INDIANAPOLIS — Purdue University’s Indianapolis campus is launching a new Engineering program focused on Gaming and Interactive Systems in partnership with Xbox.
The program combines electrical and computer engineering fundamentals with direct gaming industry experience. It’s designed for students who want to turn a passion for gaming into careers in game development, software engineering, and interactive technology.
‘More than just learning how to build games’
Milind Kulkarni, head of the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Purdue, said the goal is to train “incredible gaming engineers” who understand entire systems.
“Yes, exactly,” Kulkarni said. “So the goal here — they are more than just learning how to build games. They’re learning how to be incredible gaming engineers. But what that means is that they’re not just building a game in their spare time. They’re understanding how the whole system works. How does gaming hardware work? How do you get high-performance games to run well?”
Students will take core Purdue ECE coursework in software engineering, hardware design, and high-performance computing. They’ll also complete a major design project focused on gaming systems, Kulkarni said.
“In addition to getting a lot of the coursework we pride ourselves on from Purdue, where they’re learning the fundamentals of good software engineering, they’re learning how gaming hardware works,” Kulkarni said. “They’re learning how low-level, high-performance gaming software works. They’re thinking about big design projects.”
Xbox Game Camp brings Microsoft mentors to Indy
Students will participate in Xbox Game Camp, where they’ll be paired with mentors from Microsoft.
“They’re actually gonna get to participate in this Game Camp where they’ll get paired up with mentors from across Microsoft Xbox teams,” Kulkarni said.
The program will start with a workshop in Indianapolis featuring Microsoft staff.
“We’re gonna do a kickoff,” Kulkarni said. “We’re gonna have members of the Microsoft team come out to Indianapolis and we’ll do a mini workshop talking about all of the different aspects of the game design industry. We’ll sort of get everybody excited about this.”
In spring 2027, Purdue will launch a for-credit class tied to Microsoft Game Camp. The class will be open to Purdue computer engineering students and all Purdue Indianapolis students interested in game development.
“This class is gonna be open not only to Purdue computer engineering students but actually to everybody in Purdue Indianapolis who might want to participate,” Kulkarni said. “They’ll be able to sign up for this class and actually get credit for participating in the Microsoft Game Camp.”
Game Camp starts March 2027
The Microsoft Game Camp component begins in March 2027, according to Purdue.
University officials said the partnership gives students a major career advantage by combining Purdue’s engineering curriculum with direct access to Xbox developers and industry tools.
Applications and course details will be available through Purdue Indianapolis’ School of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
