- This topic has 28 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 6 months ago by
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http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2287204,00.html
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wow this is a topic that seems to never die…
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I am going back to do a HND in media, movie image its nothing to do with games but I am interested in it. After that I will look for a junior position, I think.
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The guys at Abertay are up in arms about this (as I suppose they should be).
http://www.developmag.com/news/30036/Abertay-hits-back-at-Games-Up?m=posted#comments
the feedback comments are also a good read…
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wow this is a topic that seems to never die…[/quote:21f44077c1]
Erm yeah, because its sort of important, just because a story is reported once doesn’t mean it disappears happy in the knowledge that the public now knows what the deal is.
Here is some other stuff you may have missed;
The planet is warming, we’re all fukked.
The global economy is in also fukked.I think you might be hearing about all three topics again – so brace yourself :)
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I’m constantly surprised and disappointed by the gaps in knowledge that recent art graduates display in terms of useful and fundamental industry knowledge. Basic but essential skills are lacking such as UV unwrapping, texture baking, normal mapping – all the way down to good modelling processes. Its not that these guys/gals don’t have the interest or aren’t willing to learn it just seems that the stuff they ARE being taught is of little practical use in the games industry, which is one of the biggest employers of 3D art grads and really warrants more focus.
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I wouldn’t have said Abertay hit back at the article, I would have said they were bigging themselves as being one of the 4 Unis that have a Skillset accreditation, and why not.
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One of the response comments from the hit back:
"Another problem is that 3 years is NOT enough time to teach a program like 3DS MAX thoroughly in any stretch of the imagination. Neither is 4 years."Eh if you can’t learn MAX to industry standard in 3 years training what the hell are you at. There are like a kagillion books on it, people need to stop relying on college to tell you everything, your supposed to do independent learning. Your professor won’t be on site when your working.
I think its important to say that even if the course is crappy there are bound to be some diamond programmers and artists in every college.
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Eh if you can’t learn MAX to industry standard in 3 years training what the hell are you at. There are like a kagillion books on it, people need to stop relying on college to tell you everything, your supposed to do independent learning. Your professor won’t be on site when your working. [/quote:fa7ca31e73]
That’s not the university’s job though, it’s up to the people themselves to have some cop on and do some personal projects as well. You can’t blame (all) the unis for not being able to perform magic if people don’t put any effort in themselves.
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That’s what I meant, I must have written it weird. I do that. :)
Not to say that all the pressure is off the lectures though, if not up to scratch they need to start learning it properly at least two semesters before they need to teach it, that is what their paid for.
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Absolutely David, couldn’t agree more
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Eh if you can’t learn MAX to industry standard in 3 years training what the hell are you at. There are like a kagillion books on it, people need to stop relying on college to tell you everything, your supposed to do independent learning. Your professor won’t be on site when your working. [/quote:12fc995c58]
That’s not the university’s job though, it’s up to the people themselves to have some cop on and do some personal projects as well. You can’t blame (all) the unis for not being able to perform magic if people don’t put any effort in themselves.[/quote:12fc995c58]
IMO with any 3D program Learn is not a word you are always learning. The easily part is learning what the buttons do, the hard part is using them to make something taking into account the polys etc.
My BTEC in media pushed me towards 3D Max and unreal a bit more but I learnt so much online from places like here and game-artist.net. I mean a got feedback on a simple model I was working on the other day from a guy working at DICE. Not going to happen at uni.
I think the big problem is a good 60-80% of the people on these coerces do it because it says games and dont have the mind set to work on their own outside uni and learn as much as they can.
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Maybe what students need are universities that equip them with a broad education in their subject area, and the ability to subsequently learn job specific technical skills, rather than more vocational style training.
Apparently though, many games companies would rather have graduates that can slot into their current workflow with minimal training, work for 5-8 years, and then get replaced by the next generation of graduates.
Maybe universities should never have started producing games specific undergradate (programming) courses in the first place.
There’s those who say it was done as a cynical move designed to increase course numbers, and does students a disservice by being too specific and vocational. (Referring to the undergrad games courses here, more specific training, eg masters, after a broader undergrad makes more sense).
It’s perhaps not surprising that many of these courses fail, as delivering job specific technical training is not what universities are traditionally setup to do, (for example, the academic staff that usually make up the majority of the lecturers are doing more research rather than development).Another issue is that if the companies in question are indeed part of
"one of the most dynamic and profitable industries in the world"
then perhaps in order to get the staff they need, they might consider paying better wages and offering reasonable working weeks, in line with what industries competing for the same pool of graduates offer. This would go a long way towards solving their projected staff shortages.In fact, until wages and working conditions start to improve, it’s very difficult to take an industry body that complains of skills shortages seriously.
It’d be nice if games companies would encourage the universities to broadly educate students, and then pay competitive salaries and provide on the job training.
But it seems what the industry is currently pushing for, is for graduates to emerge from university with the full set of job specific skills, ready to get to work – perhaps this is broadly in line with the overall trend to software factory style game development. It remains to be seen if this model will produce more or less successful games in the long run.</devils advocate>
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It gets talked about because what other industry do hear of where a course aimed at training for the industry could leave you worse of than a more general course. Sounds nuts.
Everyone wants to know if their skills are in need as it validates all the work they have put in and justifies their sacrifices.
Having passed up high paying non games jobs for 5 years of education to get into the field I think it is fair enough to want to hope for light at the end.
I agree with what feral said
Until wages and working conditions start to improve, it’s very difficult to take an industry body that complains of skills shortages seriously. [/quote:ce1a6850fa]
I want wads of cash when I finish this masters. :) -
Frankly the pay levels out once you break the 3-4 year barrier and get a few titles under the belt. I know plenty of people in games making the same amount as their mates in banks, some even earning more than them!
In a bank you’ll rise to the high wage bracket fast but then it levels off and your stuck with a database job and also the I.T. guys in a bank earn a hell of alot less than their trading counterparts. Those guys earn obscene amounts.
While with games it takes abit longer to get there but after 3-4 years your on par and in an awesome game job! Worth it I think.
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At what point in history did the industry ever say they want a jack of all trades? :) I think you’ll find the accurate fact is colleges told us thats what we wanted, because thats what suited them, more high tech subjects more money and funding pathways.
i think thats the problem most academics still frown on games and think its trivial and a few tacked on courses are going to suffice us. Frankly, with this attitude their doing their students out of jobs. Sad fact is majority of lecturers dont wanna go the full haul and learn new things to teach their students. They like the comfortable tenure and year in year similar course and notes, cant blame them. its a good life :)I recently had a talk with a lecturer who asked me while i was at SEGA what would make a game studio come to ireland. I said to him, you tell them why they should come to ireland, what can students offer them in terms of skills etc. Then I was shown a few levels of a simple game made using either unreal or source, i cant remember and told check this out, and I was like but thats a level designed using a tool already built? What can the student actually do (did he do ai, or something special with the lighting?), what does this actually demonstrate to me? Then he tuned out entirely and tried to fog me off, I was chatting away trying to give pointers and advice, which he asked for, but not one word I said went in or was taken on board. He just kept saying "but its wicked eh??". This really annoyed me.
Did he really think I was going to say "wow man this dude wrote this engine himself, jesus!" Its this attitude that really gets to me. He thought a student using this tool was going to actually fool someone if he sent it in as a demo? Sorry but he let his student down.
Sadly though on a point of graduate programmes within game studios I think you will never get a programme similar to what the banks etc offer, because a game studio doesnt take on the same quantity. Banks will take on 50-60 grads a year, a game studio might at best take on 4-5. Also their business is similar year in year out, so they can have a syllabus to train up their new grads. Unfortunately, game studios often dont make the same game next time round so how do you syllabus that, it changes too fast. Best you can hope for is you get paired with an experienced programmer or artist and he\she takes you under their wing and trains you up to be a good engineer. I was fortunate, this is how it happened for me. I had 2 really great mentors both with approx 10+ years experience making all sorts of AAA games, for that I’m extremely thankful.
Although some companies do really strive and take pride in training up their graduates, Blitz is a prime example of this ( that i know of, possibly more place do this) and fair play to them.. -
Willing to mention which uni the lecturer was from?
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I recently had a talk with a lecturer who asked me while i was at SEGA what would make a game studio come to ireland. I said to him, you tell them why they should come to ireland, what can students offer them in terms of skills etc. Then I was shown a few levels of a simple game made using either unreal or source, i cant remember and told check this out, and I was like but thats a level designed using a tool already built? What can the student actually do (did he do ai, or something special with the lighting?), what does this actually demonstrate to me? Then he tuned out entirely and tried to fog me off, I was chatting away trying to give pointers and advice, which he asked for, but not one word I said went in or was taken on board. He just kept saying "but its wicked eh??". This really annoyed me.
[/quote:84812da0d2]I assume it was a programing degree?
Willing to mention which uni the lecturer was from?[/quote:84812da0d2]
Could save someone wasteing 4 years.
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Yes it was a programming degree.
No that person will remain nameless. Sorry no name and shame here. Besides one doesn’t represent the full faculty and certainly not the course quality.
The only point I was making was why ask for advice and help then totally ignored it(kind of rude). Although technically that was industry relations as some courses would call it. We asked them, but we didn’t listen to them. lol
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I think there are just too many of them. We need fewer but better quality courses.
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Hi all,
A little late coming in to this conversation, but here’s my two cents.
Any game programming course should focus on C++, Data Structures, Algorithms, and Memory Managment.
Supporting components, (also in C++), should be Maths, Physics, AI, Networking, Cross-Platform / Hardware / Console considerations.
Level editors, level design, mods, and other stuff are fine as a hobby, or for summer schools.
If your mission statement, as an educational provider is to train students for placement into AAA studios, then these (in my opinion) are the skills that need to be taught.
YES, this is a lot of specialised material.
YES, this stuff is difficult to learn and teach.
YES, devkits are hard (not impossible) to get.I’m not pulling any of this out of thin air; it is all in the IGDA Curriculum Framework.
Regards,
Brendan. -
I think there are just too many of them. We need fewer but better quality courses.[/quote:1678be4056]
This is part of the solution and its up to the government to clamp down or do something about the non accredited courses. The games industry has grown into a very profitable industry raking in more than the film and music industry combined. Everyone wants a slice of the pie, education sector, prosective business men looking to start a profitable organisation.
In the same way that the education sector is overflowing with generic games courses the industry is overflowing with micky mouse game studios. As a student that reads a lot i think going to be hard to find a decent studio that wont exploit you just because you have one specific qualification geared towards the games industry.
Im currently doing the HNC in Derry at the moment and thats as far as i will go in terms of degree level qualifications for the games industry. To give myself the versitility im applying for a Bsc computer science degree also, this will give me a diversity that any games studio will have to respect. Im lucky that im focused on what part of the industry i want to enter now i suppose thats why i retook my a levels aswell, i think the extra year payed off in that respect.
Aside from that my perception of the games industry has changed since i started my course. They dont candy coat things in Derry thank god and we have a brilliant course coordinator. Im lucky to be in a quality course and i wish there were more courses like this one in the celtic islands.
Simon
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