Game Development Ain't Gaming!
This post is to address the issues pertaining to the students who like playing Video Games as their hobby and decides to choose Game Development Education as their College or University programme.
After observing a lot of my students in 4 different institutes over a period of 2.5 years, I realised that there are quite a few students who were unable to distinguish between Gaming (which is Entertainment) and Game Development (which is Engineering)....especially before they sign up for the programme.
From what I have experienced so far, every institute holds an entrance exam to filter out eligible candidates for their fresh intake of students every year. This is a good process and must be there as a first level of filtration followed by an interview where the candidates can be scrutinized further to decide whether they are eligible or not. But since the students are coming straight from generic educational background into a very specialised field of education (and industry) what they are failing to gauge is the amount of hard work that they need to put in to become a Game Developer. They are failing to understand what exactly the process of Game Development is - how an entertainment software is built through various stages of development, block by block, through various iterations where computer code, graphics, animation, design and management put together into one feasible recipe "cooks" a game product.
I don't blame them! They are young, they are naive! They like playing Video Games and they feel that they should join the Game Industry by joining a school/college/university which offers Game Development education. They think it would all "fun and games" exactly like how it is when they are immersed playing their favourite title.
The following quite popular video outlines the problem nicely.
I guess the education bodies should take the responsibility of conveying the correct image to the students and their parents before they commit themselves for 3-4 years by enrolling for the programme.
This issue is much deeper than one can imagine. It's a waterfall effect and it is affecting the industry and the Government as well.
Core effects:
- Wannabes join a programme thinking it is all "fun and games"
- They don't pay attention during lectures due to lack of interest
- Don't deliver assignments OR they deliver something that has been put together in minutes without much efforts
- Teachers get tired of pushing them because they have many other duties to fulfill
- Good/Serious students sometimes suffer due to Teacher's lack of interest
- Poorly executed assignments that were delivered, deserve a "FAIL", but teachers still "PASS" them to get rid of their "headache" such that they don't have to deal with those students for another semester/year
- Eventually these Wannabes graduate with no knowledge or expertise
- Institutes are pumping in bad graduates into the industry
- Local Game Industry in turn suffers from lack of local talent/fresh graduates. They need to fallback to advertising their open positions in other countries using Recruitment Agents and importing talent and sometimes outsourcing their work
Other side effects:
- Those Wannabes remain unemployed because their degree can't get them a job (Zero knowledge, No/bad portfolio). A good portfolio is a MUST for a fresher to break into the industry.
- Unemployment Office then pays them unemployment benefit (tax money getting wasted on supporting a bunch of graduates who made a wrong choice of programme for their education and slacked for 3-4 years just to get that final piece of paper, the graduation certificate). This tax money could have been channelized somewhere else, hence, a loss for the State.
- Strained relationship between teacher and students (students constantly feeling negative about their teachers and swearing at them to vent out their frustration all the time because they are under pressure. They also start bunking their lectures.)
- Loads of students drop out in the middle of the programme due to lack of interest AND/OR too much pressure
All of this, can be more or less avoided, if there was a process in every school where interested candidates first need to go through an awareness programme to understand the difference between Engineering and Entertainment.
Game Development Ain't Gaming!
After observing a lot of my students in 4 different institutes over a period of 2.5 years, I realised that there are quite a few students who were unable to distinguish between Gaming (which is Entertainment) and Game Development (which is Engineering)....especially before they sign up for the programme.
From what I have experienced so far, every institute holds an entrance exam to filter out eligible candidates for their fresh intake of students every year. This is a good process and must be there as a first level of filtration followed by an interview where the candidates can be scrutinized further to decide whether they are eligible or not. But since the students are coming straight from generic educational background into a very specialised field of education (and industry) what they are failing to gauge is the amount of hard work that they need to put in to become a Game Developer. They are failing to understand what exactly the process of Game Development is - how an entertainment software is built through various stages of development, block by block, through various iterations where computer code, graphics, animation, design and management put together into one feasible recipe "cooks" a game product.
I don't blame them! They are young, they are naive! They like playing Video Games and they feel that they should join the Game Industry by joining a school/college/university which offers Game Development education. They think it would all "fun and games" exactly like how it is when they are immersed playing their favourite title.
The following quite popular video outlines the problem nicely.
I guess the education bodies should take the responsibility of conveying the correct image to the students and their parents before they commit themselves for 3-4 years by enrolling for the programme.
This issue is much deeper than one can imagine. It's a waterfall effect and it is affecting the industry and the Government as well.
Core effects:
- Wannabes join a programme thinking it is all "fun and games"
- They don't pay attention during lectures due to lack of interest
- Don't deliver assignments OR they deliver something that has been put together in minutes without much efforts
- Teachers get tired of pushing them because they have many other duties to fulfill
- Good/Serious students sometimes suffer due to Teacher's lack of interest
- Poorly executed assignments that were delivered, deserve a "FAIL", but teachers still "PASS" them to get rid of their "headache" such that they don't have to deal with those students for another semester/year
- Eventually these Wannabes graduate with no knowledge or expertise
- Institutes are pumping in bad graduates into the industry
- Local Game Industry in turn suffers from lack of local talent/fresh graduates. They need to fallback to advertising their open positions in other countries using Recruitment Agents and importing talent and sometimes outsourcing their work
Other side effects:
- Those Wannabes remain unemployed because their degree can't get them a job (Zero knowledge, No/bad portfolio). A good portfolio is a MUST for a fresher to break into the industry.
- Unemployment Office then pays them unemployment benefit (tax money getting wasted on supporting a bunch of graduates who made a wrong choice of programme for their education and slacked for 3-4 years just to get that final piece of paper, the graduation certificate). This tax money could have been channelized somewhere else, hence, a loss for the State.
- Strained relationship between teacher and students (students constantly feeling negative about their teachers and swearing at them to vent out their frustration all the time because they are under pressure. They also start bunking their lectures.)
- Loads of students drop out in the middle of the programme due to lack of interest AND/OR too much pressure
All of this, can be more or less avoided, if there was a process in every school where interested candidates first need to go through an awareness programme to understand the difference between Engineering and Entertainment.
Game Development Ain't Gaming!
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