There is one more educational game dev initiative. Oleg Pridyuk, a former evangelist of Unity and Defold engines, together with Leroy Batyan from Devrel Events opened his online school. Non-core specialists will be retrained into game developers.
The school was named Gamedev Camp.
According to Pridyuk, one of the features of Gamedev Camp will be assistance in the development of soft skills. The shortage of personnel in the market has led to a situation where studios are ready to teach people technical nuances on their own, to help in mastering tools. Against this background, the social skills of potential candidates come out on top.
“We can teach you how to work with Unity, Blender and other necessary programs. But we want a person to be pleasant and passionately love the games that we do,” Pridyuk quotes as an example one of the 70 managers with whom he talked during the formation of the curriculum.
The development of these skills, according to Pridyuk, should contribute to:
- working with different people in a limited time;
- the need to regularly explain to outsiders what exactly you are doing;
- formulation and receipt of feedback.
They are not going to limit themselves to the development of soft skills in Gamedev Camp. Two of the three months of the program will be devoted to mastering the applied aspects of development. For example, level design, game balance, and working with the game as a product.
All studies will be in English. Among the experts of the school, employees of such companies as Unity, Meta Publishing, SneakyBox, Miro, Playdead and a number of others were noted. Despite the fact that geographically Gamedev Camp is located in Vilnius, the training itself will take place in an online format.
On Facebook, Pridyuk also said that he had recently “raised a round” for a startup. However, he did not disclose the amount or other details of the transaction.