The Game Industry Skills Shortage

[uzi9mm]

When I saw this on yahoo. I laughed!!!!!
SOOO TRUE.

I am seeing this effect first hand on not playing a great game for the PC in about a year.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20060724/bs_bw/id20060724847304

 

[Harper]

"Some of the existing barriers to entry in our industry are contributing to the qualified candidate pool failing to grow fast enough to meet the hiring needs.

This does not surpise me as there is not much in Collage or Uni courses that are actually forcusing on Computer Game designs. Most of the time you have to work around things like CAD or Mutlimedia.

Programmers. The problem there it's cheaper to out sourse over sees. Like Interplay was getting getting a lot of the coding done from Fall Out Tactics done in Australia.

And then there is getting a job. It's not easy. Like I know that Blizzard are currently hiring level designers, however they really put out some rather high job requirements. Like check out some of these job opennings from Blizzard.

In a nut shell, the game programming industry is very very hard to get a job in.

I am seeing this effect first hand on not playing a great game for the PC in about a year.

Try the last 10 years for me.

 

[HAVOC]

One of the biggest reasons why the gaming industry is hurting right now is "hardware" continues to advance so quickly, that the game/software developers are hard pressed to try to keep up with providing games/software that can show off the newest hardware. Always developing new software for new hardware cycle is the reason why they can't find the proper programmers/designers/devs. - so many lack experience... why? because it's always something new!

No one wants to buy a $500 high-end video card and then buy a game with graphics/physics/game play from 2 years ago. No, we want tough as nails - hardware taxing software to make our $500 videocard worth it's bank.

This is where the problem is. New hardware means new software... Developers are always working with something new and it seems like the gaming industry is in a never ending battle with patches/bugs/updates. This is because games these days are fly-by-wire. Oh cool let's use this new "engine" yet no one on our dev. team really has any experience with it. Oh, let's use "insane textual maps" yet, it costs us a bundle more to include, so we need to cut costs on the programming end. - Which = Repetitive game play - with updated graphics.

Some games get it right and develop happy communities... Other games are a complete waste of the retail box they come in. And games aren't getting any cheaper.

In the end... I don't think it's a lack of skills, it's mostly a lack of experience.