Is the UK now in the middle of a development skill shortage - and are schools and universities in the UK turning out graduates with the appropriate range of skills to address ensure game design and development remains a viable industry within Britain?
These are questions which have been raised a number of times over the last few days, with the new industry organisation Games Up claiming that skills are being lost overseas and that we're not creating people to take their places.
It's an issue Abertay university feels strongly about. Lachlan MacKinnon, the head of school for computing and creative technologies, said in a press release earlier today:
“The argument that British universities are failing to equip graduates with the rights skills for industry cannot be applied across the board because there are universities that are getting it right.
“What we need is better collaboration between industry and universities.
“The model that exists at Abertay University is one of very strong industry involvement, focussed on producing graduates that can work and have the requisite skills to do so, but are still broadly educated to university graduate level.
“The need is not to generally castigate universities for failing to meet industry needs, but for industries to work with the universities to identify appropriate graduate outcomes that reflect these industry needs.
“The danger if we don’t follow this route is that industry demands that we train personnel to ‘fit the mould’ rather than educating graduates who can perform in a range of roles.
“The evidence of success of working together with industry is the Skillset accreditation and the proof of the pudding is that Abertay has two of the four accreditations in the UK."
While we're not affiliated with Abertay, we've been there often enough and know many of the local companies well enough to see the Abertay practices what it's preaching.
The university has very close ties with the Dundee development community - plus ties with local government (the Dare competition started as a joint venture with Scottish Enterprise and Dundee City Council) and other organisations like SkillSet.
If there's still a gap between the skills being taught and graduates created and the requirements from industry, then it's certainly not down to a lack of communication between the two.
