Games, government and the future of coding in the UK

Monday was a pretty mundane and overcast day for most of us, but it could turn out to be a turning point for the British games industry. In the morning, trade body UKIE announced the Next Gen Skills campaign, a major initiative calling for fundamental changes to the secondary education system, including the introduction of a computer science course within the national curriculum. Later, by coincidence, the Department of Culture, Media and Sports released the government's response to the Next Gen report launched by Nesta in February. Overseen by Ian Livingstone, life president of Square Enix, and Alex Hope, MD of Double Negative, this in-depth study highlighted the strengths of the video game and movie special effects industries in the UK, but called for better computer science education to support growth in the future. In its reasonably detailed document on Tuesday, the government conceded that, currently, ICT education in schools is, "insufficiently rigorous and in need of reform". In short, the British games industry argues that it needs talented computer-literate kids for it to remain a major player in the global marketplace – and now we know the government agrees. Currently it seems, ICT courses at schools concentrate mostly on creating Word and Excel documents, not on developing the sorts of creative computing and programming skills required by the games industry – and the wider digital economy. "ICT came into the national curriculum in the mid-90s and was probably well-intentioned and quite handy then," says UKIE chairman Andy Payne. "But part of the research that the NESTA report did was to talk to schools, and it came back that children just weren't interested. It was endless tutorials on how to send emails and build PowerPoint presentations – most of which the children knew anyway." As Livingstone has pointed out in the past, this isn't a failure that affects "just" the future of interactive entertainment. Every sector of British industry – from pharmaceuticals to aircraft construction – requires talented programmers, and Britain needs to be producing more if it is to compete economically. We have a bloated financial services sector that has sucked in many of the most talented STEM graduates, but to what real benefit? "All my mates from Cambridge went into finance and look at the mess they made," laughs Payne. "If those skills were put to something creative and scaleable, I'd argue that the UK would be a much, much better place." So now the government understands the problem – the question is, what's going to happen next? Well, getting any sort of response from Westminster is a key achievement in itself. "We've been here before, most notably with the Byron report,"says Payne, referencing the 2008 study that looked into the influence and culture of computer games and the internet. "It was a fantastic piece of work from Dr Tanya Byron with great input from the industry, but it's just sat on a shelf somewhere …" Why has the Hope Livingstone report been ostensibly more impactful? The answer is that the game players have brought in some rather powerful friends. "Standing alone, the UK games industry will not be judged alongside the Nissans and Toyotas in terms of the numbers of jobs that politicians need to deliver," says Payne. "We create high-value IP-focused jobs, but we're never going to employ hundreds of thousands of people." So the campaign for computer science in schools needed collaborators, and after the launch of the Nesta report, UKIE started forming a coalition of like-minded partners, beginning with independent game developer organisation Tiga as well as skills bodies such as SkillSet and e-Skills. After this came support from the Guardian Media Group – which publishes guardian.co.uk, including the Games Blog – the British Computing Society (which details the current situation with education and computing here) and UK Screen among others. And then the big one – Google. In August, the search engine company's chairman, Eric Schmidt, took to the stage at the Edinburgh International Television Festival and delivered a damning indictment of the British education system. After praising the country for its technological achievements, its role in the invention of photography and television, he accused the nation of "throwing away your great computer heritage" by failing to teach programming in schools: I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in UK schools. Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. Payne sees that as a key turning point for the issue. Suddenly the Department of Education, the department that will need to be onboard to bring about widescale changes in the education system, was taking notice. Channels of communication were opened and Ian Livingstone apparently found himself with a line in to Michael Gove's special advisor. "We feel the door is not only open," says Payne, "Now somebody's standing there saying come in. That wasn't the case until Eric's impassioned speech." Google has since joined the Next Gen Skills campaign and hosted yesterday's announcement at its London office. One of the biggest tech companies in the world is now onboard, and lobbying beside the games industry. Facebook apparently, is on the verge of joining too. Meanwhile, Schmidt's point about programming literacy is one that Livingstone has been making at conferences and parliamentary meetings throughout the year. Learning IT skills without programming, he says, is like learning to read without learning to write. At the event yesterday, he put it brilliantly: Computing is the lingua franca of the creative and digital industries. Computer science is the new Latin. A key problem is that many in parliament don't get the intricacies of the issue. "I had a one-to-one meeting with David Cameron back in March," says Payne. "I had 10 minutes with him, and he said, 'When I go back to my government, what one thing would you ask me to do?' I said to consider putting computer science as an option in the curriculum. He didn't know the difference between ICT and computing. That rang alarm bells but it explained a few things. "But we did find some common ground. He'd just got back from the Baltic conference and was struck by the fact that countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had all started to see inward investment because their skill sets in technology were quite high – and it's because they've been teaching these disciplines." The Nordic countries, too, are stronger in teaching creative coding – that's why we're seeing the likes of Angry Birds and Minecraft coming out of that region. "As David Cameron left the meeting I just tapped my nose and said, 'Prime minster, it's all about the code,' and he repeated it. I like to think that was the start of things." Payne's argument is a compelling one: in the 20th century, the English language itself was a vital business commodity, but in the digital era, code is the king of global communication. "It doesn't matter if the product is programmed by a coder in India or China, what matters is the quality," says Payne. "Culturally, we have a massive advantage in terms of creating compelling content whether it runs on smartphone or PlayStation, but we have to have the coding skills to back that up." According to Payne, Google representatives said during the meeting on Monday that the company specifically looks to invest in areas where there are clusters of technical and computing expertise. The UK has to be one of those. It's strange because, 30 years ago, the country was in the right place as far as education and computing goes. In 1981, the BBC Micro was launched, bringing computing into schools throughout the country. To begin with, there was no Microsoft Office, no PowerPoint, children had to code what they wanted to use. At my school in Cheadle Hulme, we had BBC Micros in the library and an after-school computer club where we punched simple programs into a ZX81. This is how many of the major players in the UK games industry started out. That's largely gone now. Now, many people don't even realise that games are made in Britain – a survey conducted for the Hope Livingstone report showed that less than 10% of those questioned knew that the likes of Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Batman: Arkham City were developed here. But these are powerful advertisements for computer coding – these are poster boys for the Stem skill sets. "The games industry is the sexy part of technology," agrees Payne. "We've got a massive role to play and we need to play that part because we can attract kids into the Stem subjects – we can inspire those kids at all levels, getting inspirational speakers into schools, getting grassroots initiatives going. "There's a whole movement of really inspirational teachers who are saying, well, we're not waiting for this, we've just got to get on with it. And they're teaching kids to code with things like Scratch. Change has got to come from the grassroots as well as from above." This is the vital message. Through its response to the Next Gen report the government has acknowledged that more must be done to teach children about computing skills; the government has also acknowledged that it has a role to play in this educational transformation. And, by all accounts Michael Gove is tech-literate – after all, during his Royal Society lecture in June he advocated the use of computer games as educational tools. But right now, the Department of Education is engaged in scaling down the national curriculum – it's removing subjects rather than adding them. "We are not sure that computer science will make it on to the national curriculum," says Payne. "But it may well become an option, a subject that children can choose. That's a distinct possibility and we'd be happy with that." And while this process grinds on, ground level action can progress. There's the University of Abertay's highly successful games coding competition, Dare to Be Digital; there's the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity set up by coders and engineers (including games veteran David Braben), which has designed a computer that could retail at £20 – their aim is for it to become the next BBC Micro; a computer platform on which programming can be taught in every school. There is the inspiring Games Britannia in Yorkshire, which runs gamejams and workshops at schools throughout the region, and is holding an event next summer, teaching programming to children at the Sheffield Magna. There is Interactive Opportunities, co-founded by Ray Maguire, the ex-MD of Sony Computer Entertainment UK, which is seeking to build services linking educators with the videogame industry, and has its own template for school computer clubs. Slowly, quietly, change is being brought about, while government prevaricates. "We need to support these initiatives," says Payne. "We need to signpost them and we need to bring them to the attention of the politicians. We have to show that people are getting on with this stuff. And then the government needs to play its part. But I do believe we're at the beginning of something here. I don't think it's going to end."