Ian Livingstone to lead industry skills review

Ian Livingstone has been appointed as the government’s skills champion for the video game sector.

Livingston, life president of Eidos and chairman of the Skillset Computer Games Skills Council, is now tasked with driving both the video games and visual effects industry workforce to increase skills levels across the board.

The appointment is also setting the scene for Livingstone to begin work with Revolution Software’s Charles Cecil and Double Negative’s Alex Hope in launching a thorough review of education and training in the UK games and VFX industries.

The review is set to be carried out by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and Skillset. It was announced on Wednesday by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey at the Develop Conference in Brighton.

“This announcement is a fantastic recognition of all of the brilliant work Ian has done as a leader of the UK’s games sector. We could not imagine a better qualified person for this role,” said Skillset chief executive Dinah Caine.

“Skillset is very pleased to be given the opportunity to contribute to this review, which comes at an extremely important time for our sector. We look forward to working with NESTA and with our sister Sector Skills Council e-skills-UK as we continue our partnership work championing the importance of skills development in this key sector.”

Chief executive of NESTA Jonathan Kestenbaum said that a healthy games industry was vital to the UK economy.

“The global video games sector is fiercely competitive so our universities must produce graduates with the skills to dominate new markets,” he said.