[game_edu] Placement problems

[Martin Murphy]

Hey All,

Thanks Ian for your consistently thoughtful contributions to game
development and game education community.

I agree that students starting their own studios could be viable path of
self-sustaining income.  Early this year I read an article about an
incubator at University of Miami, The Launch Pad.  Its a service offered
through the career service center.  I find that solution very appealing
because not all students are interested in being entrepreneur and some may
not be ready to think about starting their business at an ealier stage of
their career.  If the incubator was a program offered to interested current
students and grads its seems like it could be mutually beneficial offering
to the community, college and learners.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110401/best-courses-2011-the-launch-pad-at-the-university-of-miami.html
http://www.thelaunchpad.org/about-us

Ringling College of Art + Design will be at booth 402 at GDC.
http://www.gdconf.com/pdf/floorplans/GDCSF_2013/northAndSouthHalls_3-4-13.pdf

For those who might be interested, we are also hiring multiple full time
faculty positions.
https://ringling.simplehire.com/postings/481

Warm regards,

Marty

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:05 PM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Given how competitive the game industry can be even in the best of times

> (it is a glamour industry, after all), I've never made ANY promises to

> students about getting a job there - in fact I tell them to have a "plan

> B". And right now it's not even the best of times; studios are closing left

> and right, the whole industry is in a transitional period, overall it is

> just not a good time to be looking for work, even for experienced devs.

> Meanwhile, our schools keep pumping out the same number of graduates every

> year, regardless of industry demand. So, no, I don't think there's a simple

> solution here. Even if you personally discovered some magic formula that

> made your students all high-demand, that would just mean that other schools

> in your position would have an even harder time because your students would

> be hogging all of their slots :)

>

> Obviously you can do everything possible to help your students find jobs.

> Try to figure out if you're having more trouble with the "it's what you

> know" or "it's who you know" side of the equation. In the game industry,

> that means making sure they've got solid skills, ability to work well in an

> interdisciplinary team, and ability to present themselves so that their

> resume and cover letter don't get auto-filtered; and then make sure they

> network, attend local game dev meetings but also larger conferences like

> GDC (on that note, if you have truly excellent student work to show, have

> you considered getting a booth at GDC in order to promote your students as

> good hires to the industry? If you're heading to GDC this year, I'd

> encourage you to take a walk around the expo hall and career area at some

> point, and just see the difference between the school booths that are

> primarily recruiting students, those that are recruiting faculty, and those

> that are just there to get industry visibility for their current students).

>

> You can also encourage students to start their own studios, which is a

> more viable path now than it used to be given the relatively low bar to

> entry for mobile games and some other areas. I don't know if that counts as

> getting "hired" if they hire themselves, but you can certainly work to

> establish a startup incubator in your area (or if there already is one,

> establish or strengthen a pipeline to get your student teams to go into

> there). This would probably also mean additional coursework in

> entrepreneur-type business topics, and an overall culture that fosters this

> kind of mentality - didn't someone from USC give a talk at the Edu Summit

> at GDC just this last year or two about how they basically only hired

> professors who had started their own studios in the past, and how that and

> some other things translated into an entrepreneurship culture? And hey, if

> you've got a decent number of indie studios local, I certainly hope you're

> taking advantage of that resource, bringing in some of those people as

> guest speakers to talk about how and why they went indie.

>

> Also, I suppose the other option is just to reduce the slots in your

> program and be more selective in who you let in, if that's possible for

> your school. If the industry only has enough open slots to hire ten of your

> students each year, then you shouldn't be letting twenty into your program.

> Yeah, I know, that's not an option, your Dean will break your kneecaps just

> for suggesting "fewer butts in seats" as a solution to anything, I'll shut

> up now.

>

> - Ian

>

>

>   ------------------------------

> *From:* Peter Border <pborder at msbcollege.edu>

> *To:* IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>

> *Sent:* Wednesday, March 6, 2013 10:41 AM

> *Subject:* Re: [game_edu] Placement problems

>

> Hello game educators:

>

> I have a topic I would like to open up a discussion on: placement. Frankly

> this is my biggest worry. I teach at a career college

> in Minnesota, far from both coasts, and there just is not a whole lot of

> game industry going on here. We do have a large

> QA facility for Activision and I push that heavily on my students. We have

> been blessed (there is no other word) with a very active IGDA

> chapter which I also push heavily. But aside from those two, it's all

> small shops and the local indie game designers. They all do great stuff but

> there just isn't a lot of hiring that happens at a 3-person shop.

>

> Career colleges have some advantages over regular colleges- they move MUCH

> faster, for instance. However the emphasis is completely on

> getting people into jobs and if your program doesn't do that it will be

> cancelled. So I have to get people into the game industry or else.

> Luckily, my program is basically about teaching people to be game

> programmers rather than artists, with skills that transfer into many high

> demand areas like databases or web applications, so it's certainly not

> hopeless. Still, it would be nice to place more students into game

> industry jobs than we have been.

>

> Is anyone else out there in a similar state? Does anyone have any hints?

> Maybe I'm missing something, but I think there are a lot of

> programs hitting this same wall. Game design is pretty sexy and

> recruitment is easy, but the other end of the pipeline can be a problem.

>

> Happy equinox!

>

> Peter Border

> Game and Application Design Chairman

> Globe University/Minnesota School of Business

> 1401 West 76th St

> Richfield, MN 55423

> pborder at msbcollege.edu

>

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