/Skills Bootcamp in Commercial Games Development (Closed)
Provided by: UWE
Course Area: South West
Course Type: Short Course
Start date: 08/11/2021
End date: 17/03/2022
Subjects: Games technology, Software development, Software Engineering, User interface design
Price: Free
Delivery Method: Blended
Skills Bootcamp overview
This 16-week programme will provide you with an overview of how games are developed, towards a goal of polished, engaging entertainment products across a range of sectors. Central to your experience will be training in Unity; a game engine and real-time development platform with many applications both inside and outside the entertainment industry.
With sessions led by industry developers and academics with experience of working on published “AAA” and “indie” games, this bootcamp will help you define and refine a trajectory towards jobs with existing games companies, but also how to set up a business if you plan to start out on your own or work as a freelancer. The first half of the bootcamp covers general professional and computational skills development. While the second is all about your game projects and tailoring them so you are better placed to enter the industry.
An important element of the bootcamp will be practice-based learning. We will embed personal and professional learning and development into our core delivery to ensure that you develop the personal and interpersonal skills required to operate successfully as a professional within your chosen industry.
Who is this course for
The Skills Bootcamps are open to all applicants provided they are aged 19 or over, are recently unemployed, self-employed, looking to move into a new job role, or coming out of furlough and seeking a pathway to a digital career.
Learners will engage with 16 weeks of flexible delivery, blending real-time interaction (in person and/or face-to-face via online technology) with interactive online resources. Some real-time content delivery will be recorded and made available for later review and flexible support will be available outside of formally timetabled sessions.
Eligibility
Learners must:
- Live in the South West region (Swindon, Bristol, Bournemouth, Exeter, Plymouth, Poole, Gloucester, Truro, Taunton, Cheltenham, Bath and Torquay)
- Be aged 19+
- Have the right to live and work in the UK
- Agree to provide mandatory personal data and supplementary information on their employment outcomes for up to 8 months following completion of the Skills Bootcamp
- Be looking for a new role, new opportunities or increased responsibility/promotion to a different role which utilises the skills acquired through their Skills Bootcamp
Be either
- employed/self-employed, or
- career changers/returners/redeployed, or
- unemployed within the last 12 months
Employers will be able to send existing employees who meet the Skills Bootcamp eligibility requirements on this training at an impressive 70% discount. Interested employers should contact the individual Skills Bootcamp provider.
What will I learn
The bootcamp is structured as follows:
Weeks 1-2: Induction / Basic Tools and Prof Skills
- Introduction to information systems and digital technology, key technologies for on-line learning, communicating, collaborating and presenting.
- Understanding requirements, setting objectives, planning and time-management, professional behaviour and professional ethics.
- Working with others, team dynamics, roles, behaviours and personalities.
Weeks 3-6: Computational Thinking & Practice
- Abstract and algorithmic thinking, formulating problems, organising and analysing data, models and simulations, generalizing problems and finding efficient and effective solutions
- Designing and implementing software: requirements elicitation, design techniques, programming language constructs and data types, testing.
Over the course of the first six weeks, a series of game development support events such as meet-ups, socials, tech talks, game jams and even field trips will be made available (where possible). These events are intended to provide a safe space to learn more about game development, to ask questions and get to know the local game development community before the dedicated phase of game development that follows.
Weeks 7-12: Commercial Games Technology
- Unity basics: Creating projects, importing assets, creating 3D immersive environments, prefabs, templates.
- Learning the language of Unity (scripts, interactive content, collisions, scenes, animation)
- Production in Unity.
- Weeks 11 – 12 will see you complete your own mini-project using skills developed in the Unity bootcamp.
Weeks 13-16: Preparation for Employment
- Practical industry advice, personality tests, choosing the right role/career pathway, CV and portfolio development, cover letter writing, pitching, networking, job hunting, attending interviews and interview skills.
On completing the bootcamp, you will have acquired new digital and technical skills relevant to your chosen sector. Alongside these useful skills, the bootcamp offers you an opportunity to develop the key entrepreneurial, practical and interpersonal skills required to succeed in self-employment. While your personal and interpersonal skills will assist you to quickly establish yourself as a valuable, work-ready talent with employers.
Visit this course
Creating pathways to employment
How has the Skills Bootcamp been designed/created with employer input?
The Commercial Games Technology bootcamp has been developed through collaboration between senior academics with on-going games industry experience, UWE’s internal game studio “PlayWest”, students and graduates of the Foundry Technology Affinity Space who are working in the games industry and a range of small and medium Bristol-based game companies. By taking this approach, whether you are interested in starting your own company, becoming a junior game developer with industry, or even looking to apply games technology to the world of work beyond that of games as entertainment (e.g. serious games, VR/AR experiences, simulation, gamification etc.) this bootcamp and the staff involved in its delivery will be able to help.
How are employers involved in the delivery of this Skills Bootcamp?
UWE Bristol is an award winning, TIGA (Trade industry for Games Association) accredited provider of undergraduate and postgraduate Games Technology education. Through UWE’s internal PlayWest serious-games studio and the network of its alumni and their own “spin-out” companies, industry professionals will be recruited to co-lead bootcamp sessions alongside academic staff.
Beyond games, a relationship with the Foundry at UWE Bristol also offers the prospect of stakeholder engagement in the bootcamp from broader fields of aerospace, engineering, creative technologies, software engineering, data science, digital media and the arts.
Employers will be involved throughout the bootcamp, developing and reviewing content, providing industry insight, advice on employability and preparation for interviews during the final four-week block.
What are the routes to employment following successful completion?
The UK has the largest video games industry in Europe, and is important both economically and culturally; contributing over £1.8 billion towards GDP in the year to November 2018. UWE has strong links with creative industries and technology employers across the region, and in particular with Bristol-based SMEs, tech start-ups and technology incubators with particular relevance to games technology: It was a founding partner of the Bristol Games Hub, The Bristol VR lab, and also the Pervasive Media Studio, while the game jam events hosted by the Foundry are some of the largest in the UK with over two hundred attendees.
Creative industries for the Bristol region are 50% more productive than the UK average, while Bristol has been classified as a creativity and innovation hotspot (NESTA) and one of only three hubs outside of London with the potential to “go global” due to its strengths in animation, broadcast, digital media and games that is home to Aardman Digital and the BBC, with which UWE also has established relationships.
Games technology also has crossover with a growing number of associated industries and even formerly unrelated sectors as the world “pivots to digital”. There is increasing relevance for game development experience in other STEAM destinations (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics). Participants will also be supported to attend interviews and provided with follow up signposting to further training and employment opportunities through local UWE and IoC national resources.