"Too many extinct eyes": a big discussion about the problems of education in game development

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.

There were many graduates of various courses and schools of game design among them.

Most of them felt cheated and even disappointed. Someone was faced with a change in the curriculum, and someone was forbidden by teachers to offer their own ideas. In all cases, there was a single leitmotif — a person who came to the course with a desire to “make cool games” received only a set of supposedly correct knowledge and as a result lost motivation.

“Nothing terrible, it’s even true in some places, but wait a second, why does it happen that motivated and charged authors come to the entrance to the game dev courses, and sad but [trained] machine operators turn out to be at the exit?” said Lukyanenka.

In his post, he made several assumptions about the current situation:

• the gaming industry is becoming more complex and more specific every year — for example, different qualifications are needed to develop hyper-casual and console games;teachers are afraid to admit to students that they do not know the answers to certain questions and do not fully understand a specific topic;
• practicing teachers cannot devote enough effort to the educational process, since almost all of their time is spent on their main work;
• in fact, everything is fine with education in game development, and Lukyanenka is just “fighting with windmills.”
• Opinions of other gaming industry experts

Mikhail Matytsin from META Publishing, who took several courses on game design, noted that none of them had a clear training plan.

He sees the introduction of standardization and different specializations as the solution to the problem. In particular, it is possible to divide the streams into mobile, indie and console game designers, since “the specifics of working in these three situations are radically different and completely different skills are needed.”

Igor Haspeshny, co-founder of the PR agency GTP Media, proposed the following solution. Divide the training into two “floors”: a theoretical base for all genres / platforms / methods of monetization and practice from different companies. “Then the student will be able to understand what is around in general and with whom he would like to move on. And the company will be able to get a gorgeous lead on June, who has already fallen in love, in fact, with what this company does and understands what he refuses in other directions,” he said.

Alexey Savchenko, a former Business Development Manager at Epic Games, spoke negatively about teachers who forbid students to show and implement their own ideas. In his opinion, it is better to abandon such courses immediately. In this case, it will be much more productive and useful to make mods for other games with friends.

Levon Zakharchenko, director of game design at Ubisoft, believes that an internship in a real studio under the wing of an experienced manager is the best form of learning game design. It allows you to avoid the main problems of game design schools: the lack of educational standards, teaching education and a normal track record of lecturers, as well as a superficial study of various game design specializations.

“It seems to me that the problem with any education in an applied discipline is that it will most likely be paid in such a way that a real pro will do [this] only out of a very great love for art,” says Peter Sikachev from People Can Fly. As an example of a decent payment, he recalled a course lasting 20-25 hours, which he taught at an American university and received $ 300-400 per hour for it. This is the only way, according to Sikachev, there is a chance to attract cool specialists.

Vlada Kugurakova, head of the Digital Media Lab research laboratory, noted that the problem may not be in the teachers. The fire in the eyes of students usually disappears when they face reality. Due to the presence of routine in the development process and the need to constantly acquire new knowledge, people lose motivation.

Lukyanenka

himself did not agree with this position and noted that there are “too many extinct eyes among graduates to call the situation normal.”

But

Sergey Gimelreich, the founder of the Indicator Online community of game developers, sees the problem in the lack of people who really want and know how to teach. At the same time, he notes that the situation is beginning to change for the better: “I already see people with burning eyes who want to educate a healthy person, and every year there will be more of them.”

As can be seen from the comments, there is no consensus about education in game dev. Now more and more Russian universities offer various programs and directions related to game development. However, most experts agree that there are many unresolved problems in this area.