As a student who is going through a University Degree in games development at Portsmouth Uni, I can state that a fair amount of the allegations are true.

Most courses, such as those run by Manchester Metropolitan university are run by IT professors who have been approached in ways such as "your into computer gaming, want to set up a course on it?" (almost literally from what I understand), and it is well known in the industry that universities in Canada and France turn out far better 3D artists than anything that the major UK universities create.

One of the major issues with this is that it is a new industry. These degrees are 10 years old at best (Abertay is the longest running course), and there aren't a lot of people who want to move out of the industry to teach it, so there is some what of a skills gap, and in many universities, the local games development companies either can't, or won't spend the time with the universities to develop that connection and the needed dialogue to improve the courses.

Another problem is that 3 years is NOT enough time to teach a program like 3DS MAX throughly in any stretch of the imagination. Neither is 4 years. And then, once you add in areas that need to be covered such as law and a small amount of programming, there is no time left. This, to some extent is being sorted with courses like the BTEC Games development course, but that is an even younger course that suffers from similar problems, as well as the issue that when the students from these BTEC courses go into a Degree course, they discover that they have already completed a large portion of the work at collage.

There are few solutions for this, and none that I'm qualified to give at this time in my humble opinion...

I reply to Chris as one of the authors of the BTEC Games Development course he mentioned. I'm a practising deliverer on that pre-university level course. My authoring team took special pains to consult the industry about its needs and each unit of syllabus content has been examined, amended and approved not only by Skillset but also by those publishers and studios. Has every university course been similarly approved by the industry? Yet still, in conversation with many university departments offering games courses (there are some stellar exceptions of course) I hear opinions just like those expressed to Chris's "IT Professor". I agree, simply too many university courses appear to have too little real industry involvement, it's too easy to tack a 'games dev' unit onto an existing computing course and call it 'Games Development' to attract students, the bums-on-seats approach. I'm fortunate, my FE College course has really close links with a leading UK publisher and some top UK studios - they have been unstinting and very willing to contribute advice and specimen material. Are others in the industry prepared to do the same? I asked the publisher "Why are you helping us?" - answer - "Because the industry needs to grow, we need more talent, how else can we grow it?" Game Industry - help Education to help your future!

As a recruiter, I think Abertay and Teeside are probably the two best unis out there overall when it comes to games courses. Bournemouth is very good when it comes to animation.

This isn't to say the other unis aren't good, but if I was asked which uni someone should apply for it'd definitely be one of those three first.

IMHO there is currently no need for degrees specifically tailored to the games industry. Especially for the Programming side. Any good university offering computer science and software engineering should provide students with exactly what they need to be more than competent in the games industry. I graduated with a Computer Science degree and found that the courses I took were and still are being applied every day in my job and I can’t see what value a games course could have offered me over the CS course I took. Good universities offer inter-departmental options also allowing for a student to take Math and Physics to strengthen their knowledge base which I think most of the games specific courses lack. If anything more companies should offer industrial placements to students on these courses and the universities could offer options on working in the games industry. I think unfortunately some of the games specific courses about are just there to get student numbers up at below par universities. Notice the use of the word some. I think that the Dare To be Digital event is great and I have worked with some very talented people that have been given jobs on the basis of that competition. Obviously I can’t comment on the art side of this discussion.

We have taken students and graduates on a part time placement and full time basis fom a number of universities and by far the best have come from Abertay and I congratulate Mr Mckinnon on the quality of his graduates and his forward thinking.

Other universities by contrast are arrogant and out of touch with industry more interested in the fees than the education they provide, for instance charging students fees whilst they are on placement with Games companies, they should be ashamed of this kind of practice. The trend of "me too" exhibited by universities in creating games courses when they have no specialism or affinity with the industry should be stopped and/or regulated, but unfortunately in a country where the education becomes increasingly polarised and expensive for the scholar and the universities driven by cashflow/profit and not the quality of education it supplies what can you expect. Additionally making false claims about the number of students gaining employment after the course in order to get more students in the door should be stopped.

At the end of the day the universities should be working with us to help create a pipeline of capable graduates that will gain immediate employment and this can only be done by collaboration and communication where the courses remain relevant to the industry needs. Abertay, Liverpool and Media Design School in New Zealand are the finest examples of such practice and the others should all take a look at their good practice.

Firstly, I must say I am glad that a Professor from a respected institution within the games field has responded to this.

In the original article from Sony, I believe I was the only student who responded to the rubbish of its claims. I forwarded this onto my former tutor at Teesside, but due to legitimate legal reasons at the University he couldn't get involved (and as such was grateful that our corner was being fought).
Either way, I'm consequently glad that the other leading university for games in the UK has stepped forward in a public manner in response, and I applaud it.

As far as I'm aware there are less than 20 Universities still in the UK offering these courses, regardless of quality, and with both Teesside and Abertay at least having Skillset accreditations, that accounts for more than 10% being more than up to scratch, thus making the statement of 95% a total fabrication.

I am of the opinion that the majority aren't good enough, due to reasons already mentioned, but as I said in my earlier response it wasn't anything like as bad as claimed.

Prof. MacKinnon is absolutely right in saying that collabaration is needed to bring other institutions up to scratch with places like Teesside and Abertay, especially in terms of industry connections and placement opportunities, as these Universities are the only two I am aware of that offer them.

One of the main issues that the middle management in the UK games industry whines about a lot is how the industry dev's are ageing, and new blood being needed that up to scratch. Yet at the same time, the requirement of 'X number of years experience', is constantly thrown up.
If more dev's and companies get involved in trying to help support the universities trying to start up these courses, they will be more aware of the actual overall state of graduates. This will consequently lead to more placement opportunities, and therefore more employment of graduates. This of course gives the companies more young employees who are eager to be a part of the industry.

I must correct a couple of points from the first comment by Chris from Portsmouth. Firstly, a minor point, Teesside was first to start up the courses in games, having been run at Teesside for nearly 15 years, with Abertay a close second. They are both leading institutions though, and can both be counted as 'Centres of Excellence', in response to the Sony guff that we still need centres of excellence.

However, the point that something like 3ds max needs far more than 3 or even four years to learn thoroughly simply isn't the case. In my earlier response to the Sony staement, I made a point of how in a University situation, you are supposed to teach yourself, thus the majority of your improvement in a given period of time is based on how much and how hard you work.
I can cite myself as an example, within 2 years of hard work, coupled with excellent facilities and tutoring, I got hired by Bizarre Creations. Although it was a placement year, myself an other placement students were considered full time staff, and had to qualify in the same manner as any normal applicant. Once there we also had to learn Maya, in 1 month, as that was what they used, despite our course learning being with 3ds max.

An interesting point though is that whilst I worked there, like all staff, I had access to all the application CV's and showreels, both failed and accepted. Bizarre being a close knit and friendly company, they like to get any and all staff to give their opinions on how a person comes across, and on their thoughts of the applicants skills.
In having a look at some of these CV's, I saw failed applications from Games course LECTURER'S, from institutions that will remain nameless.

This all leads back to Professor MacKinnon's point of collaberation, but also of how it needs to go both ways. Newer Universities need to bring themselves up to speed by approaching industry professionals, and the industry needs to welcome and support them. Something that damning, and bogus statements like the one from Sony, will do nothing to help with.

I think the claim that industry is not helping enough is invalid. If you look at initiatives by the IGDA (Curriculum Framework), Sony, and a few others, the writing is on the wall, as to what the games industry wants EXACTLY.

The problem, in my opinion, is un-motivated university faculty members who do not want to put the hours in learning the ins-and-outs of the latest middleware and/or hardware development kit. They use the excuse "industry won't talk to us...industry won't support us..." as justification for their slackness.

The games industry changes, new technology and architectures emerge (CELL, etc.) which requires work, and constant up-skilling by all those involved (developers AND educators).

If the people teaching do not have the motivation to up-skill, then they should step aside.

There are other issues also, like teaching Java or C#, instead of C++, because, **apparently** C++ is too difficult, and memory management is "tedious."

You will never ever see a commercial game on the PS3 (and equivalent) written in anything other than C++.

There are exceptions, as "Poster 5" said, Uni Abertay and the others have exceptional reputations globally, but the others...

The suggestion that the UK games industry could collaborate with UK academia is the first sensible thing to come of Games On, somewhat not surprisingly coming from academia rather than Games On directly.

What Games On should seek to remember with their shoot from the hip school of pressure is that they need academia a lot more than academia needs the games industry. For academia a games course is just that a course, one of many hundreds that a university provides. For the games industry a games course, and a good one at that, is a major stream of new blood for the industry.
Without running a games course, an academic provider would only need to re-assign several members of staff back to other courses, but for the industry, it has lost a stream of new employees.

I feel that members of Games On would do well to embrace collaboration with their local academic providers. Sure, courses have weaknesses, some of them significant, but the industry would do well to point out its expected aims and objectives for courses rather than just trot out 95% ....

The problem from the Education side is the existing business model- still based on 3 year Degrees, expansion, and bums on seats.
Focus needs to shift to other training/education solutions- like research, accredited CPDs (Continuing Professional Development Courses). For instance, re-training existing IT professionals with games skills.

Incidentally, there are plenty of education/training organisations trying to bridge the skills gap. I'm developing CPDs in Maths for Developers and Agile Software Development but am finding it hard to get any Games companies interested in helping me design these courses, which we hope will be subsidised/delivered by our regional Skillset Media Academy.
Anyone from industry interested in having an input? You can forward messages to me via Gameseden.org

I think saint's comment about looking beyond the traditional three year course structure is really important - why only try to attract people when they're 18 and supposed to make a decision about what they want to do in the future? A huge proportion of people end up doing things totally unrelated to their degree, and if there's no way to move across other than going back to University for three years or searching for a company that'll fill in the gaps in a person's knowledge then there's a potentially large amount of people 'lost' to the system.

I did a traditional CS degree, but I work with quite a few Abertay grads and I have to say on the whole I'm pretty impressed. Obviously we get to pick the ones we want, but it's pretty clear to me that bright kids are well able to learn the required skills there, at least.

The average games grad is pretty shockingly poor, I'd agree, but if you're looking a bit higher up the tree there is some great talent there.

The Skillset accredited courses are listed here:
http://www.skillset.org/games/accreditation/" onclick="window.open ( this.href ); return false;" class="comment_url" >http://www.skillse...tion/

No new courses appear to have been accredited since the first round of accreditations - though there are a few courses I've heard many good things about that are not on this list.
Some short courses (including some postgraduate MSc courses) have very good reputations, but due to the particular demands of the Skillset accreditation document have next to no chance of being accredited (unless Skillset make some big changes...)