Did you know the average age of a gamer is 35? Older than you thought? Well, you aren’t alone! Echoes of surprise filled the room as Jamie Brayshaw, Head of Partnerships at Ripstone, hosted an interactive games quiz to give students a flavour of the games industry before sending them off to experience the workplace Gamechangers style!
At The Liverpool City Region Careers Hub, we recognise that the traditional work experience model must evolve. The nature of games companies, with hybrid working, top secret projects and some 18+ content, makes traditional, office-based experiences of the workplace difficult for school age students to secure. However, this is the exact demographic in need of this type of experience to ensure the next generation of talented workers enter Liverpool City Region’s thriving games industry. The solution? Three days, 300+ students, 12 games companies, 2 locations and multiple interactive student workshops based on real life working scenarios.
So why gaming? As Jamie introduced students to the day, he highlighted the famous Roald Dahl quote, ‘Life is more fun if you play games’, so why not make it your career? This is more than possible locally as Liverpool City Region’s games sector generates £220m each year and is the region’s largest creative industry. It is to this backdrop that GameChangers was born. When combined, the creative force of game development studios, the expertise from educational and career providers, and the invaluable insights of community organisations will ensure a brighter future for Liverpool City Region’s games industry. Funded by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s Careers Hub and supported by All About Futures/All About STEM, GameChangers is committed to developing new pathways, partnerships, funding opportunities, and best practices that will enable people in our region to realise their talents in the games industry sector.
The GameChangers Experience of the Workplace provided young people, aged 15-18, with the chance to meet industry professionals, make connections, find out about working in a games studio, explore aspects of designing a game and asked students to then apply their new skills to develop their own concept for a game. Workshops ranged from exploring creative skills required for character development and UI/UX design, to the corporate side of games including navigating brand guidelines and copyright law.
If GameChangers wanted students to understand one thing it would be that gaming is for everyone – whether you are creative, analytical, innovative or operational, there is a fruitful and thriving career for you in the games industry and it is on your doorstop in Liverpool City Region!
Feedback echoed this with a student from Carmel College remarking: “The event was truly eye-opening, I went into it with a vague idea of the games world, simply knowing about games and companies, but I came out of it actually wanting a job within the games industry, the whole event changed how I want my future to go. This was mainly down to learning about the variety of jobs within the industry as I thought it was simply designers, coders and developers but I found out that there is a much wider range of jobs that would suit my interests.”
The Careers and Enterprise Company states that the true impact of work experience is not the number of days spent and task completed, but the skills developed. That is how we should define quality. At The Liverpool City Region Careers Hub, we are committed to supporting our schools and colleges to expose students to as many of these experiences as possible across all sectors and welcome employers to work with us to ensure the next generation gets the quality experiences they deserve. Gill Walsh, Strategic Careers Hub Lead for The Liverpool City Region Careers Hub commented, “We hope these experiences not only give students an insight into what it is like to work in the games industry but, more importantly, help them develop essential skills they can use in the workplace to ensure they are career ready.”
From an employer’s perspective, there are many benefits to providing experiences of the workplace such as developing future talent pipelines, filling skills gaps and even using these events as an opportunity to develop the skillsets of current staff. Dan Giles, Senior Manager in Publishing, Compliance and Operations at Playstation explained: “What really took me by surprise is how much I took from it personally. Of course, I expected it to be rewarding but I didn’t really understand how rewarding it would be [for me].
So, after three very successful days it is fair to say that Roald Dahl was right, ‘Life is more fun if you play games’ but this time, the golden ticket is not to a chocolate factory but to a limitless future as part of Liverpool City Region’s exceptional games industry.
Lesleyann Craig, Operational Careers Hub Lead
