Grooming the game developers for tomorrow's G2E panel

Finding and securing talent for game development companies has been a continuous difficulty for slot producers. For maths and engineering students, the difficulty has been locating suitable employment.

Some of the most steady employment in Nevada have come from the slot suppliers. One difficulty for those aspiring to be game developers is that students under 21 lack the chance to extensively study many games in the area. Legal gambling age is 21 in Nevada and many other jurisdictions.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) has offers a solution for the previous twelve years. It established at UNLV International Gaming Institute the Centre for Gaming Innovation (CGI). Monday, October's panel discussion at the Global Gaming Expo illustrated the dynamics of the process. It highlighted the three elements: class instruction, manufacturer recruiting, and the UNLV official coordinating those two.

CGI director Dr Daniel Sahl conducted the session, "Cultivating the Next Generation of Game Manufacturers". He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses for the program primarily.

The structure of the program
Panellists included Connie Kim, senior talent acquisition partner at IGT; Dr Nicole Hudson, UNLV's executive director of workforce education in the school's Career Services and Workforce Development Department; and Amani Adeoye, a UNLV computer engineering student who finished Sahl's class last year and now works for bingo supplier Arrow International.

Sahl broke apart the programme's nuts and bolts. It begins with one week of classroom training including manufacturers collaborating in the project. Orientation for the students comes from guest speakers from IGT, Acres, Everi, Ainsworth, Playtech, Arrow International and the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers (AGEM).

Each student with a partner company will have a six-week paid summer internship. Many of the corporations provide graduates jobs.

Of the ten students enrolled in his program last year, eight are seriously contemplating working with slot vendors. Five of the students were offered ongoing placement at the companies where they interned.

Learning the terminology essential for upcoming game designers
For the student intern Adeoye, knowing how to apply computer engineering to a sector as unusual as slot supply was the most crucial component of the program. For example, he noted, understanding how to create code does not teach industrial language.

"Knowing how small this sector is, there's a lot of terminology and the way things are supposed to go that you really don't really understand," Adeoye noted. "So, having that first week to grasp what RTP is - a notion as straightforward as that, I had never heard of before that first week. It also had great impact to be able to visualise extremely specific, well-known concepts from this field into my thoughts.

"Slot gaming is really a niche market," Kim of IGT remarked. So you are headhunting to locate these people. You are out there and you are vying with many other gaming companies. For us, that has certainly always presented a difficulty.

She said that the skills shortfall was recently lessened by layoffs at large tech businesses. There are, however, always times when slot providers are vying for fresh technical expertise.

Part of the program is matchmaking
Hudson, meantime, is tasked with aligning UNLV's young game creators to the demand of the market. "My job at UNLV is to be a partner with our career services," she remarked. "My job is to go out externally, work with our companies, communicate and learn more about skill sets, skill needs and help bridge the gap between academics and the workforce....

Periodically, manufacturers will get in touch with me and ask me to suggest candidates for particular job positions. The demand seemed to be much higher than the students I could find.

UNLV developed the "micro-credential" certification for this among other reasons. Along with credit towards their degrees, the certificate gets students ready for a particular career demand.

Most of all, said Sahl, the programme gives students “the opportunity to understand a little bit more about how these companies work. Something I’ve tried to foster is stronger cooperation between educational institutions and manufacturing companies. We are giving students chances to learn more about particular abilities and the possibilities these businesses have, not to suggest that we do not already have some fantastic relationships with corporations.