Monday, 9 March 2015
Friday, 6 March 2015
Task 5 - Aprenticeship
Aprenticeships
1. IT Support:- Duties include: Mobile (Apple/Blackberry) support, providing telephone support to clients, logging calls to CRM system, training clients with products.
2. Information & Technology Support Apprentice:
- Responsible for the receipt of problems that are reported by customers, and co-ordination of rapid and appropriate responses, including channeling requests to appropriate solutions, monitoring progress, and keeping the customer up-to-date with progress.
3. Advanced Apprenticeship in IT Development:
- Areas covered in apprenticeship: understanding the principles and techniques of software design, investigation, analysis and solving of reported defects, creating documents for the support and maintenance of a computer program.
4. Technician:
- Duties include: Building and maintaining computer systems, computer support, answering support calls from both existing and new customers, networking systems, understanding all products used in the industry.
5. IT Technical Apprentice:
- Duties include: building PCs from available spare parts (motherboards, power supplies, graphics cards etc), installing OS and software, laptop/PC repair, repairing faulting systems, recovering data from damaged devices, responding to client requests.
6. IT Support Apprenticeship:
- Duties include: troubleshooting hardware/software issues face-to-face or remotely, managing user accounts/passwords, controlling hardware/software inventories, upgrading PC hardware.
7. Apprentice IT Support Officer:
- Duties include: providing system training and support for end users, ensuring maximum availability of computer systems, developing and implementing new systems, IT hardware and software maintenance, researching and evaluating new technologies.
8. IT Help Desk Apprenticeship:
- Duties/Responsibilities include: providing technical 1st-line support for all staff, establishing the level of assistance required and (if needed) progress the problem to the next line of support, delivering excellent customer service for all support requests or incidents, installing, configuring, repairing and supporting computer hardware and software.
9. Apprentice Help Desk Operator:
- Duties include: Taking calls to the help desk from users around the group, logging tickets on the help desk system and assigning technicians to solve them, contacting users to confirm satisfaction with the solution, assisting transport arrangements for IT equipment, contribute to monthly reports, assist the Help Desk Coordinator with their daily activity.
10. Apprentice Technical Support Engineer:
- Duties/Responsibilities include: diagnosing and fixing computer hardware and software issues, liaising with VoIP customers/suppliers, installation tasks (servers, desktops, VoIP), product research and evaluation.
Task 4 - UCAS
1. Games Design: University of the Arts London
2.Computer and Video Games with Industry Placement: The University of Salford
3.Games Design: The University of Salford
4.Interactive Entertainment (Games Development): Birmingham City University
5.Games Design with Foundation: University of Bolton
- Course Summary: Build. Test. Play. BA (Hons) Games Design gives you the opportunity to take the software tools of games design and create new gaming experiences. From story-boarded concepts to playable prototypes to user testing and evaluation, you'll design the code as well as the visual feedback systems so you're ready to join the industry and develop new games from scratch. This course is taught at London College of Communication, at Elephant and Castle.
- The course costs: England*: £9000
2.Computer and Video Games with Industry Placement: The University of Salford
- Duration: 3 years
- Study Mode: Full time with a placement.
- Course Summary: N/A
3.Games Design: The University of Salford
- Course Summary: You will study games design and explore the professional skills necessary to pursue employment in the Games industry. You will study in Media City and engage in work based experience relevant to your programme of study.
- Duration: 2 years
- Study Mode: Full time
4.Interactive Entertainment (Games Development): Birmingham City University
- Course Summary: Developed with leading industry partners, this accelerated full-time two-year degree has been designed to challenge ambitious and talented students and prepare them for a career in either triple A (AAA) or independent video games development.
- Duration: 2 years
- Study Mode: Full time
5.Games Design with Foundation: University of Bolton
- Course Summary: The foundation year of the BSc (Hons) Games Design with Foundation will introduce you to many aspects of computing, including programming, computer networks and computers in society (covering cultural, ethical, social and security issues). As well as learning about the fundamentals of research, you will develop a logical approach to problem solving and gain project management, team work and communications skills during the project module.
- Duration: 4 years
- Study Mode: Full time
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Task 7 Professional Bodies Supporting the Industry
Professional Bodies Supporting the Gaming Industry
- UKIE - (The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment), is a trade organisation for the UK's interactive entertainment industry. They are a non-profit organisation who aim to support the industry and help it grow and achieve their interests and goals, and they help organisations receive a positive image of the video games industry, and all companies.
Source: http://ukie.org.uk/about
- IGDA - The (International Game Developers Association). IGDA is the largest non-profit organisation. They aim to make game development a lot easier and more pleasant to perform. They are based around the world and aim to bring together game developers and support anyone who hopes to to become a Game Developer.
'Whether you're a student with a goal to become a game developer or a seasoned veteran, regardless if you're based in the U.S. or any country/region in the world, whether you're an indie developer or in a AAA studio, whether your primary platform is a PC, console or a tabletop - we welcome you home to the IGDA!'
- WIGJ - (Women in Games Jobs). WIGJ is a non-profit company that works towards supporting women and recruiting more women into the gaming industry, by promoting women as role models and encouraging women to work in the industry and they give information to those wanting to work in the industry. They also want to make the industry more attractive for women hoping to become developers.
- BAFTA - (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts), identify and reward excellent, innovative or inspiring companies and even games such as The Last of Us for best art, game mechanics and best story. The BAFTA also supports, promotes, and develops the art forms of film, TV, and video games.
- MEF - (Mobile Entertainment Forum), MEF is a global organisation which supports any companies that want to monetize their mobile services/products, the organisation is mainly based in London but they are also based in Asia, North and Latin America, The Middle East and Africa.
Task 6 - Legal and Ethical Obligations
Legal
- Copyright - Copyrighting allows the owner rights specific rights to their work and they are able take any legal action against any plagiarism of it. The first owner is usually the author of the property.
- Trademarks - are the way that companies allow themselves to stand out from others, a trademark are normally a word, slogan, shape or symbol and in some cases a combination of them all.
- Registered Designs - A registered design is very similar to 'copyright' and it allows you to have extra legal protection over any of your designs. However to get your design registered you must first create something new and it cannot be similar to anything previously created by someone else.
- Patents - Applies to industrial processes and inventions. A Patent is a government license which protects your invention and allows the the inventor to take legal action against any unauthorized coping, usage and distribution of their invention for a certain period of time.
Ethical Obligations
- Violence - Violence in video games is one of the many debates in the gaming industry and others include sexism, gore and sexual scenes. Many people believe and link violent behaviour to violence in games and playing them will influence children to act the same, many games are affected by this claim such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) but these games are protected by their age rating placed on them.
- Ratings - The PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) rating system was introduced to help European parents make more informed decisions about buying games for their children and what is suitable for them to play. This rating system was launched in 2003 and has replaced multiple national rating systems. It is now being used throughout the world.
The Rating Category's include;
 | EARLY CHILDHOOD
Content is intended for young children.
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 | EVERYONE
Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.
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 | EVERYONE 10+
Content is generally suitable for ages 10 and up. May contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.
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 | TEEN
Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.
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 | MATURE
Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
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 | ADULTS ONLY
Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.
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- Education - Games are designed to entertain the player for hours on end but there are a few that are created to teach and educate the player 'such as games like Sim City and Roller coaster Tycoon, where players create societies or build theme parks, developed children's strategic thinking and planning skills'.
- Through an educational perspective, there are many different things that video games can teach us, some positive, and some negative.
- Stereotyping - Stereotyping in the gaming industry is a big issue as many games focuses more towards the male audience rather than female and in certain cases games such as 'Dead or Alive' have amplified the breast area of the female characters due to their main target audience may be men and this causes many issues in gaming as many people think it is stereotyping against women etc. However over the years the gaming industry is having less problems as newer games contain female protagonists and even have the option to choose between genders .
- Addiction - A large amount of gamers tend to spend a large amount of time playing video games such as World of Warcraft which is large and in some way an endless game and many people will become addicted to them. As a result many players will spend days on end playing without sleep or even taking a break and because of this issue people will start to have health issues like obesity other physical signs include black rings under the eyes and muscular stiffness in the shoulders which may possibly be caused by a tense posture or sleep deprivation. Also in really rare cases people have died from over excessive gaming.
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