Education

Three-quarters of students in the UK support the inclusion of esports in the school curriculum, while 64% are already participating in esports-related educational activities

Research carried out by the University of Oxford, in partnership with FuturLab and PowerWash Simulator, revealed that 72% of participants tended to experience an improvement in mood while engaging in play sessions

Epic Games has decided to teach game development using the Unreal Engine. The company announced the launch of an educational course on game design on the Coursera platform.

Additional speakers have been announced for the forthcoming GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit, which is set to address topics such as the mental health crisis and promoting team wellbeing. The summit will be held at the Royal Institution in London on September 18. Tickets can be purchased here. Emma Smith from Hestia Talent and Sarah Sorrell from Safe In Our World are slated to lead a breakout session focusing on the hurdles companies encounter when prioritizing mental health within the video game industry. This 40-minute session will provide a platform for discussing this increasingly significant concern for employers

The educational project WN Academy has launched a new initiative—WN Academy Business. It is designed to address specific business challenges of gaming companies in the field of staff development.

Parents and survivors of the 2022 Robb Elementary School tragedy in Uvalde, Texas have initiated legal action against Activision and its parent company Microsoft. According to The New York Times, two lawsuits were filed in California and Texas last Friday, coinciding with the second anniversary of the incident. The shooting resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers at the hands of an 18-year-old gunman. The lawsuit also targets Instagram and its parent company Meta, as well as gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, alleging that they played a significant part in "grooming" the shooter

In April, as part of the WN Academy educational project, a course dedicated to business sales in the gaming industry is being launched. The course is taught by Yulia Lebedeva, COO and partner of WN Media Group.

A new course will start on the WN Academy training program marketplace next Tuesday. It is dedicated to the development and launch of advertising campaigns. The author is Kirill Oreshkin, who previously worked at Wargaming and Zorka.Agency.

In Russia, they may begin to grant a deferral from conscription to IT specialists not only with higher, but also with secondary vocational education in the IT field. The Ministry of Finance has sent a corresponding proposal to the government and the Ministry of Defense, the Izvestia newspaper reports.

In July, WN Media Group launches a new educational service. It's called the WN Academy. This is a marketplace of courses, webinars and training programs for gaming professionals. At the start, the service will offer a course by Evgeny Sudak.

The humanitarian organization UNICEF wants to increase the number of female game developers. Together with GameLab, the video game development and research laboratory at the Kazakh-British Technical University, she prepared a free course on video games.

XYZ School noticed that in 2023, women became more interested in learning in the field of games. She estimated that in January-February, their activity on the pages of online school courses about video games increased by 34% compared to the beginning of 2022.

We continue to summarize the results of 2022. Next up is an interview with Pavel Moseikin, co—founder and CEO of XYZ School.

We talked about the results of the year in gaming education with Ekaterina Cherkeszade, Rector of the University of Creative Industries Universal University and Dean of the Faculty of Game Development Scream School. She spoke about the demand for education in the niche and who comes here first.

By the end of 2024, esports courses may appear in Russian universities. This is reported by the Vedomosti newspaper with reference to the roadmap “New System-wide Software” (NOPO) approved on December 16.

Playtika has announced a partnership with two Israeli educational institutions at once: Reichman University and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

Online school XYZ School together with hh.ru announced the launch of a reality show. It will be called “XYZ Reality“. His heroes will master the game dev profession and find work in the industry.

Developers from Studio MDHR have announced that The Delicious Last Course add-on for Cuphead has received a “double platinum” status. In four and a half months since the release, the DLC has sold 2 million copies.

Despite the current situation in Russia, the demand for education in the gaming field is not falling, — so say the representatives of the Scream School of game development. First of all, they are based on their own indicators, which they shared with App2Top.

As a result of the study, analysts from VK Play and ITMO National Research University came to such conclusions, who again took up the calculation of educational programs and courses in the country.

Secondary special education or retraining do not fit the criteria, said the head of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. He also stressed that the postponement will be given regardless of the length of service and position of an employee of an accredited IT organization.

She has already opened access to the first module, which tells about burnout. Riot Games is working on the course together with the non-profit organization Take This, which became a partner of the studio in May 2022.

Although the first two Beholder titles were developed by Warm Lamp Games, publisher Alawar hired Berlin-based Paintbucket Games to make a sequel. Here is how the studio took on the series and tried to build Beholder 3 on the legacy of the first two titles.

Unity has revealed its new demo project, a puzzle-platformer called Gigaya. It will be free to download and experiment with, so other developers could learn more from its creation process.

A new book about game design is on sale. It’s called “I want to go to gamedev!”. This is a guide for beginners in the gaming industry, which explains who a game designer is and what his work consists of. We talk about the book and share a small excerpt from it.

Jim Ryan, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, spoke about the significance of the Bungie acquisition deal for the future of the PlayStation. We are talking about further investments in the multiplatform, the creation of game services and development beyond one console. At the same time, other major purchases should be expected from Sony in the future.Destiny 2

It became known about the massive cuts in Skillbox and GeekBrains. They lost 300 people in November-December alone. The number of people dismissed in a year can be many times more (almost more than one and a half thousand). We talked to his former employees about what is happening in the educational holding.

Educational direction VK (former Mail.ru Group) decided to find out what Russian schoolchildren think about working in the video game industry. It turned out that almost one in three would like to link their career with games. Moreover, 28% of students are ready to start work immediately after graduation.

Another free course for developers has appeared on the devtodev analytical platform. This time it is dedicated to the basic basics of level design. The curator of the course is Oleg Grachev, a leading level designer at Pixonic.

The producer of the Recontact game franchise, Simay Dinc, has launched the CATS of Small Village creative camp for Turkish children from villages and small towns. Dinge believes that this is a great project for training and attracting young talents to the video game industry.

Slava Lukyanenka, senior producer of CD Projekt RED, wrote a post about the systemic problems of education in game development. He shared his thoughts on why there are so many people with “faded eyes” among the graduates of the courses. This caused a discussion, which was joined by other Russian-speaking representatives of the gaming industry.Lukyanenka decided to speak out on this topic after talking with young developers.

Netflix bought its first game studio. She became the Night School Studio, known primarily for the mystical adventure game Oxenfree. The amount and terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The MY.GAMES brand found out that almost half of Russian gamers want to develop games, but for various reasons they can’t do it. Therefore, the company, together with FEFU, has prepared a list of programs that provide education in game development. The list includes universities, colleges and courses for children.

By the end of 2022, esports disciplines will appear in Russian universities. Rostelecom proposed the idea to the Government. The company is confident that video games will make students more creative and stress—resistant, as well as teach them how to work in a team and make quick decisions.

Where in Russia you can get a state diploma in game development — in the material for App2Top.ru Maria Kochakova, founder and CEO of the Narratorika School of game Screenwriters, told us.

We talked with representatives of educational platforms about what they think about the current situation around XYZ School.

Over the weekend, XYZ School, known for its game-dev courses, found itself in the center of a big scandal. It all started with a collective letter from deceived students who could not get a fully paid course program for almost nine months. The post caused a great resonance, and after the official response of the management, the editorial board of the media direction left the company.

CCP Games has launched an online course dedicated to human relationships and creating real connections through video games. It was prepared jointly with the University of Iceland and is based on the company’s experience in the development of EVE Online. The program is based on the stories of real players of the popular MMO.The course is called “Friendship Machines: Creating a New Type of Human Relationship” (Friendship Machine: Forming a New Type of Human Connection)…

A free online course “Business of Mobile Gaming” has opened. Its author was a Chinese developer and publisher Yodo1.

A 74-page review of the “Computer Games Industry 2020” from the Higher School of Economics and the Development Center Institute has been published. More than half of the study is devoted to the Russian game rendezvous.

Training resource Unity has become free forever. The authors of the engine gave free access to 350 hours of Unity Learn Premium content in connection with the coronavirus.

There are many courses on game design on the market. What is their problem? — in the column for App2Top.ru answers Evgeny Sudak, Head of the Game design department at Pixonic.

devtodev analytical platform has launched a new educational course. It is dedicated to the basics of working in the hyper-casual games market. Among the speakers are specialists from Gismart, Zephyr Mobil e and other companies.

Abertay University has opened a new training center. It will teach, among other things, experimental game design.

In September, the job search service TalentsInGames.com on the pages App2Top.ru conducted a survey. It was dedicated to how much education affects a career in game development and how much game specialists are interested in studying.

App2Top.ru together with Talents In Games conducts research. Its goal is to find out the impact of education on the specialists of the gaming industry.

Unity has introduced the Unity Learn Premium learning platform. Its goal is to help improve 3D development skills in real time.

Epic Games has updated its Unreal Online Learning learning portal, adding a number of new features. They are intended for both beginners in working with Unreal Engine and experienced developers.

Analysts of The Princeton Review named the best gaming university in Europe. For the fifth time in a row, it became the University of Abertay (Abertay University), located in Scotland.

Russian social networks “Odnoklassniki” and “VKontakte” have opened an entry for a paid course “HTML5 game Developer”. It will be held with the support of the educational portal GeekBrains.