that apprenticeships and retraining will provide some of the shortfall moving forward.
WORKING TOGETHER There is a recognition that if the talent in the region is to be directed more towards Yorkshire’s game studios, there will have to be a degree of synergy levied from the region’s wider tech and creative industries, but just how established are they? Just across the way, the North West is increasingly becoming a centre in TV and film media and is no barren wasteland when it comes to games, so how does its regional neighbour compare? “The tech sector in Leeds is massive,” says Simon
From Leeds City College Rob Reed (left) and Red Kite founder and MD Simon Iwaniszak
still plenty of issues, Parmar admits, such as a failure of some universities to understand commercial technology outside of an education setting, and there remain areas of underinvestment, which is impacting the scope of what students can learn, not just in terms of technology, but teaching resources. Rob Reed, creative arts manager at Leeds City College,
adds that programming teachers can expect to earn less than half what a programmer might earn at a top studio, which, given the skills shortages at studios, is only going to make the situation worse. “It’s really difficult,” says Simon Barratt, co-founder
and CEO of Cooperative Innovations. “Knowledge is going out of the industry.” Senior programmers, he says, “Are either extremely rich and retired, or in industries which have a much different work-life balance.” The issue of finding and retaining
talent isn’t unique to Yorkshire, of course, but through a shared recognition of the issues, and a desire for educators and business across the region to work together, the search for solutions just might be. “There’s no right or wrong answer,” says
Barratt, “but we’re working together with Game Republic, with the universities and the colleges feeding into that, and that opens opportunities.” Barratt would like to see more investment into universities and from the universities themselves, while, in the meantime, remains hopeful
32 | MCV/DEVELOP July 2023
Barratt, recalling the disruptive arrival of Sky Bet five years ago. “There is now a really strong startup culture and some pretty decent sized companies with a lot of money.” The expectation, or perhaps hope, is that this will benefit games, at least via an influx of skills, if not new gaming studios and other organisations. “Medical science is big in the region and there’s quite
a big digital tech sector,” adds Sefton, who thinks that many are now looking at games, not just as a side hustle, but as a focus for their business. “Channel Four has just moved here, lots of the big film and TV companies have set up in Leeds, we’ve got Tileyard North in Wakefield, we’ve got the Production Park in Wakefield as well, with a music site and VR production suite.” Sefton brings up MediaCityUK in Salford and all that’s happening in Manchester as indicative of how the creative industries are becoming firmly established right across the North, all of which is a help to what is happening in Yorkshire rather than a hindrance.
TALENT POOLED As well as hosting a number of the UK’s most established and prominent game studios and developers (Sumo Digital, Rebellion, Team17, Rockstar Leeds, Curve, and Rebellion among them), Sefton is just as excited by the newcomers to the region. Attracting new talent into the North and seeing new faces turn up to Game Republic and GaMaYo events month after month, year after year, means he is doing something right. For those established studios, the network becomes
self-perpetuating. They attract the talent, they keep the talent, and when the talent does decide to move on, the support network in the region is strong enough that the talent reestablishes themselves locally. “We’re starting to see more of that happening now,”
says Barratt, “where people do work at somewhere like Sumo for five or ten years, do a great job, leave on good terms, then starting up and doing something else.” He cites ‘boutique code studio’ Weasentron, whose roots
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