Nesta Report - Next Gen »
The Nesta report came out recently which generally talks about the lack of skilled applicants coming into the games and creative industries and what can be done to improve the situation.
It generally covers introduction of STEM skills at an earlier level such as at GCSE and A-Level and improving existing courses at University.
All the suggestions and conclusions are valid and echo the thoughts of lecturers from a Games:Edu conference I attended in 2008. However, I see a problem in implementing some of the recommendations listed in the report as they generally involve in getting teachers and/or staff that know how to teach these subjects well.
Where are these people going to come from? Teachers and lecturers salaries are generally not great so what incentives are there for people from the industry to and teach? How do we train the existing teachers and lecturers?
Despite this, the report itself is definitely worth a read if you are interested in education of games or interactive media as it has a lot of data from surveys to support its findings and personally I am interested in one of its recommendations of having an online resource for lesson plans and collection of resources as that will be incredibly useful for people who are interested in the industry.
Games Design Courses - Are they worth it?
Please note: When I refer to game developers, this means I am referring to everyone involved in the development of the game such as programmers, artists, producers, designers, etc. There has been increasingly more enquires about becoming a games developer in forums related to games careers such as the ones on IGDA and GameCareerGuide. As much as I am happy that more and more people are interested in entering the games industry, the majority of these are asking on how they become a games designer and which games design course should they choose because they naturally see it as the best way to get into the industry. After all, if you want to be a plumber, you do a plumbing course. So if you want to be games designer, you do a games design course, right? If only it was that simple.
