Comprehending the barriers dealing with video games trainees-
At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, a session titled “From Rosy-Eyed to Dissatisfied: What Game Education Is Missing” addressed the most common issues that students of the video game industry face, as well as potential solutions.
Both Kenzie Gordon, a PhD candidate and instructor in Media and Technology Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada, and Cristina Amaya, president of Latinx in Gaming and director at DreamHack, spoke at the event.
Gordon is also the project manager for a study called The First Three Years, which follows game design students for three years after they graduate.
She explained the study’s methodology at GDC, saying, “Basically what we’re doing is we’re talking with individuals the year that they finish from their video game programme, and every year for 3 years after that, to see what that shift into the video games market is like for individuals.”
When students graduate from their programme, we are curious as to what kinds of real-world examples they were exposed to during their studies. Were internships and other career development opportunities available to them? How did they find using video games in the classroom? And then, following that, we want to know how that change has been working out for them, what kinds of networks have been supportive, and how that experience has been overall.
“The big question is what aids recent grads in general and those from marginalised backgrounds in particular in finding and keeping jobs in the market.”K. Gordon Kenzie
Which is why Gordon insists that interviewing students who don’t make it into video games is just as important to the research study as talking to those who do.
The discussion focused on students who had recently graduated, as the study is now in its second year, but it still provides intriguing insight into the challenges they face. Western University, University of Alberta, University of Waterloo, and York University, along with the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA), are conducting the study together.
Gordon posed the broad question of what aids recent graduates (and in particular those from underprivileged backgrounds) in securing and maintaining gainful employment.
For this initial phase, the research team surveyed over a hundred students across the United States and Canada (it is limiting itself to these two locations for scalability reasons).
“About half are white,” Gordon said. “The next largest group is East Asian, along with people of mixed race.” “The students we’re talking to are, in fact, a bit more diverse than the market, and that’s partly [the result of] the diverse individuals getting thrown out of the market in the first couple of years,” the author writes.
About 39% of our sample identifies as LGBTQ, which is higher than the general population but roughly in line with the video game market’s typical demographics. Roughly one-third of the population identifies as being different in some way, either mentally or physically. Surprisingly, unfortunately, about 20% of our members believe that some aspect of their identity has already impacted their experience in the games industry; the vast majority of these members have not even actively worked in the games industry.
- What exactly are gamers worrying about as they near the end of their training?
Where do video game systems go wrong?
What kinds of challenges do people who come from underrepresented groups have to overcome?
Can problems associated with video game education be mitigated?
What concerns do students have as they near the end of their video game training?
The first section of Gordon’s address focused on students’ fears upon graduation, with the speaker emphasising that the important issue is that students are “afraid,” with employment circumstances and discrimination being the primary worries.
Many recent college grads have shown an intense desire to get work in the video game industry. They may have wanted this since they were young, but they may also be terrified by the reality of it.
And that could be because they’re worried about crunch or the future of the workplace. In a similar vein, many people worry about encountering discrimination at work. Many people have told us that toxic or unwelcoming work environments are the main reasons they would leave an organisation, but when pressed further, the vast majority have also admitted that they would take any job, even if they knew the company had a poor reputation for treating its employees, simply to make ends meet.
Many recent grads are caught in a Catch-22: they are aware of the problems but don’t want to deal with them, but at the same time, they want to work in the gaming industry and are willing to do whatever it takes to get a job there. Which I think is why people in video games tend to hit the wall so rapidly.
Where do video game systems go wrong?
Crunch
- Then, Gordon discussed his research into the issues that students face during training. And crunch is a common motif.
“Most people know [crunch], and their instructors are helping them comprehend it, but we’re hearing that the design of many programmes forces students to crunch.
And I don’t think this is anything that’s unique to video games. “Crunch is kind of how university works, but a lot of students are hearing that crunch is awful and that’s not how you ought to build games, but they’re not learning any other way to make games in their programme.
She said that this is because most terms are structured like a shortened version of a typical progression cycle.
Obstacles getting work experience
- Gordon argued that getting real-world work experience was another issue with video game programmes.
We’ve found that roughly 75% of the companies out there provide some sort of work experience placement. Internships are often not guaranteed, and students often have to take the initiative to seek them out.
If you are a student who needs to work while also attending school, you may find yourself in a precarious position where you cannot take on an unpaid internship.
Absence of profession counselling
Another annoyance uncovered by the study was the lack of career coaching offered alongside academic pursuits.
According to Gordon, “very few of the programmes that we have spoken to have video game specific career counselling as a structured element of the programme.” “Some people have actually described their university’s career centre, but typically we hear that a university profession centre is not extremely well geared up to help individuals in video games or any innovative market.”
- Absence of professors variety
Gordon notes that while there is relative gender parity in some of the programmes the research looked into, the truth is that the art disciplines are typically controlled by women while computer science is controlled by men. This lack of diversity within universities is another problem.
She went on to say that there wasn’t enough variation among teachers to accommodate the students. And in proportion to that, there is little knowledge or firsthand exposure to the realities of discrimination in the video game industry.
As one student put it, “unlike crunch, where a great deal of teachers are extremely familiar with it and talking about it, discrimination and harassment may appear, but typically the teachers do not actually have the lived experience of how to handle that in the workplace.”
- Problem to develop a portfolio
The effort required to create a portfolio was another theme echoed frequently by trainees.
Many students realise that classroom instruction cannot provide them with the kinds of experiences they need to build a strong portfolio. Students in the arts, in particular, have complained that they are unable to acquire the “sleek products” they have been told are essential for their portfolios due to the nature of rapid prototyping during capstone projects.
“But beyond that, most students we spoke with have discussed with their instructors that it is not adequate to have merely your class projects in your portfolios. Of all, only a subset of students has the time and resources to complete the extra work required to amass the impressive portfolio their instructors insist is necessary to succeed in the job market.
“So students of colour, for example, or people with caretaking responsibilities, are currently getting kind of kneecapped when it comes to that portfolio development because their peers are bringing a more robust portfolio than they are, from things beyond the coursework,” she said.
And this is why groups like Latinx in Gaming, the Black in Gaming Foundation, and Women in Games International do such crucial work, as Cristina Amaya pointed out. Latinx in Gaming is one organisation that helps students find their way in the industry and launch successful careers.
What kinds of challenges do people who come from underrepresented groups have to overcome?
Gordon spent considerable time concentrating on the issues experienced by students and recent graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“I think the top is that pipeline that forces marginalised people to leave,” she said. The concept of a leaking pipeline is not new, but the idea that it may be leaking in certain places or for some people may be. And it’s leaking partly because of the institutional constraints placed on video game instruction.
Such circumstances include the aforementioned issues with trainees from underrepresented groups, such as job insecurity, a lack of professorial diversity, time constraints, etc. She said that this fact indicated that these students were “further along the burnout roadway before they even entered the market.”
“We are aware that many students crunch for the vast majority of their gaming education. In games, they will do anything is asked of them. In reality, they don’t have much say over whether or not their workplace is conducive to a healthy lifestyle.
The “burnout road” for “game designers from [under-represented] backgrounds” begins long before those designers even enter the market.K. Gordon Kenzie
“And so we get to this circumstance where trainees are perhaps getting 3 or 4 years into working in the video game industry, but they already have 6 or 7 years of this really extreme advancement cycle work under their belt, and by the time they have sufficient experience that they can begin to increase and leave these entry level positions, they are already striking that burnout limit because they have backlogged a lot of that work when they remained in those entry level positions,” says the author.
And they aren’t learning how to deal with it in school, which is problematic because “crunch” is integral to the problem.
Amaya said that the current generation of graduates “saw the Me Too movement take frequency, seeing claims, accusations, etc.” as the world was gripped by a global pandemic.
She mentioned the ‘Great Resignation’ and said, “It’s a concern of which business is even worse.” “Young adults hop from one company to another, but they’re usually gone after a few years since the new place of employment has the same toxic burnout culture as the last.
“There are low incomes relative to the market price in the cities where we live, typically below 10% to 20%,” she continued. Specifically in the realm of marketing, but also applicable to a few other disciplines. Which is a shame because we are part of the technology industry and deserve to be compensated accordingly.
Where do we go from here to fix the problems with video game education?
- Having significant discussions and diversifying academic community
Concerning the solution to “all of these exceptionally dismaying things,” Gordon has suggested “having more deliberate discussions about harassment, about discrimination, in video game education.”
These debates are inevitable whenever a company’s cultural issues make headlines, but there is no “methodical effort” in the classroom to address how to cope with discrimination on the job.
Remember that the marginalised students will be talking about this amongst themselves, therefore you should have similar conversations with all student groups. In reality, it is the cis-het white students who need to be included in those debates, and admitting as much is part of the cultural problem.
Business owners “should be developing those paths themselves, and not just as part of a variety addition programme,” despite the fact that “there are organisations that can develop those paths.”Amaya, Cristina
“We do talk to a fair number of students who go on to be part of the population that is more’secured’ or has an easier time in video games, and there are some of them that function as allies; they would speak up in a workplace where there was discrimination, but for a great deal of them, it’s not even on their radar that it’s occurring.
“Whereas unquestionably, a dev of colour or a member of a historically marginalised gender will get it. These occurrences don’t shock them at all. We need everyone’s input in these debates so that we may create workplaces that are safer for everyone. And I think a big reason for that is the type of person who is a trainer in a video game-based learning environment.
Many of the trainees we’ve spoken with have reported feeling more confident about entering the workforce after working with trainers who resemble them. They learn that these people still enjoy working in video games and that they were able to find work situations that worked for them because they learned how to manage it. Whereas if you only talk to others who have never experienced it, it stays this scary thing about which you have no idea what to do. Of course, the problem of diversity in higher education goes much beyond the medium of video games.
- Attending to crunch in education as a barrier to equity
In addition, “resolving crunch in education as a barrier to equity,” Gordon recalled, is an important part of overcoming these challenges.
That we’re making conditions where people can’t learn how to perform healthy video game development, and recognising that this kind of programme design disproportionately affects certain groups of students, is a problem not just in the market but also in education.
Gordon emphasised that a large proportion of students drop out of the programme due to its difficulty, and the research study does not include their voices. Again, this will have a disproportionate effect on trainees from underrepresented groups.
The way a programme is organised “not only signals the kind of skills that the students bring out, but also… May I ask them to please exit? Are they ready to run in the market for the long haul, or will they wilt out after three years since all they’ve learned is the rapid iteration of development?
- Supplying a course for development
Amaya also mentioned the issue of “creating channels for professional growth in the workplace.”
“There are organisations that can develop those pathways, but businesses themselves need to be developing them also, and not just as part of a variety addition programme,” she said. “Consider doing something in your groups; give some thought to working with practises; make it a priority to train and prepare the young people that enter, giving them a true path to success.
I had a conversation with a company that provides interns with a living stipend and raises that stipend for interns who stay on with the company for longer periods of time. Given the potential for widening income gaps, I found that incredibly intriguing.
We also want to make sure you’re investing in talent. There are companies that invest in their employees’ futures by funding their schooling, paying for their required coursework, hiring personal coaches, and providing them with opportunities for professional growth.
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