All of the slides we have from Games:EDU:07 are now available here, including presentations by Chris Satchell of Microsoft and Matt Southern of Evolution Studios. They’re linked in the sidebar, and the url is:

http://www.gamesedu.co.uk/slides07/

We hope to be able to update soon with slideshows from the rest of the speakers.

Rob Catto spoke about the games programme at Full Sail Real World Education, one of the top 5 games courses in the world.

Professor Paul Fullwood of Abertay University spoke of the potential for collaboration between academic institutions and the games industry, going into some detail on the recent deal between Abertay and Instinct Studios.

Chris Chilton from Skillset, along with Marc Greco of City College Brighton and Sam Watts of NCSoft, talked about the first year of a modern apprenticeship scheme that has placed people in QA roles.

Michel Kripalani talked about industry trends, including that around 20% of art assets are currently outsourced, and that is on target to hit 40% by 2011.

Sarah Lemarié spoke about collaboration between Sony and academia, announcing a new scheme whereby universities can buy PSP dev kits at a discount.

Kieran Connell gave this short presentation, profiling graduates who now work at Rare.

Matt Southern, of Evolution Studios, miraculously compressed about three talks into one, covering the background of Evolution Studios, his own time as an academic developing an MA in digital games, offering a trove of information on curent development practice and issues, and finishing with an impassioned speech about the game and film industries as rivals.

Chris Satchell spoke about XNA as a means of making parts of CS accessible. He also warned of dry teaching turning even passionate students away from important subjects like CS and maths.

August 2, 2007

“Film has been a century of preparation for the Games Industry. Now is our time” Matt Southern, Evolution Studios

GAMES:EDU:07 was again a huge success this year.  Held in Brighton, alongside the Develop Conference UK it is the only education-focused conference for both videogames academia and industry.  Organized by Pixel-Lab, the event brings together the UK’s foremost educators to connect directly with computer games developers and producers, exchanging ideas, and discussing best practice and perspectives.  This year was an intensive day with 12 sessions and over 110 people in attendance.

Last year’s event focused on the need for industry to engage with academia.  In the last 12 months this appears to have been taken on board, with industry representatives from Disney, Blitz, EA, Rare, Sony, Epic, Evolution, NC Soft and many more engaging in the debate.  Now is the hard part, how can the two worlds work together?  

In 2007 the focus was Talent and Technology.

There was plenty for the audience to get excited about throughout the day, and with over a third of the audience present from industry, the day was an effective forum for the issues that industry and academia often face.

Core development skills were heavily stressed throughout the day with Chris Wells, senior artist from Epic Games, illustrating just how high the bar has risen in terms of the skills required to craft modern art assets.

Chris Satchell followed on to stress the importance of subjects such as Maths and Computer Science, but also cited that admission rates for the latter are falling by 40% each year. “Curricula need to be made more interesting ….. as even passionately motivated students can be turned off by dull ways of teaching”. He promoted the XNA framework as a way to teach aspects of CS through practical yet engaging exercises.

Following on from Satchell, Matthew Jeffrey, head of European Recruitment for Electronic Arts, claimed that there is no talent crisis, and if anything, the UK is experiencing a talent boom. However, UK game development risks losing people to more tempting opportunities overseas, and only by properly valuing graduates can the UK industry hope to retain them.

The content of some of the generalist games courses came in for some heavy criticism from Jeffrey. Generalist Game degrees are not viewed as favourably as more technical or vocational degrees.

Matt Southern, a former university lecturer who is now Product Manager at Evolution Studios, covered a great many subjects in his talk, stating diversity in the industry as a vital factor in creating breadth in games. While saying hardcore gamers are important, Southern also asked all the academics present to leap on casual gaming, saying it is that which will send games into the mainstream and make them  "to movies, what movies are to theatre".   He concluded with a passionate speech about rivalry between the film and game industries, suggesting that the next time anyone in the industry is patronised by a film studio, they should patronise them in return, also making the incendiary claim that the film industry is "a century of preparation for what we do".

Industry players are not wholly critical of academia, there are efforts being made to reach out to a number of institutions. Sarah Lemarié, manager of DevNet at SCEE, announced the PSP academic development programme, giving universities access to developer-level tools for teaching.

Academia has much to offer the games industry, and Professor Paul Fullwood from Abertay University highlighted this in one of the last talks of the day. Students offer "almost unlimited prototyping ability", while a university can lend a project implementation academic legitimacy and longevity. Academic institutions also have access to special public funding, unheard of in the commercial world.

Clearly, academia and the games industry still have obstacles ahead.

Games:EDU provides a perfect place for these to be aired and discussed, and will return to the Develop conference next year in July.

Photos of the speakers at Games:EDU 07 are on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10715609@N04/sets/72157601121166722/
and available in high res if needed.

The slides used for the speakers presentations this year will soon be online at the Games:EDU website, with audio of some of the sessions to follow.