December 12, 2010

Help from Down Under for gaming job seekers

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Over the last few years, the one local job market that seems to have weathered the storms of the Great Recession has been Seattle's interactive media sector. Earlier this year, a joint study by the Washington Interactive Network (WIN) and enterpriseSeattle found that the Puget Sound's video game development industry grew by a third in the previous two years.

The only problem with this good news is that everyone else knows about it. As a result, the region is flooded with designers looking to work for Nintendo, Microsoft's Xbox division or any of the dozens of gaming startups. One way to stand out from the crowd, however, is to have better training than anyone else. Local job seekers may get some help in this regard next year from, of all places, Down Under.

At last week's Power of Play conference in Redmond, Australia's Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) announced that it will open a new campus in the Seattle market by June 2011 and will begin offering courses in computer game development by September. This new expansion is expected to accommodate 125 students, the academy said.

The Aussie school does not yet have a campus site selected, but it has named a leader for the new enterprise: Chris Erhardt, a local game developer and former instructor at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.

AIE currently has three campuses in Australia and is planning on expanding into Europe and Asia. This will be it's first foray into the U.S. sector, which is significant since it decided on Seattle rather than the more well-known Silicon Valley. "We evaluated several cities in the West Coast and selected Seattle because of the depth of talented game studios, the deep creative and entrepreneurial talent that exists in this city," said John Demargheriti, president of AIE, in a prepared statement.

Steve Johnson, director of Seattle's Office of Economic Development, said the AIE campus will give a boost not only to gamers but also to the growing interactive media sector. Next fall, the school will begin to offer certificate programs and continuing education courses for a wide range of digital media subjects, including game development, video special effects, music and film production.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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education, technology, training