Brink Devs Talk Uni Education Vs. Portfolio

21 Jan 2010 at 14:39:06 by Tim McDonald

Brink developer Splash Damage believes that universities teaching videogame development may have the wrong focus.

In a recent interview, we asked Splash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood whether or not developers releasing toolkits and SDKs to the public and educational institutions was likely to be healthy for the industry.

"I think it's absolutely healthy," responded Wedgwood. "I've long said that I've felt that, in general, graduates coming out of universities - particularly with videogame development degrees - don't have strong portfolios, and this is quite often because of the technology being used at the university, or that university doesn't focus on portfolio presentation over, particularly, grade scores."

"It might be arrogant to say so, but students aren't supposed to be convincing their professors they're brilliant, they need to convince game development studios they're brilliant," stated Wedgwood. "Doing well in exams is no comparison to just having a great portfolio piece."

Wedgwood reiterated that Splash Damage routinely hires those who work on fan-made levels, with the company having recently "hired level designers who have worked on things like Team Fortress 2," and adding that "we tend to keep an eye out for people who have worked on community tools."

"Using contemporary technology is going to set [universities] up to create students whose knowledge bases are better suited to my kind of game development, which is kind of graphically leading-edge, triple-A development," concluded Wedgwood.

Do universities need to change their focus in order to create the sort of people big studios want to employ? Is the industry still too niche to warrant sweeping adaptations whenever technology changes? We've put in a few calls to see what others across the industry think.

We've spoken to our friends at the University of Abartay, this is what they had to say.

Stay tuned for our full interview with Splash Damage, touching on all things past, present, and future - including Brink - coming soon.

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