Understanding the barriers facing games students – and how to remove them
Earlier this year, a GDC talk entitled 'From Rosy-Eyed to Dissatisfied: What Game Education Is Missing' addressed the main issues game students encounter, and how to solve them.
The talk was presented by Cristina Amaya, president of Latinx in Gaming and director at DreamHack, and Kenzie Gordon, PhD candidate and instructor in Media and Technology Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Gordon is also the project manager for The First Three Years, a longitudinal study which follows game students post-graduation.
"Basically what we're doing is we're talking to people the year that they graduate from their game program, and every year for three years after that, to see what that transition into the games industry is like for people," she explained at GDC.
"So when people are coming out of their final year of their program, we're interested in what kind of things were covered in their program. Did they have opportunities for internships and professionalisation? What was their game education experience like? And then, after that, we want to hear about how that transition has been going for them, what kind of networks have been supportive, how has that experience gone."
And that's whether they make it into games or not, with Gordon noting that it's equally important for the study to talk to students who don't end up in games, to understand what happened.
The study is currently in its second year, so the answers analysed during the talk focused on students just post-graduation, but it still provides a fascinating insight into the issues they're facing. The research is being done collaboratively by four Canadian universities (Western University, University of Alberta, University of Waterloo, and York University) in
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
