The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Nuclear.

Today, I read a very interesting article on the future of people graduating from Computer Games realted courses by GamesIndustry.biz, posted at Eurogamer:

There’s an interesting dichotomy in the videogames industry’s message about recruiting new talent. On one hand, many job advertisements are adamant about wanting to hire only people who have multiple years of experience – or, more often, multiple shipped products – under their belts. On the other hand, leading lights in the industry are equally adamant about the necessity to attract new talent and to develop a steady flow of graduates with the appropriate skills to work in game development and publishing. Obviously, there’s a problem here somewhere – or at least, a miscommunication. What’s a young person hoping for a career in this sector meant to believe?

It’s a true and rather interesting question. I mean, on one hand then yes – I’d like to think that the skills I pick up from the course I’m on will inevitably lead to a job possibly somewhere in the industry, but then I also fully agree with the statement about needing the expeirenced professionals on the job as well. I mean, I wouldn’t say I have too much in the way of confidence issues, but in any sort of work I undertake I like to have the safety net of knowing that there is someone around who knows the regular way of doing things, someone who at least I can compare my work to. Although don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to be the one setting the example too.

In some ways though, this argument – coming from me – might seem a little irrelevant. After all, I still don’t know for sure what I want to do yet with the rest of my life. Sure, I’m doing a Computer Games Production course, but I am hoping it will give me transferrable skills – and so far that has proven to be true, trying to get my head around binary as I type while at the same time learning a bit of history with the first computers. I’ve said this before, I probably prefer writing about games than I would do programming them, but I also like to think I have a fairly creative mind, and do sit firmly in the camp of “new creative talent”. And I think most of all, I like to be fairly learned about the subject I write about. Heck, I may not be brilliant – or even adept – at programming just yet, but heck, I enjoy giving it a bloody good go.

On the positive front, there’s no shortage of talent out there – as long as you’re prepared to stop letting other companies look for it for you. We don’t use this newsletter to blow our own trumpets very often, so indulge us this once; the London Game Career Fair, which ran for two days earlier this week, exceeded all of our expectations. From an organiser’s perspective, it was fantastic to see hundreds of people (we’re awaiting a final count, but we expect it to be well north of 1200 attendees) arriving to attend lectures, ask questions and meet with employers – and from the industry’s perspective, it was absolute proof that while experienced staff may be thin on the ground, the well of talent is overflowing.

So yeah, it’s an interesting read, still doesn’t make my future plans any clearer, but heck – makes delicious food for thought. I really should cut down on making posts while hungry. Damn food analogies.

Also this week, I’d like to blow my trumpet for DEFCON. Once again Introversion manage to create masterpieces out of the virtual putty of 1’s and 0’s. I have done a review, but once again I’m having website issues. So I’ll post it later. For now, I shall bask in the glory of my first victory:

Finally: I’m playing Psychonauts. Apparently it came out on STEAM this week. I command you buy it, or I’ll send the Milkman round…