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UK Games Industry Over the Hill?
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."
Programming a physics engine does not take creativity, it takes intellectual brute force. They are moaning about the lack of heavyweight brainboxes, not guys who sit around having cool ideas.
But as I said already, they have only themselves to blame. They don't want to pay the price such powernerds require to keep them from finding work elsewhere. Essentially, they are asking the government to train loads of people, flood the labour market and lower their outgoings for them. I say fuck them. They need to start paying decent wages.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
There are people with the necessary skills and intellect coming out of UK universities. I'd wager the real problem is that they're ending up working in finance, which has far larger salaries than the games industry.
Despite the games companies constantly bleating about how much money they make and how games are now a bigger contributor to the British economy than films, they seem unwilling or unable to compensate leading engineering talent. Is it little surprise that graduates go elsewhere?
I just finished a PhD in the UK. Granted, although I am not originary from Great Britain, I have the possibility of working here.
I have always wanted to be a game programmer. I have been programming small games since I was in secondary (school 12 y/old). While I was doing my Bachelors degree, I read loads of books on OpenGL, DirectX, game programming, game AI, etc. I even played with Open Source games (small contribs, patches, etc).
However, as I have got older, I have also realised that being a game programming does not have all the "magic" that it used to have (in the Amiga/PC DOS days).
Now I have two options, one is to kick-start in the game industry (say, as a Q-A at Sony, Rare, R* or any other UK game studio) or I can get into a Hedge fund as a junior Quant Developer.
When you compare the payment, benefits and vacations, it is evident that the game developer job has *no chance* against the quant job.
Both include maths and algorithms (I am specialized in A.I.) and both are very interesting for me. But I believe the obvious choice is to keep the game development as as hobby and get playing where the money is.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Programming *is* mostly creative.
You have to take an idea and give it form. There are a nearly infinite number of ways of doing so - some will work, many won't... that's where experience and knowledge comes in.
Just because you can't go abstract like picasso doesn't mean it's not creative. A building has to be correct (much more so than a program, as there are laws involved), but you try telling an architect that what they do isn't creative and they'll just laugh at you.
You can't train someone who doesn't have the aptitute to be a programmer. I've seen it loads of times - people who went through all the graduate stuff, read lots of books, fart algorithms in their sleep.. and can't code their way out of a paper bag. Not because they don't have the knowledge, but because they simply don't have the aptitude. The problem is I've seen attitudes like yours promote these idiots into places where they can actually do harm, like project leads.
To solve a problem in a new way you need to be able to think differently, not just copy what someone else has done. That's the difference between a code monkey and a true programmer.