The Imladris Industry Practicum gives students meaningful experience in the game industry while forming them to remain anchored in Christ. It is a structured, remote professional-practice term built for universities and for students who want both craft and calling.
In practice it resembles a single class: roughly forty hours over about 3 calendar months. Many partner universities count it toward a required internship, practicum, or experiential-learning credit. We provide the documentation your registrar needs.
The problem
What we solve
Employers want real industry production experience. Most students only have classroom projects. Most studios cannot — or will not — offer a meaningful first stretch of professional practice.
Christian students face an even wider gap: almost no guidance on how to live faithfully in an industry that can be indifferent at best, or actively hostile at worst, to a life of faith.
Technical skill without spiritual formation leaves young believers vulnerable and unprepared for the cultural and vocational pressures they are likely to face.
Our solution
The Imladris Industry Practicum is a fully remote, one-term program, about forty class/work hours, in which you will:
- Contribute to one or more live or near-live projects, and get your name in the credits
- Learn to operate as a professional contractor — schedules, tools, async communication, deadlines, client delivery
- Practice Agile/SCRUM, collaborative team skills, and the daily rhythms of professional creative work
- Receive weekly mentorship and accountability from working professionals
The program is deliberately discipline-agnostic. Whether a student is a programmer, designer, artist, writer, marketer, musician, or producer, the core curriculum stays the same: process, collaboration, professional maturity, and spiritual formation. Project focus flexes to the strengths of each cohort.
This is part of how Imladris works to find, feed, and flourish Christian professionals in the game industry — people over products.
What makes this different
Industry-specific spiritual formation
This is not generic discipleship bolted onto a production term.
Every participant joins an embedded spiritual formation track drawn from Imladris’s Achievement Guide for Redemptive Game Creators. The term begins with foundational sessions on a biblical framework for creative work, vocation, and cultural engagement. A consistent application thread then runs throughout the practicum, helping students practice remaining anchored in Christ while operating inside real production environments.
Formation is integrated into the rhythm of the work — not treated as a separate class. This is one of the program’s strongest differentiators, and the reason many Christian universities and students seek us out.
Every participant also receives:
- Lectures + Q&A with professionals working in the industry
- LinkedIn and portfolio review with actionable feedback
- A look at how a working studio talks about professional growth
- Honest references upon successful completion
- Full rights to showcase their work in professional portfolios
Primary path
For Christian universities
We partner with institutions that want their students to graduate both employable and spiritually resilient. Imladris serves as an experiential partner so your department does not have to staff the industry supervision.
Current and recent university partners include Biola University, Trinity Western University, George Fox University, Azusa Pacific University, Houston Christian University, and others.
Universities use the practicum to:
- Fulfill required internship, practicum, or experiential-learning credit with a trusted, mission-aligned partner
- Give students real production experience that strengthens graduate outcomes
- Offer distinctive faith-and-vocation formation that most secular or purely technical placements cannot provide
- Serve students across programming, design, art, writing, marketing, production, and related fields
Whether your institution labels the term an internship is your decision. We handle production mentoring, professional habits, and the spiritual formation track so faculty and career offices can focus on academic oversight and student support.
For students
You want more than another classroom project. You want to know what it actually feels like to contribute to someone else’s creative vision under real constraints. What’s more, you want to grow in your faith while you do it.
You do not have to attend a Christian university to participate. If your school requires an internship or practicum, this program can often fulfill that requirement. Many students simply bring this page to their coordinator or career office and ask to make it official. If your school is unable to sponsor the term, a $1,500 fee applies. We would rather say that up-front than after you have planned the semester.
You will leave with:
- Tangible portfolio pieces from real collaborative work
- Stronger professional habits and Agile/SCRUM fluency
- A clearer sense of how to live out your faith as a creator in the game industry
- Credible references from working professionals
For individuals
Not every motivated creator is currently enrolled in a degree program. If you are a recent graduate, career-changer, or independent learner who wants structured production experience plus serious vocational formation, the practicum is open to qualified individuals on a secondary path.
You will work under the same standards, receive the same mentoring and spiritual formation track, and leave with the same professional assets as university-sponsored participants.
Individuals who wish to participate in the program incur a $1,500 program fee for the term. Some workforce development, career retraining and veterans assistance programs are available resources here. For clarity, this isn't just tuition wearing a different dress. These fees are how the coordinator, the lectures, and the formation stay standing.
The outcome
Students leave more prepared for the industry and more rooted in Christ.
Universities gain a reliable experiential learning partner that strengthens both employability and formation.
The game industry and the Body of Christ both benefit from creators who are competent, collaborative, and spiritually grounded.
Ready to take the next step?
Universities. Let’s discuss how the practicum can serve your students and fulfill requirements. write us.
Students. Bring this page to your internship coordinator, practicum advisor, or career office, or reach out to see how the next term can fit your timeline.
Individuals. If you are ready for structured production experience and vocational formation — regardless of current enrollment — ask about upcoming terms.
You Want More?
Many people finish their BA or BS more ready than they were...but still not getting the job offers they want from the studios they love. That's not a failure of your university; it's the well-known 'no-job/no-experience' doom loop.
The Imladris Apprenticeship might be just what you need.