Biggest year ever for Grads in Games

Recruitment specialist Aardvark Swift reports that it has received more entries than ever for its Grads In Games initiative.

The venture comprises of two talent-hunting competitions – Search For A Star for post-grads and anyone due to graduate in 2016, and Rising Star for younger students – both of which are split into coding and art.

400 aspiring games developers have entered the coding competitions, while just under 200 have entered for art. Over the past month, these have been whittled down for the second round of each contest, with 103 coders and 57 artists from 62 universities still in the running.

The University of Central Lancashire, Abertay University and Goldsmiths University of London have turned out the more coders, while the biggest share of artists comes from the University of Hertfordshire. In fact, the latter has produced 11 per cent of the overall participants.

And, unlike previous years, there is significant presence from European graduates, with more than 20 qualifiers hailing from both NHTV and Howest.

Round two will see students working on a two-week development projects. Coders will be working with Microsoft and Unity on a game demo, while artists will work with Autodesk and Epic Games on assets for Unreal Tournament.

These will be judge by teams from Aardvark Swift’s partners, including Epic Games, Sumo Digital, Playground Games and other studios.

The prize for Search For A Star is a full-time job at one of these partner studios, while the Rising Star winner will receive an internship at Sumo Digital.

Both 2015 winners Sam Parras and Yan Knoop were among our latest Develop 30 Under 30.