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Dear silicon.com: Games skills gap, student outsourcing, ID card fears
Reader Comments of the Week

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 27 June 2008

The games industry is the latest to suffer the dreaded skills gap - but who's to blame? Also attracting plenty of reader comment this week was the revelation that UK students are 'outsourcing' coursework to India. Is this good old fashioned cheating? Or just good practise for working life? And lastly, ID cards are again on the agenda.

Gaming skills gap
Universities blamed for games industry skills crisis

Would this be because the focus has shifted to using existing software rather than teaching the principles of software development and logical analysis?

Well the older generation has that particular skill set in spades and would be quite happy to work on video games.

How about asking us?
-- Karen Challinor, UK

If the games industry wants to nurture talent for the next generation, what they could look at is running competitions for youngsters to write simple games for mobile phones. These games tend to be as simple as those of the Speccy era, but the tools aren't immediately to hand for most kids. Give them a little incentive and you might create a craze with the potential to create vastly more games developers than the Speccy age ever generated.
-- Andrew Fish, Nottingham

You want decent coders, pay more money! I know at least six outstanding developers - all with advanced degrees in either physics or math - working for financial institutions. They hate the work but the pay is too good to pass up. They have all expressed the opinion that they will happily move to any other type of company as long as the pay cut isn't too severe.
-- Me Myself, HereTherefordShire

Totally agree with "Me Myself" - a starting salary games industry salaries are about £10k less than other services industries (at last check). What a joke.

Personally I think that the emphasis on technology is misplaced - I think the biggest problem with games development is lack of creativity. Nothing wrong with licensing an existing game engine(s) as long as the content is fresh.
-- Richard Southern, Cambridge

Why does anyone need a university education to program a game? Surely a university degree in video games is to the games industry what a film studies degree is to the movie industry. Practical experience, not theory, is what is needed, and universities are not good at providing the skills needed to actually do things. As Karen says, maybe the industry is looking in the wrong place...
-- Jeremy Wickins, Sheffield

Editor's choice

silicon.com editor Steve Ranger flags up his picks on the site this week...

♦ Photos: Shopping just got high-tech
♦ Bill Gates on the future, the past and the brilliance of fertilizer…
♦ Photos: Bill Gates through the ages
♦ Photos: Top 5 Bill Gates moments

Laziness or showing initiative?
UK students outsource IT coursework to India

It'll be hard to come down on students seeing as business is carrying out this practice! It'd be a case of kettle and pot!
-- Matt H, Staffs, UK

Not new. This sort of thing went on when I was a student all those years ago - it was just more localised as it was 'pre-internet' and so there wasn't the mechanism for matching tasks with foreign suppliers.

Still, any students using this service should fit in well with modern business - don't need to know anything, outsource to the cheapest, sit back an let others do the work.
-- Simon, Cumbria

This sort of thing, getting a third party to do your coursework, is absolutely unacceptable as students are lying when they pass off someone else's work as their own.

Comparing this sort of behaviour with outsourcing done in business or calling it "showing initiative" is pretty darned stupid and totally disregards the reason for coursework.
-- Golodh, London

Why not? If your IT or engineering degree is going to be either useless or not get you a good paying job after graduation, why not do what your potential employers do?

Corporations have brought this on themselves! Take away the best paying jobs, leaving only low paying service jobs only leads to devaluing the remaining jobs.
-- Anonymous, outsourced USA

We were thinking of doing that too as part of our IT class. I am sure we could have gotten away with it as the whole outsourcing task in itself would have been quite a learning.
-- Ram B, student, RPI, Troy

Fingers and thumbs
Warning: ID cards face fingerprint errors

Biometric ID cards will not solve problems because

1. They will not work where there is no reading equipment. At such points of transaction fraudsters will be tempted to use fakes of these cards.
2. These cards will not deter fraud crimes such as identity fraud.
3. Fraud is costing billions now and so waiting for an unreliable ID card system for years is not a good option.

-- Roger, London

We don't even know if fingerprints are unique enough yet - it's just been a 'given' since the days of Sherlock Holmes. I reckon that by the time there are 10 million prints on the database almost every new application will match an existing ID card.
-- John H Woods, UK

Please note, comments may be edited for clarity, grammar, spelling, punctuation and style. The views expressed are not necessarily the views of silicon.com. You can write to silicon.com by posting a Reader Comment below, or emailing editorial@silicon.com.