Game industry is highly advanced technologically sector. Involvement in games development, no matter if at professional level or as a hobbist, provide the person with important skillset which is important for their digital skills. Apart from the knowledge of the selected programming languages, the game creation involves a lots of other skills such as: creativity, innovativeness and as well knowledge of marketing, sales and promotion in Internet. The typical users of gaming products are youth without higher education who lives in the small-sized cities or villages (Report State of the Polish Gaming Industry, 2017). At the same time the most of the creators in the industry posess at least bachelor’s degree or higher title in the computer programming or gaming production (Study.com report, 2019). In the EU most innovative countries such as Scandinavia, there is a lot of educational support also for non-higher education students who would like to participate in the sector, mostly in through the use of non-formal methods of education, courses and other types of non-degree educational intervention. Typical show-case story is of Markus Persson who is a creator of the Minecraft and one of the richest people in the EU in the IT industry. Bacically he was a NEET and spend most of the time with his mother at home unemployed. His mother finally found him a informal course where he was introduced to the game industry and he followed with the course of C ++ which was the kickstart of his future career in the game development. Our project aims at enabling the NEETs also to consider the careers in gaming sector which offers lucrative and stable jobs. Objective: The general objective of the GAMEON project is to exchange of good practice in the informal educational pathways to the gaming industry for the NEET group. The specific objectives are: • to exchange best practices on how to bring NEETs to high-tech industry of gaming; • to create the show-cases of successful people (like Markus Persson) who made it in the industry without formal degree; • to visualize the alternative pathways for the gaming industry with the use of informal learning approach; • To promote a non formal approach in game training; • To provide understanding of the educational pathways for non-degree students (in this case NEETs) to the gaming industry; In our course we would like to focus on NEETs and youth who are not in higher education and would like to consider their career in the game development but they do not know how to enter it without degree. The project focuses on exchange of good practices between partners on the topic of attraction of NEETs to game development industry and the specific results of the projects are (RESULT 1) report on the best practices of bringing disadvantaged youth and NEETs into game development industry with show-cases. (RESULT 2) repository of free online resources which will guide the participants into the basic level skills of game development. (RESULT 3) Educational pathway to game development for NEETs The project targets primarily: nr. 110 youth workers, youth organizations and social educators dealing with NEETs who will test the RESULTS 1,2,3 nr. 50 young people NEETs that will be testing the RESULTS 1,2,3. All of them be a participants with the fewer opportunities. The participants will be involved: 50 people youth workers, public policy authorities, social policy centers and other stakeholders will participate in the GAMEON conference 60 people youth workers, public policy authorities, social policy centers and other stakeholders will participate in the GAMEON local workshops (15 per country) min 50 NEETs will test the RESULTS 1,2,3. In order to select and involve the above-mentioned target groups, after the kickoff meeting, the project partners will provide stakeholders agreements with youth organizations, for ensuring the involvement of target groups from the very beginning of the project. The criteria for selecting the participants are: - Interest in the project’s topics and availability in being committed with the project’s activities - Significative presence of youth workers’s working with NEETsn (if cooperation on instititutional basis for example with social welfare centers) - Previous collaborations between the youth organizations and the project partners is considered an added value - Interest in ICT and gaming industry Rationale for transnational cooperation: - Project brings partners with the unique set of skills in the IT industry: VR/AR, AI technologies (Sumy State University), digital skills and coding training (INERCIADIGITAL), project management in IT (Eduvibes) and two partners who have a broad experience in working with NEET (APE and AKTEK). The scope of the project can be attained only in such wide consortium
The general objective of the GAMEON project was to exchange good practice in the informal educational pathways to the gaming industry for the NEET group. The specific objectives were to exchange best practices on how to bring NEETs to the high-tech industry of gaming, to create show-cases of successful people (like Markus Persson) who made it in the industry without formal degrees, to visualize the alternative pathways for the gaming industry with the use of informal learning approaches, to promote a non-formal approach in game training, and to provide understanding of the educational pathways for non-degree students (in this case NEETs) to the gaming industry.
The consortium applied for this project because we identified the need to address the issue of the underrepresentation of NEETs in the gaming industry, particularly in the context of the fast-paced digitalization of the economy. We recognized the potential of the gaming industry to offer lucrative and stable employment opportunities to the NEETs, and the need to promote non-formal approaches to learning and training in this field. By participating in this project, we aimed to exchange best practices and develop innovative solutions for attracting and training NEETs for the gaming industry, in collaboration with our partners from other EU countries. The specific results of our project, including the report on best practices, repository of free online resources, and educational pathway for NEETs, were designed to address these needs and contribute to the overall goal of promoting digital skills and employability among disadvantaged youth.