I'm not saying they're doing a fantastic job but quite a few companies through TIGA are doing their best to help academia. It's not like no one is even trying. Some companies even line themselves up with their local university.

Yes, the tools and techniques they teach become obsolete before they even start teaching them. But that's not the issue. The best courses I ever did taught me how to think and be creative on stuff that I never used in the industry. This is a lazy requirement from people who just want mediocre juniors to be able to hit the factory floor without the company having to spend time and money on training talented people on their tools.

A big problem is that some universities aren't even trying to achieve anything like Skillset levels of education. They just want bums on seats.

The better universities still need a lot of work but it's difficult because the problems lie with the nature of how degrees work. It's far too focused on individual work, stifling creativity with rules, and courses that can't work in line with each other.

I know of people who have gotten firsts from good universities who didn't cut it in industry. I know people who did badly at university and have excelled in industry. The whole thing is fundamentally flawed and no calls for people to roll their sleeves up when there is no more to roll will change anything.

The issue that (in general) developers seem to spend a lot of time criticising and not a lot of time actually trying to change things is a very valid point.

I think the fundamental issue is that universities run courses based on how many people choose to do the course. If there are a lot of people signing up to it, why would they not run it, and why would they feel like they need to improve it?

Surely then if we want the universities to improve their courses we need to influence the people who choose those courses - by getting involved with those people BEFORE they get round to choosing.

If we education schools, parents and school children on what the students need to learn, then we are empowering them to choose good courses, and that will in turn force the weaker courses to improve. This can be done through developers building relationships with their local schools e.g. doing talks at schools and offering work experience positions.

On a slightly different note, a lot of university courses offer placement years, or try to place students in shorter term placements. But from speaking to current and ex students from games courses, it appears that very few ever get placements - more developers should be offering placements.

At the end of the day, if we don't communicate with the students before they get into the industry, how exactly do we expect them to make sensible decisions on what they need to learn?

We are a very small studio, but get a lot of requests to do guest lectures, and set briefs to university modules - which we do as much as we can. Thing is, it works well for us as we get paid to do a lot of it. We also take placement students and work experience students, and we find that placements students are a great asset (as well as potential employees!) and that taking a work experience student for 5 days every now and again really doesn't hurt!

The major problems are: -

Education before university. It's not enough to go into schools and getting kids to do more maths for the reward of making games at the end of it. Standards of education seem to be down and kids aren't going to improve just if we just tell them too. University courses are too easy now because before that students were dropping out in droves because it became too difficult.

Work Placements. These are great. I agree. But it is also expensive for a company to employ very, very green people for a year. Quite a few companies do take on the best and brightest, usually those who will do well degree or no degree, and reap the rewards but just doing more of them isn't going to solve the larger problem. Also, if you take too many on you'll find they won't be given as many important tasks that they can actually learn on.

Guest lectures. What are you going to go in an teach in one session? The only guest lectures that are on are recruitment drives. The stuff they say is interesting but not particularly useful. Anything of any larger scope would be a massive drain on time and resources. It's one thing to advise universities, it's another to do their job for them.

The education problem is a massive one and can't be solved just by doing more of what we're already doing.

I was at Develop Liverpool, but I missed this panel because it clashed with something else more relevant for my students but I was surprised to be one of very few academic representatives at the conference.

Some aspects of the comments above are true but a lot seem out of kilter with what actually happens. We can, and do, change or update our course content pretty much every year, we have to or we languish behind the industry, the tools available and the students expectations.

We'd love to get more of our students working in placements, even short term, but we understand why not more of even our best students don't get placements but any industry and we work hard to provide alternatives - incubator years for instance.

A guest lecture on any subject, in fact just the chance for our students to listen and ask questions to someone from the industry is a great motivator. We have a graduate show every year and engagement with that rockets when they know industry representatives will be attending - which in turn is great for the students.

We do work very hard at developing our courses and it isn't for us about 'bums on seats', the education the student receives matters greatly to us and I'm very proud to work on the courses we do have and develop new ones - ideally with as much industry involvement as possible.

I'll tell you why developers are sitting around bitching.

The fact is that so many courses have popped up purporting to prepare students for games development. The truth is that there was probably little wrong with the traditional education streams leading in to a career of games development. Specifically, Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics for the Programming side. Design, Art and Multi-media courses for those of an Artistic bent. These traditional courses tend to create a skills rich employee and leave the student with more options if their primary career choice doesn't come to fruition.

You have to forgive the bitching when the we're still a little cynical about the motives of offering headline grabbing and popularist games courses educating thousands of students when the number of graduate places in this country can be counted out with a packet of cigarettes.

Now to complain about why the industry is distancing itself from this type of education that seem predominantly orientated towards benefiting course placements is like asking why somebody doesn't join a cause that benefits nobody bar the cause initiator.

If only one or two of these courses started up, slowly, and was actively engaged with Industry from dot we'd probably be more prepared to proffer advice direction and take the courses seriously.

As it is, it's like the wild west, with a new course being offered every week, more lecturers than industry professionals - and with each department baying for industry participation we just don't know where to look.

I can tell you there is no clear educational path leading into management, why don't we have any courses there?

A quick comment with regards to the game education system. I am a 10 year game industry veteran and have have worked on my fair share of 'AAA' titles. By working with and now teaching at the most esteemed game eduction program in the States, I can tell you that we pride ourselves on being ahead of the game industry.
While everyone in the industry is in the trenches, heads down, focusing on the next milestone, we have time to research and develop new tech, new ideas, new methodologies and have a real focus to the future of the industry.
As our game industry matures and the value of the university improves, to what is predominately an industry of non academics(myself included), it will be the university students developing, leading and owning the next generation of game industry studios.

To often programs at universities begin without a true understanding of the game industry or of the needs they have. This has tainted the universities, both the good and bad ones, making it difficult for developers looking for talent and a standard of education.

Bear in mind though, that the university is in a difficult spot as well, we are asked to take all of the game industry and find commonalities and develop a standard from this... let's be serious about this, I've been there folks, the game industry is all over the place when it comes to what a standard is... it varies from one developer to the next and few to none at this point in time are willing to adopt a standard.
This is seen in many ways from what should a portfolio have in it, to what software should be used, (If you want a list I'll post one) to the more difficult and most important the acceptance, by the game industry, of the standards set.

It is an exciting time for the game industry and universities as we continue to develop and mature together making a better future for this creative and demanding medium.

I am very curious as to which " most esteemed game eduction program in the States" Will refers to??

Hi there, I just wanted to put across my own views on this debate about the games industry and universities... from a student's point of view!

I am on the second year of a computer science degree at Brighton University, and am actively looking for a placement for next year. The course I am doing has a games element to it, and I do feel that having this has greatly enhanced my willingness and desire to get into the games industry. The lecturers are also great and very supportive, although it is probably true that the course isn't as up-to-date as it could be!

The problem I am having at the moment is getting an industry placement for next year! I have applied to a few companies, most of whom I have had no response from at all, and just one who have said that they do not offer placements.

This is leaving me in a bit of a dilemma at the moment! I have a strong programming background having taught myself ten years ago now in Delphi, and since then have gained experience in Java and C# too. However my strongest language is C++ which I feel I am fairly experienced in - I spent the summer this year going out of my way to make a 3d racing game which really enhanced my learning and skills. It was not something that I had to do for university but just a personal project as I really do enjoy programming and love learning something new! (www.sam-edwards.co.uk)

I have had excellent results so far at university, with A's in all my first year modules, as well as already possessing A-levels in maths, physics, computing, and electronics. The university has even awarded me a scholarship in recognition of my results, which I am very proud to have received!

This is where the problem lies. I feel that I am more than motivated and able to cope with a placement, and have all the right skills, probably more so than any of the fellow students on my course. I also believe I could genuinely contribute something positive to a company and give them something back, but how do I get a placement if very few are willing to take students on?

The question is, do I now continue applying to games companies in the hope that an offer may come up somewhere? I live in the south east, so would ideally like to find something local-ish or in London, but may have to accept travelling further afield? Or do I resign myself to the fact that I am unlikely to find a placement with a games company and start looking to spend a year with any IT company? Or do I give the placement year a miss in light of the recession/unemployment and then hope to land a job straight after my degree with no experience?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Have you tried talking to Tiga about this, Sam?

They cover a load of studios, including Relentless I believe. The guy at the top is called Richard Wilson, never met him myself but I'm told he's a cool guy. Ping him an email and see if he can help locate a participating studio.

sam2019, I hate to patronize you dude, but I'd advise you phone these companies rather then email them. And be persistent.

Make them know your name, and make them know your enthusiastic and driven as well as talented.

Studios want people who deliver, not just people who are qualified. being assertive and bold in your pitches will only add to your reputation.

Forgive me picking up on one particular poster, but the "traditional" degrees, while a historical legacy, are not best placed to prepare all but a few students for games and in no way suggest to them that this is a valid path. I have a Maths and a Physics degree. I built my own computers from the age of 10 and it never occurred to me that games was a valid career; I wish someone had told me it would be back in 1979. As it is, I now teach game programming, so it all ended well for me. However, the traditional courses are seeing departments closing and falling recruitment, despite (IT for example) careers screaming for new graduates. For those people still doing these courses, Games offers a very poor alternative. The very least (and we are doing far more than this) is the legitimisation and research into games development as a career.

If you want to take the cynical stance of "bums on seats" miss-selling of games courses face on, no-one who is doing this will survive the next few years. And if we are honest that not every student, or even a majority, will probably end up in the industry - so it is worth having those core IT skills - then we are being useful in a number of ways. Those traditional courses, when they were still viable at the point I did my degree (for which I received a full grant, to date me) didn't even think of dealing with the key transferable skills, such as team work, communication, etc. They were for an elite of 3-4% of the population attending university, not the 30-40% coming now. Teaching styles and the end result were/are completely different.

I'm a masters student at a well known(ish) university in Scotland studying games technology (that should give it away :)) I've been involved in the university at degree, post grad and now masters level, it is an excellent university and anyone I know with a serious feeling about getting into games I recommend this university.

However I understand the problem academia has with the industry, take for example a well known console released circa 2000, the university is still teaching students to program on this bit of kit. Now it could be claimed that this is still a good learning curve and differing take from traditional windows programming, but to continue to do so on a now obsolete piece of kit is frustrating for students.

So being a student representative I queried the institutes reasoning. Their answer, the new piece of kit, the next-gen dev kit, has been on order from the company, order form's signed off for months, as in more than 12. But they were still awaiting delivery, and when I enquired as to how many dev kits would be delivered....just two. For over 200 computer game programming students....2.

Now this is a very specific example and I’m hoping to prove a wider point, that when an institute is willing to keep up with the industry, the industry itself is tying its hands.

Now Chris K mentioned that course are popping up all over the place and most of them are not run to a standard which is useful to the industry, but because there are so many popping up it’s impossible to help. My only response to this is, don’t help them all. Help the ones that are established, there are those that are actively trying, push those ones and while I understand you can’t turn around and say there rubbish but infer. I understand that not all companies have the time/resources/people to help, but no companies or only very few, I find that very hard to believe. I have the fortune to live in a city where there are multiple games companies and most seem to be very helpful, but this is not universal. The answer appears simple, sit down and talk about it, of course that’s not necessarily easy.

I used to be a games developer and am now a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London, teaching the games programming aspect to their MSc in Computer Games & Entertainment course and, in my opinion Enda is totally on the money with this.

From my experience of building the MSc at Goldsmiths, one of the best resources we had for the course was the ability to contact developers that I had worked with in the past, essentially to use them as a reality test for what we were thinking of teaching, i.e. was our course material actually relevant to industry needs. In addition we used them as a sounding board to determine what kind of things would they like to see in the graduates coming out of the course. This directly led to re-directing some of the course to make it far more focused on team-work and working with other people’s code.

Another thing we’ve been able to implement, which I feel has had a massive positive effect on the students, has been to get people from industry in to talk to the course. I know a lot of developers will say ‘what have I got to offer’, but bear in mind that you’re talking to a bunch of students that are passionate to get into the industry, the students will hang on your every word because they are really that keen to find out what actually goes on in games companies. You would not believe what a black box you work in.

Games developers need to build relationships with universities if they want to get better courses, it simply isn’t good enough for the development community to just turn round at conferences and whatever to just turn round and issue a ‘games course aren’t fit for purpose’ sound bite a
nd to then expect things to magically improve.
I’d say to developers, please get involved with your local university’s games course, you’re never going to know how good, bad or indifferent a course is until you can meet with the staff and students. Then, if it is a load of rubbish, you’re in a good position to help the course address its problems and once they do fix the problems, you can gear the course to give you a steady inflow of interns, placements and recruits.

This was just an additional thought, but couldn't it be possible, for there to be a public ranked industry led Computer games course table.

So not only to students know how well regarded the course is by the industry but the institutes know. Could it not be run by a body like skillset (the media division bit) who i know use industry pros to evaluate courses. A yearly lists just to show.

Then you'd have kids fighting tooth and nail to get on the undergrad they wanted. And if they couldn't get a high enough uni, then they could try a standard computer science degree before post grading at a well respected company.

The thread is very interesting. As a specialist games industry recruiter Aardvark Swift places many graduates each year into games studios. We carry out 20 - 30 careers talks at various universities to push the benefits of a career in games to under grads.
The vast majority of the candidates we represent do not manage to break into games (they are not deemed strong enough/relevant by studios) - So we are acutely aware of the skills/knowledge gap that is out there. We also recognise that there seems to be a lack of communication between studios and academia.

We are not interested in who is to blame but we are interested in helping to find a solution

This is why we have devised a plan!

It's called "Search for a Star" and will be running for the first time this year. It's an "X Factor" style competition that will test technical knowledge and coding skills to highlight the UK's brightest grads and also highlight the best courses.

We have 50 universities that are talking part, we're running it in partnership with Develop and also have Relentless on board as a specialist studio partner. Please keep your eyes on the press for full details (next months edition of Develop)

We're hoping that the competition will help more grads make it into games but we're also hoping that those courses who do not achieve success will realise what developers are really looking for and take a look at their course content/adapt it for the following years.

Any studios or Uni's that are interested in hearing more - please mail me.

Ian Goodall
Director
Aardvark Swift
ian@aswift.com

It's worth mentioning that it doesn't really matter which university is the best (Kyle's post). I don't think that will solve anything. I've known people do well at Skillset universities and not be able to cope with industry. I've known people that had a horrible time at uni do very well.

The people who did well tended to be in two camps at uni. Those who did well of their own backs. And those who didn't because they were bored. The course itself was rarely a factor ...and I went to one of the good ones.

Going back to my earlier points (that seem to be from ages ago now) ...the gulf between the experience of working through a degree course and that of working in industry is massive. It's the whole structure of academic teaching that is the problem.

It's all well and good getting dev kits and guest lecturers in but the ridged academic structure will always keep it back. From the people who get firsts to the people that scrape a pass ...it's still a drop in the ocean compared to what you will learn working alongside experienced developers for a few months.

Obviously giving every student a developer each isn't a solution. But my point is that neither is simply improving the degree courses we already have.

An academic degree is a great thing to have. Go and learn computer science, go and learn maths, go and learn art ...and designers, go and learn anything you like.

It's from this point we should be focusing our efforts into getting these people trained up and into games. I'd rather have a smaller pool of talented people from any relevant background willing to enter games than have money pumped into kids out of college who a vast majority of won't make it.

I don't think game developers are opposed to the idea of game degrees per se, it's just self evident that there are too many of them, producing too many students who will never get jobs in the industry. Obviously the best students still stand a good chance - but then they always did! The fact that there are SOME decent games courses, and SOME great graduates of these courses in no way justified the great bulk of mediocrity we're seeing pouring out of them.

I'd echo what others have said above. A degree is pretty important to get looked at these days, but I would not look beyond traditional CS and Art courses, or any decent degree for disciplines like Production or Design.

1. It's less likely to be dismissed as micky mouse, unfair or not.
2. If you fail or change your mind you're not stuck with a highly tailored games specific degree, and you'll have more chance outside this industry.

If I was in the position of choosing my degree again, I just can't see the argument for choosing a games course over a traditional qualification. Whatever you choose you'll likely have to learn yourself outside the curriculum to make it into the industry.

Been following this discussion from start to finish. Genuinely fascinating. You’re all keynote speakers in the making.

Would be nice to put some faces to the names though! You can register an upload a mugshot if you like.

I would offer that the normal accreditation process and degree format is unsuitable for games development.

Anyone who can go from a game related degree, and subsequently do a Game masters and Games PHD consecutively has probably in all likelihood to have had sufficient mileage in the games industry to offer/provide suitable mentoring/teaching ability to incoming students.

Far better to introduce a system where one

1/ Does a game related degree/intercalated with a traditional course

2/ Have had to work in the game industry for a minimum 3 years, before being allowed to apply for a masters. And subsequently, have had worked
5-6 years within the industry before applying for a PHD.

For example, a Aspiring artist - would enroll for a intercalated Game Entertainment Design course - this involves 1.5 years of either industrial design/fine illustration/transport design coupled with 1.5 years of Product usability/game level design/entertainment design.

An additional 6 months, should be spent, via links forged with the gaming sector for a UNPAID, 3 - 6 month internship.

This will allow for sufficient training/mileage to be both useful/learn the initial aspects of working within the industry and subsequently help provde stronger feedback for the next years course.

Apologies, I meant to say:
" Anyone who can go from a game related degree, and subsequently do a Game masters and Games PHD consecutively has probably in all likelihood to have had insufficient mileage in the games industry to offer/provide suitable mentoring/teaching ability to incoming students."

Any Games Developers who want to give back to Education are welcome to contact me as Computer Games Manager at Skillset. We accredit the best universities, (and will have more good news on that front before Christmas), but we are also increasingly getting involved in offering those Universities aid in terms of curriculum development and linking with industry. Our accredited Universities welcome your input and can only improve by a dialogue with you, Developers! Skillset can broker this free of charge. Developers, if you've had trouble getting a response from Universities, get in touch. Educators, if you want to improve your course then read our online accreditation guides -written by industry for you- then speak to us.

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I’m going on an assumption here from Kosh so if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick pre apologies.

I assume you are talking about the people lecturing at universities and claiming that without industry experience in there on going education towards msc and PhD that they are unsuitable to teach.

I would as with most things disagree to a point. Some of the lecturers at the university I study at currently got there original degrees in things such as maths and computer science and have amalgamated towards Computer games design, is this ideal, certainly not, but when computer games courses were young (10 years ago) there were the best people to teach because industry folk wanted nothing to do with it. It started off as a template to try and succeed.

Now my university is lucky that it’s games course has a couple of people who have worked in the industry, one of which has 15+ years of experience (a fact he loves to remind us) as a computer artist by trade his relevance to us is more about teaching about the industry, I found his module interesting. By contrast the other lecturer with industry experience I’ve learned practically nothing off, perhaps lack of experience in the industry or as a tutor, but to suggest that he’d be better suited than someone who has been teaching (and staying on top of) an ever changing degree for 10 odd years is ludicrous.

Now let’s for argument sake say I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick and you’re talking about us learning folk. I certainly couldn’t agree more. Having done my degree 3 years ago, I spent two years working in differing industry jobs, gaining experience before returning to do my masters, it gave me a completely different outlook on the industry and I would fully recommend it to anyone who is thinking of jumping straight to master’s level.

I would point out thought that I am a rarity having done under grad games then post grad games, most post graders (is that really a word?) come from maths degrees, engineering, computer science. So can you imagine doing those degrees and getting industry experience (beside CS obviously).

This whole idea that "traditional" courses on computer science are "better" than game development degrees is really annoying to me.

I'm assuming that the people who purport this argument actually haven't experienced BOTH of those. I took a relatively traditional CS degree many many years ago. It taught me about a lot of things, almost all of them were interesting but mostly irrelevent to modern game development.

Now I teach game programming after many years in the industry and I try and cherry pick the ideas that were useful from traditional CS but embed it within the technologies actually used in game development.

So how can the CS course be "better"? A good quality game course is literally the BEST parts of the CS course combined with knowledge of modern development technologies and practice.

So I really refute that argument, I suspect a lot of it is projection of the individual onto their own experience. But I'll lay down the gauntlet and say that anyone who has a better set of skills to deliver is welcome to let us know about them!

On the topic as a whole, I agree with Enda. It really is a great help if industry actually takes an interest in their local universities. We do pretty well in that regard, we have plenty of industry visits (including a good number of our own graduates who come back to share their experiences).

One thing I will point out to those that don't know about the skillset accreditation that REALLY annoys me. The accreditation requires that your courses have been unchanged for I think it might be 3 years? (we stopped looking for a while). We change our courses constantly to improve, often based on industry feedback. We simply weren't happy to have the course remain static in order to get the skillset approval. I do wish they would acknowledge that having an improving course is actually a requirement rather than detrimental.

Anyway, at least there are some different views being discussed here. I often look at the industry/academia debate and feel so depressed. Both sides have so much to learn.

One of the issue I see when we get interns at work, is that the type of education they get is not really adequate, it's too focused on things that can get irrelevant very fast.

As a programmer in a videogame studio, what I'm looking for are people that are adaptable, can find things by themselves, people eager to learn, that can search and find things, people who learned to learn: These people will perhaps not be entirely ready to work immediately, but at least they are going to be able to show their abilities as interns in a large number of different setups.

On the other hands what we get are people who got some very strange mixes of courses. Like 1 month learning how to use Unreal Editor, 3 months learning Java, 1 month learning C++, etc... these never used the tools they are going to use in the industry (source control, debuggers, issue trackers, communication software, ...) they have been working on small projects not involving no more than two persons (so they have no clue on how to work in a team), most have to work only on one platform, and never had to do something that work on says Linux + Mac + Windows, they don't have low level knowledge (hardware, caches, multithreading, locks, ...), don't know anything about networks, no experience in hacking/piracy/abuses/programming best practice/documentation/testing, etc...

That was for the programmers.

I heard similar things from people evaluating interns for art (people not knowing what 'budgets' are, being totally inefficient using art packages, ...)