The Institute of Digital Games was established in 2013 at the University of Malta to deliver world-class, postgraduate education and research in game studies, game design and game technology. The international team of researchers at the Institute come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including literature, media studies, computer science, human-computer interaction and design. Researchers of the Institute have been and are currently involved in numerous externally funded research projects, editorial boards of top academic journals and programme committees of the most prestigious conferences in games research. Aside from the academic complement of staff, the Institute also includes game developers with experience in both triple-A and indie game development. The Institute has strong links with the game industry as well as local and international public institutions. Although individual researchers vary in their disciplinary backgrounds and each follow their own path within game research, a unifying focus among researchers at the Institute is the intersection of player experience and game design. This focus is consciously reflected in the M.Sc. programme, with credits that take on the challenge of exploring and working with the play experience from myriad theoretical and practical perspectives.