The Department of Interactive Media and Games (formerly known as the Department of Network and Games) was established in 2006, and is one of the earliest institutions in China engaged in the teaching and research of interactive media and game design. It consists of two professional research directions: Game Design Art and Digital Interactive Art.
It aims to cultivate innovative and compound "four-way" talents proficient in game-based thinking and defining the future social landscape with an international frontier vision and deep roots in Chinese culture. With a focus on Chinese contemporary futurism, the Department is dedicated to exploring an innovative path of interactive media and game works under the empowerment of diverse digital media. It deeply reflects on the positive value and significance of game education and functional games in social development. It actively engages in and expands digital content creation in areas such as metaverse, digital humans, game mechanics, interactive narratives, and world-building. It also aims to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and integration among different disciplines, with the goal of constructing new humanities disciplines. Furthermore, the Department strives to foster the incubation and value transformation of full-process intellectual properties (IPs).
In recent years, the Department of Interactive Media and Games, with a forward-looking pioneering spirit, has been proactive in exploring the path of innovating on the basis of what has worked in the past in this discipline and specialty. Meanwhile, it has undertaken educational reforms, focusing on the synergy between industry and academia through collaborative education initiatives, such as the Ministry of Education's collaborative education base, the National Trend Art Research Institute, XR LAB, and university-industry co-built laboratories. The Department has also implemented a "dual mentor" teaching mechanism, and established a series of practical training and outcome incubation platforms, including game creation summer/winter camps, game producer competitions, and interactive narrative workshops. It advocates for co-creation and collaborative research based on curriculum teaching, and continuously delivers high-quality innovative talents to leading game and Internet companies, research institutions, and universities. The Department aims to empower the specialty and contribute to social development with the game-based spirit and interactive thinking.
