- My name's Simon Grey.
I am the Programme Director for the Computer Science
for Games Programming Masters programme
here at the University of Hull.
Our Masters programme is targeted at producing graduates
that are suitable to enter a graduate programming role
in the games industry.
So we do a lot of C++, we do some DirectX.
Everything we do here on the Masters level
is tuned for the AAA games.
The games industry is massive.
There's tonnes and tonnes of jobs for graduate programmers.
There's a real jobs shortage
for graduate programmers in the UK.
The games industry's bigger than film,
it's bigger than music combined, it's absolutely huge.
So they're crying out for graduates with the skills
that we're trying to produce.
We've been providing the games industry
with high quality graduates for over 20 years now.
So we have great, really, really deep roots in industry.
Our graduates have gone on to work on AAA games
and they often come back and try and hire our best graduates
from the next crop because now they're in management roles.
They're hiring graduates themselves and they trust us
and we trust them to inform us what
should be in our courses.
So we're constantly talking with industry to figure out
what we need to be teaching the students that they want
to be employing in the next year.
So in the UK,
most of the games industry works based on a kind
of contracting model where they get contracted to do bits
of other larger games by larger companies.
That's a great model
because it means that they have more job security
because their success isn't tied
with the success of the game.
It does mean they're working for companies
that you might not have heard of,
but you'll no doubt have played many of the games
that our graduates have worked on.
We've had lots of students working
on games like "Need for Speed," "Burnout Paradise,"
"Grand Theft Auto V," really cutting edge AAA games.
So we use our links with industry and our alumni
to get people from industry to come as industry speakers.
So students get direct contact with the people
who may well be employing them in the future.
It's really great to catch up
with our alumni when they come back
and find out what they've been working on.
It's really special when you find out that someone
who you taught has been working on a game
that you've been playing that weekend.
Really amazing feeling.