UK Games Industry Over the Hill? 314
Tinkle writes "A games industry campaign group has warned the UK is falling behind on coding skills because university courses are not up to scratch. But this article includes an interview with an industry coding veteran who believes a lack of creative home computing hardware (think: Atari ST) is more likely to be at the root of the skills shortage, and explains why Britain's games coders are getting a bit long-in-the-tooth."
This pal is probably in more than correct there (Score:1, Interesting)
Games and pretty much all other creative programming comes inside person itself and his/her experience, not from excessive training.
Creativity cannot be trained with today's methods.
Liverpool (Score:3, Interesting)
game coding at universities? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do any other countries really have game coding lectures resulting in seriously skilled coders?
I am working for more than twelve years in the gaming industry (in Germany) and I never came across one person who didn't learn his skills all by himself, including gfx-artists and musicians. (cue jokes about the quality of German games.)
Of course, if you intend to code low-level stuff like a game engine, then it helps alot to pay attention to your mathematics teacher on subjects like vectors and matrices but you learn these neccessary basics before university.
There are some coders who studied CS though but it mainly helped them to organize large projects and code more readable.
Games just take too long to make (Score:1, Interesting)
Games just take too long to make these days. Look at GTA IV, that took years and cost close to $100M apparently. A British studio can't afford that, they just simply don't have the budget. The UK might be able to churn out something low key and amazing, but it probably won't do as well as the games that the US and Japan create.
Let's look at the movie industry quickly, the most recent film I saw was Iron Man which had an all star cast (and Gwyneth Paltrow) and amazing special effects. You're simply not going to get that from a British studio because of the lack of a budget. The UK does provide some real gems though, such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, for a more reasonable budget, but I'm not sure how well they did outside the UK.
Everything I know about games programming is either self taught or read from tutorials on the web. My brother and I have been working on Blob And Conquer* [parallelrealities.co.uk] for over two years now and, to be perfectly honest, it's been a fucking nightmare. Games development is seriously hard work and the Universities don't really give you enough education.
*Shameless plug that has nothing to do with anything
It's not a university problem, it's people leaving (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a staff retention issue. I blogged in some depth about it here:
http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=16 [positech.co.uk]
basically people run games companies on the system of getting cheap graduates, treating them badly, and then replenishing them the minute they wise up and leave. This isn't a new thing at all.
Of my msn contacts from when I was in retail AAA dev, 70% of my ex colleagues now work in other industries or for themselves. That's the problem.
Re:UK IT bosses whinging at the lack of slave labo (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems to be true. I remember a few days back on Slashdot reading a story comparing Apple employees salaries to Google salaries in Silicon Valley. Well, believe me, all the salaries in that article are very high for UK programmers. Especially when you consider the high level of tax we have to pay over here.
starts to rant....
But I think it's all part of a general pattern of undervaluing technical, academic skills in Britain generally. In my first job working for a university, is was very noticeable how all the top academics had gone to the US. You'd often go on conferences to America and find that the top man in a particular field whose name you recognised turned out to be British when you met him, and he'd emigrated.
There is a lot of nonsense in the press at the moment about declining numbers of maths and science students, all the way through kids to university. There suggesting that it is because it's too geeky, and has a social stigma. Well, the real reason is people have got more sense. If the best jobs just require "a degree", no matter what in, you aren't going to pick something really difficult like Physics, are you?
completely agree (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is when choosing the general science route at A-Level, you do Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Maths, later dropping one at A2. If you don't much like either chemistry or biology, it's not a problem if you're interested in the gaming community. The problem lies with the fact that you can rarely timetable Maths with anything other than the 3 sciences. I didn't do A-Level maths, and I'm very annoyed that I didn't. My problem was 2 fold - the upper sets were full (we had 2 x 3 tiers since our year was divided into 2). I plodded along learning nothing in the middle set. I felt like I was a paper calculator! The interesting and applicable stuff was only introduced in the higher tiers - throughout my time at Uni I've been constantly annoyed that I don't understand introductory proof to things I've never been introduced to.
The second problem is the type of candidate the course wanted to attract. I did Computer Games Systems Masters at an ex-polytech. The course had a math element that largely went beyond me (however, I now have an appreciation for the fundamentals at a system level), having only a working knowledge of integration, and unable to show proof. How do you still cater for students that don't respond well at math? Give them system programming, internet programming, windows programming and hotsex programming modules! I enjoyed these because I didn't have to think about the work - I could program long before my Computer Systems undergraduate degree... finally however, I was using what I knew in fairly productive ways (and getting it right the first time).
So admittedly I am the type of candidate my course attracts - but that's not the whole story. There are other modules I had to do for my MSc that weren't related to Systems: Games Prototyping was a module where we took an idea, and prototyped a design: generally some kind of working model such as level. Here my course (as there were only 3 of us on it!) mixed with the Computer Games Design idiots.
Let me break for a paragraph there, because a break is required. Having done a systems engineering degree, systems programming for 4 years, and a genuine interest in technology, I had modules with CADers and Photoshopers who's only interests were in PLAYING games and hacking skins. They did NOT program, they did NOT care about the technology. For my group work in the prototyping module I actively ignored my lecturer since it turned out that he wasn't even a PhD candidate and had actually graduated through that University (one renowned for being poor at Science in the first place - albeit one with a fantastic employment track). I ignored the CAD stuff he was teaching me, I ignored the game design crap I could read about myself (his lectures consisted of photocopied material from a book!) and I ignore the fact that I was probably more qualified to teach when he questioned my analysis on throughput, net code, and the fact you couldn't realistically expect to host a 5v5 on a home broadband connection (he said he could do it on his XBox - so that made him right: if he reads this - f u c k o f f, and go study signalling).
I made the most out of that lecturers modelling by delving into the Hammer engine and coding some actually game aspects.
So what do I have to show for my masters in computer games systems? Not a lot. When people are getting degrees and masters in computer games design, and putting themselves out to games companies as great programmers having only studied a single module on C++ (not even covering allocation and collection let alone dependency garbage collection!), compared to the real engineers who were doing assembly on an ARM7TDMI in their sleep, they are destroying the reputation of the graduate industry as a whole.
As someone who drank myself stupid in my final year at undergrad, and came out with the worst possible grade given my ability, finding myself so much more technically able than those who got a first class in undergraduate computer games degree is a disgrace to any gaming graduate.
If I hired a
Re:Home coding on the Atari ST? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Games just take too long to make (Score:2, Interesting)
The UK does provide some real gems though, such as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, for a more reasonable budget, but I'm not sure how well they did outside the UK.
And this is where the potential of the UK lays on. Just take a look at Battle Toads, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Worms, among others. The English humour is something that is really nice. I am not English (I am Mexican) but I know that the Battletoads games were a big success for my generation of videogame players (nes/snes).
Just when the market is tired of full blown million-polygons-per-second games which are deadly boring, UK studios should create games which are simple, funny and with a lot of personality. And of course, the presumably best console to publish them is the Wii.
Of course any other console would be all right, but people would compare such games in the PS3 with the last interactive-video Metal Gear instalment, which is not the case.
Think ZX Spectrum... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the early-to-mid 1980s *everyone* in Dundee owned a ZX Spectrum. Why was this? Because Timex had their UK manufacturing base there, and they build computers for Sinclair Research. This meant that everyone knew someone whose Dad knew a man in the pub who could "get them cheap".
The practical upshot of this is that everyone who was in any way interested in programming had a simple, powerful and well-documented (I remember John Menzies in the Overgate Shopping Centre having several feet of shelf-space of copies of The ZX Spectrum ROM Disassembly, and I still have my copy) home computer to go and play on.
Look at where the UK's computer game industry is mostly based now...
A mindset that perpetuates failure (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a problem with the British education system with respect to IT skills.
In 1979 when I was 12, my maths teacher taught the entire class to program in BASIC using pen, paper and a single teletype terminal with a 110 baud connection to the mainframe in City Hall. 1000 pupils shared the computer, but, if you were in the top maths class, you were expected to learn to program. Shortly after we learned FORTRAN and an educational pseudo-assembly language called CESIL. We loved it, and when the ZX81, BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum were launched, many of my peers bought them to continue to program - not to play games. The emphasis on coding continued throughout school and university - mathematicians, engineers and scientists were all expected to be able to cut code.
I'm an accountant now, but when I have some complex data to process I often write a program (much to the distaste of our IT team who don't think that I should be allowed to intrude on their domain). And, as a result, I invariably wipe the floor with colleagues who only know how to use Excel and MS Access.
My son is now 12, and his school has literally hundreds of computers. But programming has been removed from the curriculum and been replaced by lessons in Word, Powerpoint and the Windows GUI. Coding is deemed to be too difficult for the masses and is restricted to a few older puplis who show particular interest. But all my children enjoy programming at home - even my 9-year-old has a go at it.
Perhaps worse, very few PCs now come equipped with the tools needed to write some code. Even Ubuntu, a geek's operating system by any normal measure, has no obvious desktop coding environment - if you don't know that python's hiding away on the command line, you won't find it and even GCC's not installed by default. As for Windows or OS X...
So kids aren't being taught to program in school, and they don't know what they can do with the equipment that they have at home. Is there any surprise that there's a skills shortage?
Re:Think ZX Spectrum... (Score:4, Interesting)
It could be that modern computer systems are simply too complex for such treatment. I recall having a complete memory map and assembly language tutorial in the manual that came with my Acorn Electron - such a thing would be preposterous for my MacBook Pro. Its inner workings described to the same level as that 1980s manual would probably occupy a shelf.
What is really called for is a programmable games machine. Put keyboards back on consoles, include a good BASIC interpreter and watch the whizz kids develop.
Re:Games just take too long to make (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, in Scotland actually. Same as GTA, GTA3, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. That poster who reckons British studios don't have the budget is typing through a hole in his butt! British studios have produced countless big-budget titles.
Re:completely agree (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the point tho isn't it - game designers are overshadowing the game programmers. Games companies don't care how skilled their CADers or Photoshopers are when they're likely to outsource most of that anyway, and since there's no shortage of them its not a massive problem. The problem lies with the fact CADers and Photoshopers and graduates who *think* they are not when they are, however skilled they maybe (terrific skills indeed - i submit!) wanting to get into the programming side because of the financial rewards. They've been subtly coerced into thinking that if they apply for jobs they'll get one. Many of them haven't heard of the Gems series, let alone own any!
I don't pretend to be the only person in the world who knows what they're doing, but I am as equally annoyed that what was once portrayed as a simple career path for the experienced and talented programmer is now one where you have to fight just to get an entry level job because the CADers and Photoshopers are taking up all the interviews proclaiming to be software engineers.
I have a chip on my shoulder. Fair enough.
Matt
Re:Who the hell... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly...
Too many people decide in their teens that the path to future job satisfaction must be to take one of their hobbies and make a job out of it. The inevitable result, 10-15 years later, is that they find themselves exploited, abused and burned out on both their job and their hobby.
I remember when I was 15 and deciding which A-levels I wanted to take. For non-UK readers, A-levels used to be (and in a modified form still are) taken at 17 or 18. Most students would sit between 3 and 5 of them and your grade predictions (and eventual grades) were the major factor in determining which university you got into. I was doing a fairly mixed spread of GCSEs (taken at 15-16), that left me with the option of going down either the arts or the sciences route. Being a huge gamer at the time (and involved in the fledgling Doom mod scene), there was a massive temptation to pick two Maths courses along with Physics and Chemistry, with a mind to an computer science or maths degree and a career writing games. Many of my friends did this. However, at the last moment, I got cold feet. I took Latin, Ancient Greek, English Language and English Literature instead, then went on to do a Classics degree.
Best decision I ever made.
A decade and a bit on from there, I'm earning the equivalent of just under $100,000 for a varied and enjoyable non-technical job with a good work-life balance. I come home in the evenings and, if I'm feeling stressed, I fire up a game and blast some aliens. Meanwhile, the friends I stayed in touch with who actually made it into games development are earning less than $50,000, living in some of the least desirable areas of the UK, working 60+ hour weeks and have little to no prospects of advancement, despite high-scoring degrees in maths and computer science from some of the UK's top universities. Worse still, two of them now openly confess to loathing and detesting games. Having spent their working day crawling around in the back-end of one under development, the last thing they feel like doing when they get home in the evening is loading up a different one.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad (for obvious, selfish reasons), that lots of clever people do want to work in games development. However, if anybody I knew or cared about, curently going through education, gave any kind of indication that they were considering a career there, I would beg and plead with them to think again.
The greatest secret I have found for career satisfaction is to keep your work and home lives separate. Certainly, you should try to find a job you enjoy; but this doesn't mean it has to be connected to an existing hobby. I've worked in some strange fields that I went into with very little previous knowledge (eg. maritime environmental regulation - although I've moved on from that now) and have found them fascinating. If you have an active mind, you should be able to find subjects that grab your interest in almost any field. Look for a career that will broaden your horizons, not confine them to what you already know and enjoy.
Re:A mindset that perpetuates failure (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead I have got him started with scratch [mit.edu] which he loves. It's much better for introducing maths, logic and generic programing skills and it's a lot of fun.
He has done several homework projects in it which have been well received but I discovered recently that the teachers need to view his work outside of school because the local education authority firewall has a rule to actively block access to scratch ! I wonder if thay had a powerpoint presentation at couty hall with a slide labeled Scratch - Must stamp out.