This writer hails from the era of Duck Hunt, the Game Gear, Dominik Diamond and Patrick Moore as the GamesMaster on Channel 4. Playing a bit of Actua Soccer on the PC or heading downstairs (and a few years earlier) for a bit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on my NES was one of the many things I could do to while away the hours until my mother, every bit the classic South Asian matriarch, would vehemently order me to bed. If, as a teenager approaching those first big life decisions, I had said to my parents that I wanted to go to Uni to study gaming – as in the design and creation of video games – this wouldn’t have met with much satisfaction from neither them, nor from most other parents back in those days. Fast forward 25 years and we live in a world full of possibilities for young people who want to take their passion for gaming and forge a career in the world they love.

If you are reading this and are wondering where on earth you could study gaming, then the UK is a pretty good place to be looking. With over 200 institutions offering undergraduate courses and qualification on this island alone, finding the right fit for you and the subject specialty you want to pursue with top-class teaching isn’t as daunting as you might think. See one of these courses through to the end and you’ll have an internationally recognised qualification along together with a suite of transferable skills that’ll have you ready for career lift-off, no matter which road you go down.

As is relatively standard here in Britain, undergraduate courses usually take around three years to complete and many of these degrees have partnerships with organisations and companies within the video gaming ecosystem, so in some cases, job progression happens straight out of graduation – or your degree is a four-year course with the third or fourth year spent working within the industry at a specified placement. Not only does this give you the best type of on-the-job work experience, it is also a great way to network and who knows where that might lead…

Different colleges and institutions will structure their courses in different ways, but the common denominator here, as with most courses, is that the modular study blueprint used in most universities means the course you choose will be flexible enough for you to select from a wide range of modules/subjects to study, so fear not – modules on eSports or mobile gaming will be just as possible to study next to the more business-oriented end of things. On top of all this, you will be making your bones in some of the best gaming laboratories going – this country is well-known for its tech learning spaces and the depth, variety and detail to which you can go studying in this area.

All courses offered across the country place huge importance on career skills – so alongside coding, design, theory and programming, you’ll also be bestowed with the knowledge and tools to establish your own game design studio, which means a strong focus on sales and marketing. Look out also when you are searching for courses that are TIGA accredited. TIGA is the leading authority on video games in the UK. For TIGA accreditation, universities will have to be able to prove how many of their graduates have then gone on to work in the video games industry. What does this all mean? Well, if you graduate with a TIGA-accredited qualification, your chances of employment in the sector do increase.

At £75bn, the global video games industry despite its constant changes and shifts IS a huge, worldwide and lucrative business. A qualification from a UK establishment, many of which have ties to the 2000 plus gaming companies, is a positive career move. The average salary per year for a UK-based game developer is around £42k. The industry itself is going through huge changes whether due to the pandemic or just due to those shifts that occur over time. One thing that hasn’t shifted is its growing and obvious importance as an industry worth working in. As a keen gamer, a career move like this may or may not be the one for you. Some will jump into this arena and love it just the same whilst others can sometimes find their love and time for gaming diminished somewhat by moving into studying what they love doing in their spare time. This is just human nature and nothing to be worried about. However, if you feel that studying gaming and moving up through those levels is the next move to make, go grab it with both hands as it might be just about the best decision you are likely to make for a very long time.

The post Studying gaming in the UK – a breakdown first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Big news today from the world of FIFA as EA Sports announce that women’s football legend Alex Scott will be featured as a commentator in the soon-to-be-released FIFA 22! She is set to become the famous franchise’s first-ever English-speaking female commentator.

During her playing career, Scott was a five-time Premier League winner and a seven-time FA Cup winner with Arsenal, a runner up in the Women’s Euros and a member of the England team that finished third in the 2015 Women’s World Cup, making 140 appearances for her country.

“This is a big moment for FIFA, for football and women and girls across the world,” said Alex Scott, speaking earlier today. “Representation is crucial and the inclusion of an English-speaking female commentator on FIFA is game-changing. The impact it will have is simply stratospheric”.

Happy to finally share the news that I joined the FIFA family and will be commentating for #FIFA22! 🙌🏾🎮

This is a big moment for FIFA, for football and women and girls across the world.
It’s also a big moment for me personally and professionally.#FIFA22 pic.twitter.com/A1Lhozl7K6

— Alex Scott MBE (@AlexScott) July 21, 2021

“Whilst I am the first English-speaking female broadcaster to feature in FIFA, I will certainly not be the last. I know this is just the start of stronger female footballing representation from EA SPORTS and the football community as a whole.”

Scott currently plies her trade on the BBC, having provided expert punditry on the channel’s recently concluded Euro 2020 coverage and is set to take over the anchor role on Football Focus this year.

EA Sports are yet to confirm whether gamers will be able to play as women’s club teams, having been able to play only as women’s international teams in recent iterations of the iconic football game.

Keep your eyes peeled here at Go2Games for all things FIFA 22 as the release date fast approaches!

The post Women’s football legend Alex Scott to be first ever female commentator on FIFA 22 first appeared on Get2Gaming.

It has been a week and a half now since the dream died and England were beaten by Italy in the European Cup final at Wembley. Our best chance of winning some silverware in 55 long and often painful years. To be honest, I think I’m just about over it – but to be honest, this writer is still not over Euro 96 – or World Cup 90 (yup I am ancient). However, it was what started happening immediately after 19-year-old Bukayo Saka missed the deciding penalty that dominated the headlines, social media and perhaps the private thoughts of every non-white English football fan for days. As I left my friend’s house that night, my dejection soon turned to thoughts of self-preservation. I swapped my shorts for a pair of trousers I had used on the cricket pitch earlier that day, zipped up my tracksuit top so the collar went right up my neck to my chin, donned a big black mask and a cap – and even wore some batting inner gloves. This way, you couldn’t see too much of me on that 25 min journey back from Brockley to Croydon – a Croydon that was demonstrably still reeling from the defeat as the drunken revelry had turned to detruitus and despair on the streets down from Boxpark, a sense of anger and fury palpable in the air. On the way home, social media quickly started revealing a face that had been hiding just beneath the surface of the water all tournament – the true face perhaps of England, the face of racism, volleyed at the three, young black and proud Englishmen who had missed the penalties in the game earlier. From monkey emojis to vile rants posted online, a trickle became a deluge and now we are talking about ID checks on social media accounts, lifetime bans, sackings – but perhaps avoiding discussing the root causes focusing instead on serving up heads on plates and moving things on until the circus comes back to town again for the next big flare up.

Gamers of colour (GOCs), for want of a better expression know all too well what our young kings have had to endure since Euro 2020 ended. The very same racist abuse finds its way all too often into the living rooms and bedrooms of eager gamers across the land, by people who have the privilege of hiding behind an avatar, a screen and a general cloak of invisibility. It comes in the form of text chat but more viciously, through voice chat and through video camera – to the point where many GOCs are just too traumatised to game or stream online due to the abuse they know they will get. In a 2019 study carried out by the Anti-Defamation League in the US, 53% of the gamers surveyed reported being targeted based on their race, religion, ability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.

This kind of abuse is followed up by racism rearing its head in other ways in the gaming world. Take for instance the Ugandan Knuckles meme – a Sonic meme which is now used to troll people, make fun of African accents and make racist jokes, especially around the topic of Ebola. Although it hasn’t quite followed in the footsteps of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon frog which has long since been weaponised by the Alt-Right and is now a symbol of identity and solidarity amongst fascists, it would not require a giant leap for Knuckles to follow in the same way, as racist users feel that they are having their ability to practise free expression prohibited, thus dragging Knuckles further into the culture wars.

When you also consider the poor efforts by the authorities to do what is admittedly a difficult thing to police, GOCs are left with very little space in which to feel safe enough to game freely and without fear. Groups like Black Girl Gamers have been set up in the wake of this, in order to give in this case young, black female gamers (probably the worst affected demographic) a safe space in which to do what they love doing. Since its inception, BGG has grown at pace, to 5,700 across the world – and has recently staged the UK’s first all-female gamers’ event. Groups like these are key in the fight against racism and other forms of discrimination in the gaming world. Why? Because ultimately, the buck stops with the gaming companies and game developers.

A study in 2013 claimed that Xbox Live had become a hub for “the overt racism that used to permeate our society”. Now, any person from a black or ethnic minority background will tell you that this is not a case of “used to permeate” but rather a case of “has always permeated” – it is just that with the rise of the internet and online gaming platforms, that racism can be practised often without fear of recrimination and without abandon. However, this same study did go on to identify the issue that lies at the heart of the fight against racism – the issue of structural racism. Whether it be in football management, our national institutions, the boardrooms or in this case the gaming industry, white male hegemony is the barrier separating us from progress. Black gamers, female gamers, older gamers, LGBTQI+ gamers are seen as “deviant”, as contrary to what “should be” in gaming, as the white, male-dominated industry and largely speaking, the games they make act as a perpetuation of this same white male hegemony.

Of course, this is not entirely true as today many games have characters of colour, LGBTQI+ characters, all of which are positive in their representations. However, it goes without saying that representation of non-white people in the gaming industry whilst slowly improving, is still an issue. In 2015, a Creative Skillset survey reported that around 4% of workers in the UK gaming industry were of a BAME background, well under the 10% across all sectors. With very little research done on race and representation in gaming, this does paint an underwhelming picture of the reality felt by BAME communities in gaming and also does very little to counter further truths in society at large.

This is then mirrored in the portrayal and misrepresentation of black people and other minority groups by stereotyping and by assumptions based upon racial identity or gender (or both) which then informs the creation of characters and storylines in the games themselves. Too often have we seen black characters in games portrayed as angry, dangerous and menacing which feeds back into false stereotyping based on the colour of one’s skin – and this has unfortunately been the case for many different communities of colour for as long as video gaming has been a thing:

So, where do we go from here? It is not enough for companies to just shoehorn in a black or ethnic minority worker round the table. This is simply diversity – not representation – and even if this happens, how can a BAME worker in the gaming industry fully commit to the task when there is a lack of visible representation around them? There are many great initiatives like blind recruitment, unconscious bias and antiracism training – but in this writer’s opinion, this has to be baked into the process well before companies start diversifying their boardrooms and workforces.  This is key to reaching and involving fully the diverse global audience found in the world of gaming and its marketplaces. Perhaps these firms are too spooked to “do the work” for fear of alienating who they mistakenly believe is their dominant, target audience.

In the US, black gamers are the dominant rising demographic, which should represent a shift in thinking from developers and marketeers within the industry. Here in the UK, BAME gamers are a large part of the demographic in the gaming universe. Will the industry follow suit and deep dive into what is surely, in financial terms at least, an ever-growing source of potential capital? Time will tell. And much like we are seeing in the world of football, saying that companies will not tolerate racism, sexism or homophobia is not enough unless those words are turned into concrete deeds. The Black, the Asian, the Latin, the LGBTQI+ experience is an important well from which to draw knowledge from and until the industry represents fully these strands, we may well be having these same conversations in the coming decades.

At Go2Games, we are proud to employ a workforce that is diverse through lines of race, gender, sexuality and ability – although we know that there is always more work to be done and this is what we strive to achieve. We see education, training and skills as a key pillar in ensuring that opportunity leads to experience which in turn, leads to representation for the many young people who spend time with us, often in their formative years in the world of work. It is through education, training and skills that we wish to develop our own mission, which is one of opportunity for all in the diverse, local community that we are all proud to be a part of. Working together with other community organisations who share our values and stand up for the different parts of our community is also an important part of our social DNA

Finally, circling back to the football, while a veil was lifted to expose something darker about English society, maybe England won something far greater than a big chunk of metal. In the wake of the sickening abuse, communities up and down the land came together in support of those three footballers. Communities with people of different colours, creeds and class – just like the team that brought everyone together, a team picked from every corner of this island. A team which played for us and perhaps spoke for us, on and off the pitch. For the gaming community and the gaming industry, this should represent a teaching moment. Because this is what representation really looks like.

Football may not have come home, but this side made England a home… 👏 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

England Didn't Really Lose

Written by @SebSB Illustrated by @Alice_Devine_

🎥 Watch: https://t.co/feA311HWMe pic.twitter.com/5Qq3TnzRm6

— Tifo Football (@TifoFootball_) July 12, 2021

The post Racism in Gaming first appeared on Get2Gaming.

As I start writing this, Summer Solstice is upon us and I am surrounded by my comrades here at Go2Games, many of whom have been brought together by the one cataclysmic event that, whether we like it or not, unites each and every one of us – the global Covid-19 pandemic. We are all human and we are all beset by worries on a good day. Throw into the mix a global pandemic and those worries are magnified tenfold, with an added sense of existential dread. Will things ever be the same again? Probably not. Will my job still be there when all this is over? Who knows? Why do I feel weird about venturing out to see people who I’ve known for years? What am I even doing with my life right now? For many people – myself included – these are the questions that have beset every waking hour since the before times became, well, the before times.

Dealing with things over the last year has taken many forms – from Tiger King to Tik Tok, working from home to home workouts, banana bread to Dalgona, people have re-found themselves through new experiences that have helped while away the days, the weeks, the months and indeed the last year. However, there has been one thing above all else that has dominated time spent during lockdown that is not simply a lockdown fad, but rather a lifestyle choice – video gaming.

2020 saw an exponential rise in sales for video games, with an estimated £7bn spent on gaming last year. This was played out by the fact that almost two-thirds of adults here in the UK turned to gaming to help them get through lockdown and amongst the younger demographic of 16-24 year olds, 92% played video games during the pandemic. The key takeaway from all of this was that half of all gamers stated that playing video games helped them get through lockdown. As Coronavirus drew the curtain down on life as we knew it, it also made mincemeat of the one thread that holds most people’s lives together – structure.

Yet in a strange way, video games have given many people that structure to their lives, in a way that say, recorded music or films and TV shows are unable to. Turning your Ultimate Team on FIFA 21 into a world-beating outfit capable of taking any gamer in the world, figuring out how to eliminate Urias Strajer in Resident Evil Village on that brand-new PS5 you managed to somehow get yourself or reconnecting with your youth by picking up where you left off all those years ago on a Nintendo Switch with Mario Kart 8 have given spiritual sustenance, mental salvation and emotional fortitude to many worrying about whether they’ll ever be able to work again, or if their mum and dad might get Covid – or worse.

my local, smyth's, is coming along nicely. there's even some lad standing on a table next to the jukebox pic.twitter.com/Y5SECG08bo

— cian maher (@cianmaher0) March 19, 2020

I remember a time when video games were denounced as the next coming of Satan, the inspiration for school shootings – a claim that even Donald Trump made in casting blame in the wake of the Parkland shootings (nothing to do with social atomisation, gun culture and racism obvs) – and that “If you were Mario and you jumped on turtles, you were more likely to kill turtles in real life”. Yet the reality is altogether different. Video games have been the ointment to soothe and calm the worries and stresses that lockdown life has brought upon us, a way to connect with our friends in times of isolation and in some cases, a way to raise our glasses together to that most hallowed of British institutions – the local pub, recreated via Minecraft! As they say, if you can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, you gotta bring that mountain to Mohammed! And this is just the thing – while building your local pub on Minecraft might seem like just a bit of a laugh, there are organisational skills, attention to detail, selectiveness and creativity all rolled into one task here, all of which are skills and abilities one might use in the workplace, in the classroom – in real life.

Of course, apart from our immune systems, the biggest assault launched by the pandemic was on our mental health. My personal happy place is creating/playing music, something which has been with me ever since my days as a toddler. Like video gaming, it is a place where one can operate solo, or collaborate with others. It is often said that politicians and politics are always well behind technology and the speed at which it advances (this may well be by design, as this writer anticipates the soon-to-be incontrovertible need for an egalitarian-like-Star Trek future of fully automated luxury communism in a world tended to by machines of loving grace). The social advances made by video gaming during the pandemic vis a vis the positive effect of gaming on mental health may well have helped to write a different narrative around the place of video games in modern society. No longer should video games be blamed for the ills of society when the research and evidence is there right in front of us that gaming has had a positive effect on the well-being of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here at Go2Games, we have done our best to ensure that people do not miss out on this, partnering with Crystal Palace Football Club to get games and consoles out to those disadvantaged families and places in need.

In the coming decades, we shall soon become a world that knows nothing other than the digital age, a world where gaming was either for some of us, always present and for others like me, something that began when we did. Where once video games were a lightening rod for everything seemingly wrong with the world, they are now increasingly becoming recognised as a force for good in this world (watch this space however for a stinging critique of sexism, racism and homophobia in the gaming universe – Incels, I am coming for you). Gaming has been proven to help stave off the early onset of dementia amongst the elderly (who knew Super Mario had it in him, eh mum?) and is now being credited with playing a major role in the combat against Coronavirus and its resultant social symptoms. It is now down to us to ensure that gaming grows from this point in history, that it remains a unifying force socially and culturally and that we learn from the part it has played in the fightback against COVID-19, the biggest of all bosses.

No turtles were harmed in the writing of this article.

The post Gaming in the time of Coronavirus first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Since 2012, Go2Games has been operating from the heart of Croydon, reaching out to gamers across the UK and EU. Started by four friends native to the borough, today Go2Games’s entire workforce are from the local community, representing the diversity that runs all the way through Croydon. However, Go2Games does not want to be solely an online retailer. Nor does it see its contribution to society as merely that of a local employer. Go2Games has always placed community cohesion at the centre of what it does – and it is this civic duty that underpins what it is about. In early 2020, the planet surrendered to the hellish grip of a sustained global pandemic and it was shortly thereafter that Go2Games doubled down on its role for the many strands of community that together, make Croydon what it is.

Crystal Palace Football Club literally runs through the blood of Go2Games, with several of its employees, including its MD Craig, lifelong (and some might say long-suffering) fans of the team. Because of this, Go2Games has developed a historical partnership with the Palace For Life Foundation, having sponsored its Down Syndrome Eagles Football Team. During the early stages of the pandemic, back in April 2020, Go2Games got together with Palace For Life to provide gaming consoles to local, disadvantaged children, young adults and families, whilst also distributing consoles to hospital wards too. As Craig said himself, “As families increasingly feel the need to tighten their belts, we thought giving away some free consoles might have a positive impact on local lives, and we’re grateful to Palace for Life for identifying for us those who need it most.”

This partnership with Palace For Life deepened even further in 2021 as Go2Games launched its #keepcroydonconnected campaign. With the pandemic causing schools across the UK to close and learning to then go online, if you were stuck at home without the tech you needed to do your schoolwork, to log onto online Zoom classes or to submit work to deadlines – you were truly at a disadvantage. Partnering also with Croydon Commitment and Croydon Voluntary Action, G2G’s #keepcroydonconnected campaign sent out a call-to-action borough-wide asking people to donate any used laptops, tablets and PCs that they had no further use for. Go2Games would then receive these laptops, send them to a refurbishment company and then, with the help of several people and groups including local MPs, distribute these devices to the young people and older adults who needed them the most. Pre-pandemic, this communitarian quest to help those less fortunate members of the community had long been part of G2G’s DNA – #keepcroydonconnected was a logical extension of this mission.

GO2GAMES PROUD TO BE A DISABILITY CONFIDENT EMPLOYER ❤ @playstationuk@nintendouk@xboxuk pic.twitter.com/IlYVtBhF9m

— Go2Games (@GO2GAMES) January 21, 2021

It is those who before the pandemic, have already had the odds stacked against them that stand to struggle the most coming out of the pandemic into the “new normal”, whatever that might mean. Ableism and its impact on those seeking employment who have some sort of disability is, on the part of employers, borne out of a lack of education, an unconscious bias, an absence of compassion and understanding – or a cocktail of all three. That is why Go2Games has committed deeply to being a Disability Confident status employer. Announcing this in January 2021, Go2Games is proud to hold this status and more importantly, is now an employer which is confident in doing so and in turn, is an employer that people with disabilities can feel confident to both approach and apply for roles at the company.

Two years ago, Croydon’s Legacy Youth Zone threw its doors open to the young people of the borough. Built on the model of existing On Side Youth Zones which give young people safe and inspiring places to go in their leisure time, somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to, Legacy offers world-class facilities to young people to engage in the activities they love doing but also to find out about and discover new passions and hobbies alongside each other. Go2Games has partnered with Legacy as a Gold Supporter and have been involved with Legacy throughout every step of the way. In recent times, Go2Games have run gaming sessions at Legacy, premiering new releases and trying out new and featured products, eSports FIFA tournaments and regular junior Mario Kart tournaments – all inside and outside of lockdown, as per government guidelines around youth centres.

Since May 2021, Go2Games have been in partnership with the local social enterprise Fashion Meets Music, taking up a space on the shop floor to promote new releases and a selection of our wide stock range, to offer shoppers at Centrale a free gaming experience by courtesy of Nintendo Switches and a PS5 with classic and new games – but most importantly, to offer an array of traineeships and accredited work experience for the people of Croydon.

We are currently running a Kickstart scheme from the shop, having brought on board some amazing new content creators, post-production crew, streamers and social media administrators – all of whom are now heading up the effort across our social media platforms! Working together with Fashion Meets Music, who showcase independent, black fashion designers, pan-African art and textiles and some banging playlists has been wonderful and places Go2Games quite literally at the heart of Croydon. Come down and meet the crew, see if you can beat us at Mario Kart, FIFA, Street Fighter or any of the titles we have there and if you are interested, put your name down for some 2021 gold dust in the form of a PS5 or an Xbox Series X!

Finally, a good news story! A couple of weeks ago, stand-up comedian and all-round stand-up guy White Yardie came down to the shop to meet Go2Games and launch a charity prize draw to win a PS5 – in order to raise vital funds for the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who have recently had their lives turned upside down by the eruption of the volcano La Soufriere. The prize draw has now since ended and we are thrilled to have raised £1075 in just a ten-day period! The draw has now since ended and White Yardie spoke to a very excited winner to congratulate them and to highlight in detail how much St Vincent and the Grenadines have been through in the last few months.

We are nothing without the people with whom we share this town and there is so much more that unites us than that which divides us. Go2Games was born out of this unity and shared experience and as it has grown, Go2Games’s values have remained rooted in this sense of community and social responsibility. Stay tuned for the next chapter in this story – and if you think you can help us write it, come find us because as a wise man once said: “Without people, you’re nothing”.

The post Go2Games in the Community first appeared on Get2Gaming.