I’ve been having a look at some jobs of “lecturer in game development”. They are looking for “industry experience”, “knowledge of industry tools such as Unity”.
How hard can it be? I’ve worked in computer games companies and have couple of moderately successful games on Steam.
It’s nice money too like £40k per year.
“those who can’t do, teach”
that’s what they say anyway. i think teaching is the noblest profession. i doubt its hard to get the job. Every college lecturer i ever had was a weirdo.
Teaching and learning the technicals is small beans, I’d expect. Seems like reason most people fail is they don’t know how to be professional. That’s the real work. I think if I was gonna be a teacher, that’s what I would focus on. Slap kids upside the head they come in all groggy and shit cause they stayed up late. How you gonna learn like that? slap!
What do they mean by “game development”? Unless there’s further context that’d be a red flag to me.
Regarding technical knowledge, you shouldn’t just know the subject at hand, but truly understand it. If someone asks “why?”, you should be able to answer with authority the vast majority of the time.
Are you a people person? Can you break down concepts to their fundamentals and then explain them step by step, in different ways for different people? Are you patient? Do you enjoy helping people to learn?
I’ve done some teaching and I loved it. I’m not especially a people person, and I certainly wasn’t a comfortable public speaker at the time, so to me it was a bit of a self challenge. Worked out pretty well. 
Yes, I’m going by the fact that most of my lecturers were pretty rubbish. A monkey could have done the same thing. i.e. copying out notes to a projector.
BTW There are some good lecturers I’ve seen on YouTube: Susskind, Patrick Winston, Feynman, Dirac. They are good because they are experts in their fields and you can tell.
I have lots of useful advice for people making games, such as “if in doubt, Google it.”
There is a really good teacher on youtube named Marco Bucci for artist.
Also this dude:
has superb courses on udemy.
just some examples of guys i think are really good teachers.
Copying their example and providing equally useless content won’t solve anything. It only perpetuates the problem.
Unless you’re dealing with someone who has no familiarity with Internet telling to “Google it” is not useful advice.
This was intended as satire… right?
He really is one of the best I’ve seen for the kinds of things he teaches! Would have been invaluable for me to have his stuff around when I started out.
yep. Bucci is the man. He is the only teacher I have seen online that makes art seem as simple as it is, while still getting into the nuance of it.
If you’re interested in book recommendations on painting:
James Gurney - Color and Light
Gregg Kreutz - Problem solving for oil painters
Like any profession seen from the outside, teaching seems easy, but as a lecturer in game development, let me tell you:
Doing the job well is about empathy. Your ethos as a teacher depends on a combination of humility, expertise, and compassion, for which a “how hard can it be?” attitude will automatically disqualify you. The job isn’t to deliver knowledge from on high unto the rejoicing masses, but to keep each student’s individual struggle in your head and to do your very best to make sure that your contact with any one of them results in the unique positive growth that he or she needs. You will have to constantly shift your emotional and technical vocabulary over the course of a single day.
There is a lot of planning. You will need to rehearse lessons, devise examples, and relentlessly update those examples with new technology. Classes will need to be revised to compensate for pedagogical weaknesses, changes of venue, subject matter, procedures, institutional policies, and feedback.
There is a lot of busywork. You will need to keep track of attendance, address student concerns, questions, and complaints, participate in countless meetings, attend events, negotiate with colleagues, coordinate schedules, arrange for the needs of students with disabilities, improvise when put on the spot, and make difficult moral judgements. No matter how much of an expert you are, you will be embarrassed now and then in front of a crowd by failing technology, a clever student, or by the vicissitudes of your own mood.
Grading and communicating feedback will devour your time. Finding the headspace to continue to work on your own projects becomes a difficult balancing act: you will always be able to do better by your students – to what extent will you do that vs. focusing on the game you’ve started but that is now languishing in the ever receding past?
You will need to wade into interpersonal conflicts between students who are working in groups and follow up with those who are struggling.
It is repetitive: students in your classes will have the same kinds of problems, year-in, year-out. You’ll discuss variations of the same fundamentals over and over again and find yourself casting about desperately for the passion you remember having when you taught it for the first time. You’ll wonder where the years went and whether you should have spent them all on giving.
For some people, it’s absolutely worth it just to see a handful of students flourish, but it’s certainly not easy to do well.
Oh boy, the mood took a nosedive at point #6!
Regarding the “Google it” thing… people are there to learn from you. They could have “Googled it” from home or the library without paying fat wads of cash or taking out loans to sit in front of you.
Teaching people to use the resources at their disposal is valuable and necessary, and search engines are a valid tool in their arsenal. Still, consider that the part where they “Google it” is just one step for one kind of research. There’s a whole bunch of other, supporting skills and knowledge they’ll need to get good results from that, and as their teacher you’d better be ready to get on board and help them develop all of those skills.
Then, keep in mind that not every problem is solved, and solving new problems is a huge part of game and software development. If people need to rely on what’s already solved online for them then their skills will always be limited compared to those who can solve their own problems. As a teacher you really ought to be helping your students shift from regurguitating existing solutions to coming up with their own.
Even if there is an available solution, comparing it to your own partial solution or circumstances is an important part of sorting the gold from the junk online.
Going over your post history, I can’t tell if you’re a troll or the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If it’s the former, well, good job. If it’s the latter, I pity anyone who has ever had to work with you in any capacity.
Who hires a “lecturer in game development”? A teacher or instructor is one thing, but a lecturer specifically? Most places I have worked, typically if you are a senior in your field lecturing is expected/required. (I typically give talks on pipeline and design tooling.) . The first one sucks if you aren’t a public speaker, but if you know your field, it gets easier.
It seems a bit sketchy/weird, especially at that salary… that is pretty low. I would think anyone qualified to lecture knowledgeably on game development should be able to easily make way more than that. (unless it isn’t a full time job)
At least where I work, “Lecturer” seems to just be a job title for a teacher with more than 3 classes. I guess it’s a bone to toss to contract employees who are doing more than part time.
The salary does seem low, but it’s a more widespread reality than it should be. Many institutions are waking up to student interest and research prospects in the field but have fixed contract wages or salaries based on job title. What a professional can make in the industry isn’t considered. The result is that these positions attract either unqualified shysters or self-sacrificial enthusiasts. (Neither are flattering, but I hope constantly that I at least fall into the latter camp.)
Here’s another downer for @angrypenguin : For years, I was an adjunct instructor at a public community college; regardless of the subject I earned $15k a year, received no benefits and no sick pay or PTO, and worked all the time. At one point, two of my colleagues died and I took on extra classes to keep the program going. The school said it didn’t have the money to hire replacements, so I taught 6-8 classes a semester for years, still on contract. I could have left any time and eventually did. But I guess I was passionate about the subject, could use it to test my skills, was proud of carrying so much responsibility, and enjoyed interacting with young, energetic, and sometimes talented people.
Maybe that’s an extreme or self-imposed example, but I don’t think it’s atypical outside of the major urban areas where colleges interface more regularly with industry.
Honestly these days technical knowledge is probably the least important part of being a teacher. Technical knowledge is all parceled up nicely on the internet, and anyone can get it.
Problem with gaining “Technical Knowladge” over internet, or even from book, that is just still theory. Need to practical experience, to be really valid.
For those who don’t believe there is such a thing as a lecturer in game development:
If in doubt Google it.
Also, I think that’s good general advice. What you gonna do in a job? Ring up your old proffessor and say “How do you install Unity on a Mac?” Learn to Google. It is a good life skill.
I’m not sure exactly you’re supposed to teach. Or if you just make up stuff to teach. Who knows. Not me that’s for sure.
Are you trolling now, or trying having some discussion?
Because with such altitude, you could ask
If in doubt Google it
And spare our keyboards.
We’re not saying it’s not a good skill. We’re saying it’s a very basic one. Only way you’d have discovered game development tools short of being told about them by someone else would have been to search the web. Since they’ve already done that it’s kinda silly to tell them to “Google it” when they’ve clearly already been using it.
It’s not a game development topic nor is it something that should be covered by someone giving a lecture on it especially when there is already more than enough good topics to cover and not enough time to cover all of them.