TIGA appointments

25 November 2009

TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry, today announced that it has appointed Professor Carsten Maple from the University of Bedfordshire and Mark Eyles from the University of Portsmouth as TIGA Education Advisers.

The new roles will enable TIGA to further develop and cement its ties with educational institutions and also continue to consolidate and strengthen its new Diplomas in Games Development and Games Design.

Mark Eyles and Carsten Maple will initially focus on the TIGA Diplomas, which are being delivered by Train2Game, with a view to benchmarking them against existing educational qualifications frameworks and also ensuring that the Train2Game courses are delivering to these standards.

Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO stated: “TIGA is committed to helping academia and industry foster ever closer links and to ensuring we assist wherever possible in closing the UK skills gap. The appointment of Mark and Carsten as TIGA Education Advisers will greatly assist in these areas and will ensure we are able to offer the best possible advice to our members and wider industry.”

Carsten Maple has been involved in a number of knowledge transfer projects with industry. He said: "I have always strived to ensure that there is good communication between the academic and industrial communities. It is through collaborations such as this that educators can achieve their aim of developing people to impact upon businesses and society, and that industry can ensure that they have a workforce with the relevant skills to create this impact".

Mark Eyles established and runs two undergraduate video games courses at the University of Portsmouth and is also active in the schools’ games research division. Before joining academia Mark spent over 20 years working in the video games industry as a designer, producer and manager for companies such as Rebellion, SEGA, Electronic Arts, Microprose, Activision, SCI, Nintendo and Climax.

Mark commented: “The games industry continues to grow and change at an incredible pace and it is vital that TIGA ensures that the skills required to support this are being developed. This exciting new role enables me to assist in consolidating the important educational work that is being done to ensure that the UK games industry continues to be the envy of the world.”

Ends

Notes to editors

About TIGA

TIGA is the trade association representing the UK’s games industry. The majority of our members are either independent games developers or in-house publisher owned developers. We also have outsourcing companies, technology businesses and universities amongst our membership.

TIGA's vision is to make the UK the best place in the world to do games business. We focus on three sets of activities: political representation, generating media coverage and developing services that enhance the competitiveness of our members. This means that TIGA members are effectively represented in the corridors of power, their voice is heard in the media and they receive benefits that make a material difference to their businesses, including a reduction in costs and improved commercial opportunities.

About Mark Eyles

Mark Eyles is a Principal Lecturer in the School of Creative Technologies, Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Portsmouth. He is course leader for two undergraduate game courses that he took through validation in 2004. He also took MSc Computer Games Technology through validation in 2006. He lectures on game design and production on undergraduate and postgraduate courses and manages staff resources for the department.

Before joining the university in 2003 Mark was Head of Design at UK game developer Rebellion and had spent over 20 years working as a designer, producer and manager in the games industry (Quicksilva, Sega, Electronic Arts, Microprose, Activision, SCI, Nintendo, Climax etc). He also wrote scripts for 2000 AD and Sonic the Comic, made holograms and has worked on board game designs for Hasbro.

In 2004 he held the first Women in Games Conference ( www.womeningames.com). He set up the Advanced Games Research Group at the University of Portsmouth in 2006 and is currently engaged in research into ambient games, a type of pervasive gaming.

For more information visit: www.eyles.co.uk

About Carsten Maple

Carsten Maple is Head of Department for Computer Science and Technology at the University of Bedfordshire. He has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years and is an accomplished senior manager with an international research reputation and extensive experience of institutional strategy development and interacting with external agencies. Carsten has substantial experience of chairing and participating in committees and boards at all levels of an HE institution and a strong track record of leadership and obtaining grants in research and enterprise.

Carsten developed one of the first BSc Computer Games Development programmes in the UK and has been invited to sit on many validation panels for a number of areas in computing and creative technologies. He has been elected to serve on the Committee for Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC) and has participated Parliamentary IT Committee Meetings. Carsten has advised both businesses and educational establishments in many countries including: China; India; Sri Lanka; Russia and throughout Europe.

For more information contact Eva Field, PR Manager on M 07814 039 983 or E eva@tiga.org