Many school graduates in creative game design cannot find a good job. The prospects in the game industry are not as bright as they might have you believe, reveals NRC Handelsblad.
The game industry presents itself as an innovative, growing, hundred million dollar industry. In reality, experts told NRC there is talk of a bubble and a hype. There are currently between 2500 to 3000 people employed in the game industry. For the 1600 vocational and professional, ‘MBO’ and ‘HBO’ (intermediate and higher vocational education) graduates, there are only about 60 jobs available.
Looking at the figures confirms the difficulty of finding a job in this sector. According to a survey conducted by the Research Centre ROA in Maastricht, only 70% of the professional (hbo) graduates found a job within one and a half years related to the education they followed, against the 84% average of other technical graduates. After one and a half years 10% is unemployed, twice as many as other technical graduates.
In the past few years 1500 freshman start each year at a professional school (hbo) as game designer. In 2013 these professional schools (hbo’s) awarded 880 diplomas to game designers, and since that time this number will have only increased.
Source: www.cursor.tue.nl
Translation: Peter Marijnissen
