Tiga outlines education plans

Tiga has published its latest policy paper, Download 03, in which it sets forth its plans for strengthening relationships between businesses and universities.

In addition to profiling the relationship types often seen currently, such as Ubisoft’s work with Teeside University to develop its course and Emote’s research collaborations with Imperial College London, the document reaffirms the organisation’s call to the government for a Games Education Fund, as originally detailed last year.

Tiga intends to continue its Tiga Technology Group effort to promote knowledge transfer between developers and educators, and has also pledged to examine how other industries manage the academia collaboration and see if there are models that the industry can adapt to its own needs. The group is also considering using the Tiga-Nesta portal on its website to share information between the industry and the academic sector regarding research needs, projects and funding.

“If the UK games development sector is to maintain a competitive advantage in an intensely competitive global market, then developers must pursue two objectives: exploit universities’ research activities in areas such as artificial intelligence and work with them to produce graduates of the highest quality," said Tiga CEO Richard Wilson.

“Universities should work through Tiga to highlight areas where they would like to collaborate with games developers and games businesses. Tiga and universities can also work together to improve the content of higher education courses. Universities such as Abertay, Brighton, Derby, Portsmouth and Teeside have joined Tiga to develop strong links with the games industry, to the benefit of their students and of the games development sector.

“Tiga will continue to strengthen the relationship between the video games industry and higher education in order to help make the UK the best place in the world to do games business.”