Games Education Summit Day 2

Once again, another day of discussion packed with valuable information.

My takeaways:

1) Key smart (soft) skills that employers look for are communication and cooperation skills - teamwork.

2) Respect your co/workers time and schedule, use scheduled messages/emails to fit within their timezone and work hours.

3) Put only the best 3-6 projects in your portfolio; don't put in work in progress / work you're not happy with - your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest piece.

4) Add in pieces from outside of your course to show enthusiasm and teamwork (since it'll mostly be from game jams). Although there was a little disagreement on this point, as often more disadvantaged people / minorities / people with mental health problems cannot afford to do this extra work on top of their studies (and very often a job).

5) For new students - explore, but don't deep-dive; this goes for both exploring fields/disciplines and project scope. For the latter especially, no one can make a fully-fledged game by themselves.

6) Respect yourself and your needs - your sleep, your work-life balance, work hours, mental health, etc. these things are not worth sacrificing for an immediate boost, because what follows is a wipeout.

7) To industry - offer placements and apprenticeships, if you can't, offer live briefs, mentorship, or even just studio tours.

6) For getting into the industry - do game jams, collaborate with other disciplines, don't give up, keep building, keep learning, join communities, and be yourself (but don't be an asshole).

7) For inclusivity and diversity - keep asking yourself periodically "Who is in the room, why isn't, why?"

----------- Bits for myself -----------

The schedule: https://thebgi.uk/vocation/games-education-summit-22-schedule/

Recording: <not yet published>

Games Education Summit Day 1

Today I attended day 1 of Games Education Summit.

I would love to go in-depth about everything that was discussed, but if I do, I'll spend hours writing it all out, so here are the highlights / my takeaways:

1) Imposter syndrome, a huge proportion of people experience it, and industry is working on how to address it. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic and forced remote working. The same goes for mental health. Remote/online also restricts making connections, peer-to-peer learning and support, and feeling part of the team and belonging - this is a real problem, but some are working to solve it (while still keeping remote or hybrid working around).

2) Thanks to the pandemic opening up the possibilities of working remotely and hybrid, people want flexibility and choice (within reason of course). Another thing that's currently quite attractive and being explored is 4 day weeks for full pay - sounds counterintuitive, but some data is showing that it can increase productivity. Since the data is still being gathered and verified, the verdict is still out.

3) There is a split in the industry between expecting graduates to be ready to hit the road running and understanding that a fresh grad will need to be mentored and nurtured for 3-6 months before being ready to take on projects on their own. I personally would prefer the latter. Apparently, this initial period is key to the person staying in the industry (rather than moving to another one).

4) Currently the most sought after skills are: soft/smart skills (e.g. teamwork) and specialisations that overlap disciplines (e.g. technical artist = art + coding). But this also requires that people start their games industry journey much earlier than uni, ideal all the way back at GCSE level - but this currently is not happening due to the games careers not being valued by the people who are in charge of distributing funding. Also, uni needs to stop being the only further education path people can take to get into the games career - apprenticeships need to be embraced.

5) Management needs to embrace holistic approaches rather than focusing on / valuing only productivity. This links back to previous points, but especially the first few.

6) Taking breaks is key, and is normal, even in office people take plenty of breaks to get a drink, stretch, go to the bathroom, chat/socialise - it is inhuman to work non-stop 9-5 (or even longer) - something that everyone seems to have forgotten over the pandemic. Also, just because you work from home, doesn't mean you have to respond to every message and email instantly - set boundaries.

7) Gaming can be beneficial (e.g. for mental health), but gaming disorder (addiction) is a real problem for some, so industry and academia need to take responsibility, raise awareness and find ways to reduce it. This also applies to toxic work environments and toxic communities. It was actually agreed that industry and academia need to stop blaming each other and take on the responsibilities together. Also, surveys show that players want to know about working conditions to ensure they don't support bad ones.

8) Something I've never considered before: community managers often get missed out, the devs see them as the community, and the community sees them as the dev, because they are the in-between, so they get the brunt of it from both sides.

Populating the portfolio

Today I started to populate my portfolio with my past projects.

I've started with just adding project names and short descriptions, and later on, I want to add screenshots, tags, categories, long descriptions, links, etc.

For now, the added projects aren't live, as I am unsure if I want all of them public - this is where Games Job Fair will come in, where I can get advice on what I should and shouldn't display - doing this is part of my preparation for the jobs fair.

I also updated my LinkedIn profile Education section a little and sent off a job application. The application was mainly for practice / can't hurt to try.