GIVING GAMING BACK PROGRAMME
Internships and Placements
Why become part of Giving Gaming Back?
The gaming industry is notoriously hard to get into. With so many developers now utilising social media platforms such as Linked In and Twitter, it’s easier than ever for businesses to head-hunt game developers, game designers and graphic artists specific to their needs. While Research Through Gaming is a research company, we operate as a gaming company – merging research ang gaming together for the first time ever in business.
- If you’re a student who would like to get a real ‘hands-on’ placement, please follow the carrier pigeon.
- If you’re a University and would like to know more about the Giving Gaming Back programme, please feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you right away.
We want interns to become part of the GGB programme to:
- Genuinely develop their skills and strengths
- Gain responsibility and autonomy in projects
- Help each other, as well as learn from the current team
- Identify areas which can be improved and work on those
- Learn more about the gaming industry
- Show an interest in developing leadership skills
- Experience some client-facing and strengthen networking skills
Research Through Gaming will:
- Never, ever make you make the coffees or teas, or collect work from the printer. Ever.
- Help students develop online and offline portfolios (with a large amount of the work they create with RTG able to transfer onto these portfolios for better employability.)
- Nurture each students specific needs, growth areas and areas they want to learn about and gain experience in.
- Encourage leadership skills, responsibility and autonomy of projects.
- Give students a real insight into what it’s really like to work in a games company
- Give all students, where we can, the opportunities they want. If they want to be involved in more creative projects, this can be done. If they want to write blogs, they can, if they want to experiment with ideas for the business, they can.
Interns can expect to get really involved with the day to day development, input their own code, graphics and ideas. Interns with Research Through Gaming will be able to work from home also, so not to get in the way of any part-time paid work or coursework from University. This also means there are no commuting costs, no take-out food costs for lunches and no office-clothes costs! There are however, weekly face-to-face meetings and constant discussion online between the team.
Internships can be full or part-time and start whenever is suitable for the student.
If a student does a great job while they’re with us, there is real scope to be employed full-time and we’ll be sure to give you a glowing recommendation on your CV and Linked In profile.
Feedback from a Student:
My internship at Research Through Gaming
Hi, I’m Oscar and I am the developer for R.T.G. I applied to the internship after completing my second year studying Computer Science with Games Technology and am now 5 months into the 1 year placement. During my time here, I have already vastly developed my skills and have achieved so many things I am very proud of.
The main projects I have been developing include a game engine to support all R.T.G ResearchGames and content such as the Avatar Creator Tool, which allows respondents to create a virtual version of themselves to take part in the games within the Playspondent Playhouse. Not only am I developing all these projects, but they have to be nicely tied in together to work together bug-free.
When I started my placement, I had no experience with Javascript and there was no engine or templates to build from. I had to start completely form scratch learning as I went along to make Betty’s game designs come to life. Since day one I have really enjoyed the challenge and the creative freedom to develop the things I want to and extremely thoroughly (I’m a bit of a perfectionist), and to push myself to the limit. The professional development, combined with the constant great feedback and praise I receive has made the placement a wonderful experience so far!
It is also wonderful to be involved with the company at the highest level and to have so much input, especially in the technical side of things. It occurred to me quite early on that all the ResearchGames designed so far had many core features in common, features I knew could be simplified and rapidly reproduced with a well built engine, and I knew I had the skills to design and built that engine too.
At R.T.G I have been able to be more involved than I ever imagined in an internship, and finally show off my true potential and talents. Betty has taken a strong interest in my needs and what skills I have wanted to develop and has made it easy for me to get the most of my placement. Oh and did I mention it’s all super fun?” – Oscar North, City University Student and Game Developer at RTG.
See Oscar’s blogs for Game Access
here!
Feedback from City University Staff:
“RTG is a fantastic concept and Betty’s commitment towards nurturing new talent is inspirational. Not only does she give students the opportunity to work within this incredibly competitive industry, she encourages their creativity and innovation, she instils a culture of autonomy to manage their own projects and teams, and commits to professional development through skills enhancement and working abroad, all in an entrepreneurial and positive environment.” – Donna Davies, Work-based Learning Advisor City University London
