GamesEdu Manchester 08

Thanks to Dr. Jon Purdy from the University of Hull MSc course, I was invited to give a short presenation on how I got into the games industry to other lecturers from various Universities, handful of students and representives from other companies. The idea was that it be interesting to hear from someone who has had experienced different qualities of education and the job hunting expereience thereafter. Considering that this was the first time I have ever given a presentation like this, it didn’t go too badly.

I also met up with John Sear from the University of Derby and Kim Blake from Blitz Games who shared similar concerns about generalist games degrees and the sheer number of students taking these courses.

I was particularly impressed by John’s BSc course that he had created to teach students what they needed to know to enter into the games industry as programmers. Some of the project work is comparable to the material that we had to do in our MSc. Especially where they are taught about industry practises such as source control, coding standards, code reviews and project planning towards milestones. The 4 year course also includes a compulsory placement.

Taking to some of the students of the course, I later found out that they only take in ~50 students per year and this number halves as they progress through the course. Currently, there are only 17 students in the final year. The fact that they were still singing prasies about the course despite the huge demends and dropout/failure of the course speaks volumes about the quality of the course and what they are getting out of it.

It makes me wish I had these courses to choose from back when I was an Undergrad.

Hull University Visit

I was meant to write this up last weekend but have been remarkable busy over the past week. A small handful of us was asked to give a talk to the current MScs of the course we took 2 years before.

The whole day was pretty cool, it was great being able to catch up with our old tutors and each other. Honestly, it was like being back at University again (and that isn’t a bad thing ).

We did the usual talk and attempted to answer as many questions as we could and we were surprised at both the level of skill and experience that the students generally had and the some of the questions that were asked.

All the portfolios I saw were extremely high quality and don’t foresee many of them having trouble getting job interviews when they start applying. Quite a few of them already have previous experience in related industries which will help a lot. Overall, it looked very promising for this year.

As for the questions, I honestly expected more ‘break into’ questions, such as anything related to tests, CV and portfolio questions. Instead, we got questions about areas we take for granted such as flextime, technology, recognition of work in the company, which companies to work for and avoid. We really had forgotten what it was like to be sitting where they were.

To round off the day, we all hopped into the union for a few drinks with the head of course Jon and just chatted about industry and the course.

Overall, a pretty good day. Thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely do something like that again.