTS, during 2026, which will feature advanced computer labs, collaborative spaces, virtual production facilities, and accessible accommodation for disabled students.”

Emmanouil Agianniotakis, NFTS alumnus and lead designer at nDream’s Studio Elevation, has said that his time at the institution was incredibly useful, not least due to the variety of people taking the games courses.

“There is such a diverse corpus of students, it’s mind-blowing,” he said. “That’s not just because there are many different disciplines in film, TV and games, but also – especially within the games course – people do have very different backgrounds. It’s an interesting melting pot where you get to express and to come into contact with all sorts of very interesting and bizarre ideas.”

He added that, while it is certainly possible to learn game design from free resources such as YouTube, a ‘traditional’ education, like what is offered by NFTS, is invaluable.

“There are a lot of resources and skills that are impossible to get outside of an institution like NFTS,” Agianniotakis stated. “The fact, for example, that I was with that very diverse group of students and we were exchanging ideas daily, the fact that we got to work with so many different disciplines during the course. We worked with composers, producers, VFX artists, modellers and actors. That’s all incredibly difficult to get outside of an institution like the NFTS.”