Anonymous studio exec quoted as saying skills shortage is due to 'aging' industry
From provocative comments on our recent stories about the industry skills shortage through to reports in the mainstream press, the matter of education and games development is still a hot topic - but is the rising average age of coders and artists holding back the workforce?
One anonymous development exec thinks so, speaking in response to the Games Up campaign to silicon.com.
Their source is quoted as saying: "Anyone that's over 28 or so hasn't really come through that education path. They've taught themselves, they've been on courses that aren't necessarily video game courses - they may be maths or engineering or more general purpose software engineering."
The source adds that the bedroom coding culture helped contribute to the industry's rise to power, but its absence means less people are getting into games.
"Whereas now people don't really understand all those basics; they don't really know what's going on under the hood… That's where the real discrepancy comes."
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They add: "The industry's aging. The older people are sort of staying with it. It used to be all 20-year-olds or whatever but now it's a lot of people in their late 30s.
"Because the US economy is depressed it's cheaper to develop there and people are looking at other places - everyone's setting up studios in Shanghai and Eastern Europe at the moment."
Is there a coherent thesis expressed by the "anonymous development exec" or is he just rambling? I can't find a clear connection between age, training/education, the US economy, and setting up studios in cheaper labour markets.
Is there a longer transcription of the interview? Otherwise this article is just all over the map. It is possible (and necessary) to find people who understand the hardware and the algorithms. It is also *necessary* to find people who are disciplined, organized, and who can communicate.
It's not clear that any of this has anything to do with the age of the workforce, or the complexity of the consoles, or the US recession.
Hi Jason,
Link to the original source has been added in - accidentally omitted it before.
MF
Hmmm - doesn't really make much more sense there either :-) Let's be generous and say that perhaps the quotes are taken out of context.
I think he's trying to say that the computer games related courses are really helping to provide the talent required by the games industry.
This is, of course, quite understandable given that some games courses have probably been created in a vacuum without input from games companies. Of course, now is the ideal time for games developers to get into bed with games courses to help them strengthen their offerings.
@ ex-coder
Actually I would venture to suggest he's saying to exact opposite. That 'the youth of today', having not been self taught in their bedrooms but learning in the classroom, are not as proficient or able as the (now older) games makers. They don't know what goes on under the hood, and haven't benefited from more traditional maths and/or software engineering courses, but have instead studied on the more generic (vanilla?) Games Development courses now available.
I work overseas and we have the same issue - potential recruits with Game Development degrees know a little of everything, but not enough of anything to be able to contribute.
But your last point is spot on - the industry at large needs to work hand in hand with the education institutions; we can't just moan from the sidelines.
1979 I completed my first computer built from circuits.
Of course I didn't have C++, C or even assembly, so I started out programming it with binary switches and hexadecimal displays....machine code style.
Since then I moved to Assembly programming, later to C and C++ , even Prolog, Occam.
1991 I started programming tru parallel computers Transputers programming them in Occam and parallel C++.
Know finally PC and console game platforms comes with multi cores.
Since 1998 I have been taken all the courses from NVidia, ATI and Microsoft in 3D programming tre times a year. I have had my own small studio for eleven years doing anything of my fancy. Going totally wild on the latest technology and APIs I love new hardware features and new middleware.
I know 3dsmax inside out for 3Dgames I have worked with RPG's, online FPS using Unreal 3, I prototyped MMO sports games using Big world MMO engine. I developed smart scene optimizing for truly dynamic 3D game environments. I worked as a technical artist (optimizing expert). I been given talks world wide on big and small game development conferences, now I am 42 years old have house (farm) and kids. I would say I still moving learning new stuff like the latest Z brush tricks or animating tricks.
I shave of a lot of overhead (rendering and workload wise for artist) on any project in my first week, only because of my insights. Still there is a lot of 25 year old guys out there that has a nicer resumes, just because they where lucky participating on some part of shipped AAA games. Myself I slaved away at several upstart that has yet to deliver a game, some of them had to redo the same game 5-6 times….
For one I don't like to develop things that could have been done several years a go. I am driven by the latest and greatest technology features. Still I do work with young kids that are fast and excellent programmers. They cut a lot of corners and they don't really understand what they are doing but they get the job done in time. They can put in much more time that I possibly can at my age. Usually they don't care about the fancy new stuff. They just "wants to code" So the insights of how things really works is left to us the old guys....Being bleeding edge is something I found company’s today can't afford, they rather try to put me somewhere in the production rather than in R&D or prototyping where I belong. At my age production sucks. I am not a hero programmer that does anything you ask me to do, I only do what we agreed from the start I should do and I do it my way or it's the highway....
I look forward to "insider"s next post in 10 years time when he's pleading for short-sighted studios to take advantage of his experience.
By the way did "insider" also provide the artwork for the post? Or did some young luvvie at Intent find it?
So the industry is growing up! Well so are its customers. Back in the 80s there were probably few 40 somethings playing video games. Now there are millions. The industry is simply maturing. As for education it's a moot point whether a vocational degree is a boon or a handicap. Sometimes it's better to spend one's time at university learning how to ask the right questions, research one's subject and find one's own answers. The bottleneck in UK education seems to be in the lack of maths and science teachers at secondary level and the sometimes waning popularity of those subjects at A level and degree level. It tends to be cyclical. In the 60s the sciences were cool. By the 80s it was the arts. Now it seems to be media studies.
What the industry can do, and is starting to do (to its credit) is explicitly make the link for secondary school students between subjects like maths and careers in game development. Working with the government to promote maths and science is a short term move that's relatively easy to implement.
