New Unity Educational Track Could Make You a Game Developer
New Unity Educational Track Could Make You a Game Developer
New Unity Educational Track Could Make You a Game Developer
By Nick Kolakowski
November 18, 2020
Summary
If you're interested in developing computer games, a new educational initiative from Unity could provide you with the skills you need to do so.
The new program, paid out with proceeds from Unity's recent IPO, will give 80,000 students the opportunity to build video games.
Of course, much of that education will involve Unity's eponymous cross-platform game engine, so the company's intentions are pretty clear-today's students of your platform are tomorrow's developers who rely primarily on it.
The program is based on "Pathways" designed to upskill developers to the point where they could conceivably land a job as a developer in a Unity-centric game shop.
For any technologists worried about the viability of Unity's platform with regard to the broader game-development ecosystem, the company points to surging demand for augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D content-all of which Unity has angled itself as a specialist in.
The pathways include Unity Essentials, which a 1- to 2-week dive into the basics of Unity.
Will Unity reach its stated goal of giving 80,000 game developers the skills they need for full-time employment as game developers? That's a rough question to answer.
VentureBeat took a stab at the math, estimating that there are some 115,384 open developer jobs per year asking for Unity skills.
Back in March, for example, it made the Unity Learn Premium educational platform free for three months.
Companies such as Google continue to design no-code and low-code platforms designed to take a lot of the work out of game development, usually via drag-and-drop UX; while it doesn't seem likely that a developer will build a AAA game anytime soon with low-code tooling, such efforts may still reduce the overall pool of developers relying on Unity and Unreal.
Reference
Kolakowski, N. (2020, November 18). New Unity Educational Track Could Make You a Game Developer. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://insights.dice.com/2020/11/18/new-unity-educational-track-could-make-you-a-game-developer/