I've always been a games player
that's been my passion, and I always wanted to turn my hobby of playing games into the business of making them and
Way back in the 1970s. I started a games company called Games Workshop with a school friend of Mine Steve Jackson
And we moved out selling games that was mail-order launched dungeons & Dragons we then took?
role-playing games to wider audience by creating series of interactive books called fighting fantasy
Books in which you were the hero killing monsters again and finding treasure making a game experience of a book
Confronted by fire-breathing gorgons you can look in your pack for something to offer them 20 papes
36 or [turn] [to] page 90 draw your sword and fight them one of those books is called Death trap Dungeon and
I was contacted by a
Startup video game company called Omar asked me to write [story] [board] and design for their launch game Eureka
Eureka is great fun because I've been playing computer games
But didn't anything about how to amaze I to work with a team [of] programmers an artists
and making Eureka and saying there's a completely different skill set and especially one was a
Ethereal process with millions of lines of code and I couldn't go still can't code
strange
science for someone of my age to start earning now
joined Omar
I'm selling out of games Workshop [and] dome art metamorphose into [idose]
And [I] became Chairman of the new entity which was floated on the London stock exchange
And then we acquired a studio it was developing [tomb] [Raider] and launched [-] made it so this
whole boom in the console cycle I was
Very much part of and very much enjoyed and realize what an amazing talent this industry is
huge teams of artists and programmers and artificial intelligence programs 3D programmers to D programmers or the art and animation and
storyboarding and narrative and camera and lighting and
You know physics and maths and [the] [compassion] combination of art and science that goes into
making games like making Interactive Cinema is
It's it's just
extraordinary the skills required to do that [and] is during this process of
Developing games that I realized that
This simply weren't enough
programmers [of] the high enough caliber in the uk to support an industry in
Which we got off to such a flying start in the 80s now
[this] was down to programme have been taught in schools [the] BBC micro was a cornerstone of computing in schools
so [it's] not much to look at but the beauty of it is you can get into programming for easily doing this and in the
home everyone had a spec [18] affordable programmable computer
which cost not very much and so we're [after] a wonderful start the early days in the uk of games such as
Manic miner and populist and then we went through the tomb [raids] and grand theft auto's are more recently Moshi Monsters and
And Runescape and other great successes
but it could have been so much more I
Was asked to chair skill sets video game skills [counsel] looked at all the universities which had games
in their title and found that for most part
They were not fit for purpose they offered soft skills
in the culture of games
the Role of
games in Society and a little bit of our design
But they weren't teaching what we need which was the hard skills necessary to make the games you know computer science
coding on animation and
They were doing students a great disservice because they thought they're going to come out these courses and immediately get jobs. They weren't
Because we effectively happened to be retrained and of the 144 cases that were listed
Skill [set] only accredited ten of them as being fit [for] purpose
So I
talked at Length to Advisee
the culture Minister here in the uk
About this problem, and he invited me and Alex [hail] from double- to write a review about the situation [that] review was called Next-gen
In a digital age schools and universities are failing the creative industry
Next [gem] was a review with the main recommendation to have [cuda] science on the on the school's [national] [Curriculum] was essential discipline
plus [nineteen] other recommendations for government industry and
education and
Whilst it got you know received well within our industries, it didn't really make national headlines
until
Eric Schmidt's Chairman of Google Reference next gen and his [met] [taggart] lecture
I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science is not even taught as standard in uk schools
Now your it care curriculum by the way focuses on teaching. How do you software, but it doesn't teach people how it's made
This risks throwing away your great computing heritage
And of course if Eric said it must be true and a month later the prime minister echoed his words in his speech at
Tech City and
We were suddenly invited in to discuss
computer science
and Next-gen had highlighted
not just the probably need Averse t's but the cause that led to
the Lack of computer science being taught
in higher education in further education
That being the Ict is currently taught was largely a strange hybrid of office skills kids were learning
at school word Powerpoint and excel they're using it learning [how] [to]
Use technology what were given no insight how to create their own technology
We were in effect teaching them how to read but not how to write we were making digital consumers
But not digital creators now the uk happens to be pretty good at creativity look at our film or fashion or music
Our design our advertising
And of course our games, and we're very good at high-technology
Yet against all odds. We've managed [to] put kids off learning about how to create technology
despite them running their lives through through [smartphones] and social Media and
By the way, we taught Ict at school
So we need to excite them to understand them to understand how to create technology because as soon as you get kids coding
it's
Just amazing the response you get for them. They've created something they want to share something you feel really
special that that's your game being played by different people [I]
would like to make games for people to buy them all over the world and so coding is at the heart of
The world in which they're going to exist they need to be taught skills for jobs that don't even exist today
But what I don't want it to be
It's just another dry fourth science what they should be doing is
Having coursework assessed. Have their code assessed working cooperatively
bringing Academia
the school environment closer to the work environment something that's relevant and in context fun and
Something they've through peer to peer learning there's so many creative ways of learning together in school that teachers shouldn't be afraid
to have children teach them effectively they can be facilitators using the best online resources where it's code academy Khan
Academy or the informal clubs over here like young rewires tked and [ko] club. There's amazing facilities to get kids excited
Games are a perfect [example] of a collaboration of two
skills art
and science and it's not just about
games
Architecture you need the visual aesthetic so [a] building looks beautiful
But you also need the mathematics to make sure it doesn't fall down and kill you
so if you look around the whole world where it's designing a car or
a plane or
a smartphone device
[it's] that fusion of art and science. It's the steam agenda. It's not the stem agenda
So science technology engineering a mass of course essential, but you have to have art as part of that or a deep understanding
So that people can [collaborate]
Computational thinking problem-solving games based learning is going to be all part of having somebody has a more
Deeper understanding of the problems that they need to solve in their real worlds
For me an exam
Should if at all should not be this memory test yeah question one
For a computer science exam should not be who invented will [word] web frankly I couldn't care less
I can google that and find out that in a second. It's where they can write some code
Show me your code and I can give you a job
Wonderful people and all that I understand all that then we need them desperately
but not everyone's going to be an [academic] you have to so for me the
the
The place where children learn has to be brought closer to the place where they're going [to] work so collaboration
As Ken [Robin] says it's not cheating. It's how the real world works, [so] [let] them learn together let them work together
Don't judge them in isolation because we are all different [so] it's about working together with our own words
It's just is actually in going into the computer games industry eventually