If you asked industry insiders to name the most influential people in games, the same household names would keep cropping up and few of them – if any – would be educators. As respected as he is within the industry and academia, Gregor White would probably be among those overlooked in favour of the development glitterati. But there are at least 1,030 reasons why White should be considered a serious contender for any influencer shortlist.
For starters, White is overseeing the education of around 1,000 students on games-related courses at the University of Abertay, Dundee. He is responsible for a production line of talented people who will enter the development trenches at a time of enormous upheaval, and in helping to shape those aspiring games professionals, he will surely help shape the industry itself.
Abertay’s game pedigree can be traced back to the mid-1990s when a small course began to supply graduates for Dundee’s burgeoning development scene. DMA Design’s Lemmings had catalysed a regional boom which needed to be fuelled by talent – and computer science courses at the time weren’t producing what employers needed. To begin with, the university offered a tiny postgraduate degree programme delivered in the nether regions of a huge building. “Fast forward 15 years,” says White, “and our undergraduate programmes closely mirror the core roles in studios covering disciplines such as programming, art and design and production.”
Teaching is a mix of traditional lectures and, increasingly, team-based work as White seeks to help students develop a blend of deep understanding and strong collaborative communication skills.
Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, plays host to over a thousand budding game developers.
“We bring all of the students together in an environment which has wide open spaces and give them an opportunity to work together,” says White. “Increasingly, the academic role is about managing the environment and keeping an eye out for students who are not thriving. Some are less gregarious and need to find ways to express themselves.”
1,000 reasons down. What of the other 30? His four years as project director of the Dare To Be Digital competition and his place on Sony’s academic advisory board all go in the ‘for’ column, sure. But that’s not it. 30 is the number of PSVitas within Abertay’s studios, making the institution Europe’s biggest Vita lab. Every student has access to their own Vita to work on because Abertay are fully paid up members of Sony’s PlayStationFirst scheme. They also get their hands on Sony IP and can enjoy mentorship from SCEE staffers who will teach them exactly what is required to earn a development greenlight.
“Our postgraduate students are embarking on a dev project using a range of devices including PSVita and the PlayStation 4 dev kit. We’ve also got a number of undergraduates working with FuturLab in Brighton who are setting up briefs for prototype design on Vita.”
And despite the Sony link up, Abertay remains platform agnostic as they seek to develop flexible, problem-solving graduates, not coders trained as one-trick ponies. “We had Microsoft up in the last couple of days,” explains White. “They were talking about making ‘quadruple-A’ games which are massive endeavours that involve working with Hollywood to create blockbuster franchises. You can see this really high level of investment in the industry, though not a lot in the UK anymore. Hopefully there will be opportunities to respond to these challenges.”
The post Get Into Games: 1,030 reasons Abertay will help to shape the game industry appeared first on Edge Online.
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