Studios could fund educators to teach pupils, and have priority on hiring them in return
Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, has heard recommendations to promote a ‘golden handcuff’ scheme that could build stronger bridges between the games industry and the education system.
The initiative would see UK studios help fund a trainee’s game development education at university, after which the student would return to the studio for full time employment.
The theory is that the scheme would force stronger collaboration between the games industry and academia, whist at the same time stimulating job growth in the sector.
Vaizey revealed the possible initiative at the Learning Without Frontiers event in London, a three-day conference for discussion and debate on digital media, education, technology and entertainment.
He said the opportunity to work with games and tech companies is “enormous”, however he suggested the speed of the industry is moving can naturally be problematic for public spending.
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“How you can fund and encourage technological advances if new ones arrive every year,” Vaizey asked.
How academia works with the games industry has become a contentious issue in recent months. Many game developers have said that younger generations of aspiring developers lack an adequate foundation in key subjects for game development.
Many education groups, meanwhile, believe that the industry must help universities build more practical game-based courses.
Awareness on the issue has grown in recent months, and today the trade body NESTA is conducting an ongoing review on the skills-gap affecting the UK industry.
The initiative will make recommendations to Government on how the UK can improve its standing on an increasingly competitive world-stage.
Vaizey said the government had a roundtable with the games industry at the end of last year, where companies such as Nintendo and Sony discussed how games can help education.
At the end of his speech, the culture minister heard several criticisms of the government’s commitment to the games industry. You can read about that here.
On paper, this approach can sound grand. However, the minutiae of making it all work, be a worthwhile investment is a bit more tenous.
Perhaps a year end grant, for the top 5 and a job guarantee at various developer studios may offer a good incentive.
I'm a mature student currently studying games design in my 2nd year and the casual attitude of 90% of the students even now after the initial crop in the first year horrifies me.
The top five idea sounds like a good plan, at least the company needs to have some guarantee of sorts of the quality of staff they may end up with.
Alternatively maybe some kind of work experience prior to uni with the chance of some uni funding if the company are happy enough with the candidate.
I think encouraging students to come out of uni and start up their own companies should be the most important. The UK needs new IP's, what better way to do that than have fresh minds?
I don't quite follow, I didn't think there was a shortage of skilled games developers. Quite the opposite, there's a shortage of games jobs for existing graduates. It's foolish to encourage people to go into this industry without supporting the industry itself. At the moment we are training up students to go overseas. Dumb.
Given the trouble UK developers have staying afloat, and where wages are their biggest cost, adding the wages for students who don't even work for you is quite daft.
Nothing is more effective than inspiring a child. The best people out there don't always come through the education system, they just love what they do. How about subsidising a British built gaming platform aka Spectrum 2020!
