How can the industry and education bring through the next generation of games talent?
Lisa Carter
Wednesday 20th April 2022
The skills shortage in the UK games industry -- and elsewhere -- is putting a spotlight on how the sector can nurture talent for the future. At the same time, we are seeing a huge shift in working patterns, with studios and educational institutions adopting remote, flexible and hybrid working.
These issues will be addressed at the Games Education Summit, which kicks off tomorrow, and here we discuss some of those points with the speakers.
There has been criticism in the past of studios not engaging well enough with Higher and Further Education institutions, and of universities not preparing students properly for a career in games. How have things changed over the past couple of years?
Rick Gibson, BGI: When we ran the first GamesEd Summit in 2019, we saw some feisty debates between educators and studios as competing demands clashed. But the summit is designed to build bridges and since then we've seen real change as studios and educators increased their collaboration. We like to showcase innovation, including from smaller studios, and I was particularly impressed last year with how Fabrik Games and Bolton University worked so closely together to redesign the curriculum and review students' portfolios. Not so small now, but Fabrik shows how any studio can think long term about pathways for talent into their team.
Philip Oliver, Panivox
Philip Oliver, Panivox: The impact of COVID basically put everything on hiatus. Adjusting to the impact of the pandemic became all-consuming for both educators and studios, so for a while any perceived lack of engagement from either will have been exaggerated. Educators, for example, needed to focus on delivering courses while staying safe, while studios had
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