

Skills shortage hits games firms  - edw519
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7460870.stm

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xirium
Two weeks ago, the BBC had an article about the shortage of mathematicians and
physicists who persue teaching (
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7433339.stm> ). Would you want the best
mathematicians and physicists writing games or teaching the next generation of
students? Currently, there's a shortfall in both cases and the reason is quite
simple: the pay and conditions are atrocious.

~~~
gaius
If there is a _genuine_ shortage in any industry it's easy to tell: it's
reflected in salary, signing/retention bonuses, people getting away with
acting like rockstars, etc.

If there is a lot of whining about a shortage but that isn't showing up in
cold hard cash then all we have is a management class trying to drive down the
wages of the workers.

~~~
narag
One of the ways to do that is asking the government to ease the inmigration
policies for programmers.

~~~
gaius
I'm not sure that will help at all, since the only mechanism the government
has to evaluate a programmer is whether or not they already have a job with a
local company, and if they do then the company will sort their visa anyway.

To be truly meritocratic, we'd need a means to not only allow but _attract_
engineers (of all sorts) based on talent. At the moment a mediocre engineer
from a country that has historical ties with us will find it easier to
immigrate than an excellent engineer from a country that doesn't. Which seems
a bit counterproductive to me.

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pmjordan
I know this is getting pretty old, but game companies have nobody but
themselves to blame. Let's face it, _making games is cool_. They've got that
on their side. But they're not willing to pay enough to even cover costs of
living to graduates, they don't pay people for the copious overtime they
expect them to work, and to top it off they insult people's intelligence by
doing a terrible job managing the teams and projects.

Okay, some places are probably better than others, but I never heard about any
fantastic places to work at from people in the industry. And I suspect word
would get round pretty quickly, given how there's about 3 degrees of
separation in the UK game industry and everyone knows everyone.

EDIT: if I sound bitter, that's probably because I speak from experience. I
was once a fresh-eyed graduate going straight into game development. (I
studied computational physics, not gamedev though)

~~~
derefr
Hmm... sounds like an opportunity. Why are there no gaming startups?

~~~
pmjordan
There are quite a few, at least in the casual and PC game sector. You stand
almost no chance on consoles, as the console manufacturers won't give you the
SDKs and won't let you sell your game for their console unless you go through
an established publisher. The publishers generally require you to sign over
all "IP" (concept, names, characters, art, code) to them, which doesn't make
it attractive to your average startup founders.

The only publisher I know of that doesn't do this is GameCock,
(<http://www.gamecockmedia.com/>) they're effectively a startup as well,
although the founders are industry veterans.

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dazzawazza
I used to be a lead programmer in the UK games industry and interviewed many
many graduates from Games courses. I didn't find a single programming
candidate that understood basic alrorithms, memory usage, embedded programming
or compilers. The courses are simply not up to scratch.

That being said, the UK games industry is always moaning but it does little or
nothing to help. Ask academics and they will tell you: that the industry
doesn't help shape the courses at all, it's impossible to place students for
work experience and many graduates who do find work leave the industry after
their first game as it quite frankly sucks.

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ajross
Hrmph. The article starts out with this weird meta-argument about degree
programs and accreditation (not enough game developers because there's no
standard curriculum? Please...) which makes not sense to me. And finally it
gets to the meat of the argument which seems to be:

"The games developers say that they are struggling to find in the UK the kind
of high-powered mathematicians and computer scientists that they need to build
increasingly sophisticated products."

Get in line, folks. News flash: 3D graphics programming is hard, and can't be
done by typical IT employees. If you want these rare people to work for you,
how about offering higher salaries than your competitors? Understood in this
context, what the bit about degree programs and accreditation _really_ means
is: we can't find enough smart kids willing to work for cheap any more. Cry me
a river.

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pkaler
The management/production side is a huge reason programmers don't want to go
into games anymore.

But the bring problem with universities is that they stopped teaching C/C++ a
while ago.

~~~
Tichy
Or the problem of games companies is that they still use C/C++?

~~~
ajross
No, that's a canard. Whatever your particular religion is about language
choice, anyone capable of doing 3D programming is _more_ than talented enough
to be able to be productive in C++, irrespective of what they were taught in
school. The problem is that modern game engine development is hard. People who
solve hard problems for a living are expensive, and the games industry isn't
used to paying that kind of salary.

~~~
Tichy
Talented enough, sure, but maybe people don't want to program in C/C++. I know
I don't want to, and I have always been interested in games programming.

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jobeirne
"We want to work with government to help equip our graduates with the skills
they need to thrive in one of the most dynamic and profitable industries in
the world."

The government is the leading expert on game design education... Love it...

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jcromartie
I find it interesting that this "skills shortage" seems to coincide with the
emergence of the game development degree. First it was places like University
of Phoenix and DeVry, but now I see them offered at more reputable schools.

I wonder if this skills shortage isn't partly because the students of these
game development programs don't get an education in things like computer
science, software design, fine arts, literature, and history?

~~~
pmjordan
I don't think there's a causal link there. I've interviewed quite a few game
development graduates for programming jobs, and they weren't any better or
worse than CS graduates. Plenty of riff-raff like from any other subject of
course, but enough decent people that they're clearly not useless degrees
either. I do wonder if you're limiting your chances with such a specific
degree though. No idea how easy it is to get a non-game job with one of those.

I suspect the effects they're seeing are caused by:

\- dramatic increase in cost of living in the UK (low salaries really burn)

\- UK university degrees becoming easier. (you won't believe what passes for a
2.2 these days)

\- The game industry isn't quite as cool as it once was. Chances are you'll
work on a crappy game that sells badly, or if it actually sells well you won't
see any of the profits. Teams are so big that when friends ask you what bits
you made you sound pathetic.

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noonespecial
FTA:

 _"The death of maths, physics and computer science graduates is hitting us
hard."_

Graduates are dying?! Bogus! OOOhhh you meant to use _dearth_.

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daniel-cussen
Supply and demand.

