Gina Jackson OBE is the leading member of the WASD Careers advisory board, the founder of GameDev Bootcamps and a director of NextGen Skills Academy, among other things.
“There is a massive pool of talent on the edges of our sector knocking on the door. We need to let them in.”
How did you come to be involved with WASD Careers? I was seeking funders for a research project I am working on looking at the current skills crisis in the UK games industry. Everyone I spoke to said I should also speak with David [Lilley] from Roucan, as he was planning something for later in the year and we had very similar interests and views. When we did catch up, I had already been lucky enough to do a panel at WASD on leadership, so I knew the kind of event that WASD could be. I was really excited to get involved as so much of what
WASD Careers links to are things that I have spent years working on from games education with NextGen Skills Academy; diversity work (including the top 100 women in games that started with MCV) and mental health through my connections with Safe in our World.
What is your focus as the event heaves into view? My focus is to ensure that the event is as inclusive and relevant as possible: I was delighted when Dom Shaw [EDI coordinator] at Ukie agreed to be our advisor on this. As Dom has demonstrated with #raisethegame and his events, he is considerate and understanding of many of the different communities we want and need to be embracing. Then it’s making sure we are talking to all the
different parts of the talent pipeline; from schools, FE
colleges and universities through to apprenticeships, mentoring programmes and accelerators - as well as games publishers, developers and service providers. As you can see, that is a huge number of interested parties. We have a place where they can come together with local and national government - with access to different skills and education budgets.
What are your hopes and fears for the event? As I am seeing from my research project, the games industry has been been trying to recruit around 10,000 roles over the last 12 months. That’s about 50% of the size of the UK games industry. We have real opportunity for significant growth - this is a time when the UK can come to the fore of the global industry - but we are being held back by our access to talent. I am working across the sector, bringing groups and ideas together to solve this.
You’ve talked in the past about the UK games industry lacking a single-minded approach to tackling skills issues or being too inward-looking in attracting talent. How might WASD Careers work to evolve things? It’s the time and place for us to come together and share best practice and to work out how to collaborate to accelerate solutions. We did this after the NextGen Skills report, creating huge changes in education and leaving long term legacies like the NextGen Skills Academy. We need to do it again now with the issues we face today.
Games careers aren’t just for WASD, of course, they’re for life. How does the industry - collectively or at the organisation level - best follow up on initiatives like WASD Careers? We must give people a moment to step back from the huge recruitment drives to look at longer term skills planning. We have current initiatives like apprenticeships and bootcamps that have been developed by industry that can come with massive government funding. Apprenticeship can be utilised for upskilling current staff to fill existing industry roles. We are hugely reliant on the people we know or look
like us, but there is a massive pool of talent on the edges of our sector knocking on the door. We need to let them in with the support of bootcamps and mentoring programmes to allow them to be impactful. I am so proud and delighted that the first cohort
from the producers bootcamp I ran last year are seeing themselves in the credits of games within twelve months of completing it.
September 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 31
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