Three Scottish stories of interest today.
The first arrived on my RSS doorstep yesterday - Games to be taught in Scottish Schools shouted the headline from MCV. The crux:
Scottish schoolchildren are to be taught the basics of video game design as part of the country's new national curriculum ... the move is to designed to 'create the next generation of young programmers'.
Hey, it worked for the BBC with its Micro initiative in the early 1980s, and look at the thriving UK industry today.
The second story landed in my Twitter feed via PDA's Jemima Kiss: Mike Butcher writes, Scotland confirmed as UK's gaming hub as Realtime Worlds pulls $50m:
That's a lot for a games company. Admittedly Realtime has an exclusive partnership with Microsoft Game Studios and its first title, Crackdown for Xbox 360 in early 2007, sold about 1.4m copies. But the money looks likely to head towards it's online games development. Realtime Worlds already runs All Points Bulletin, a massively multiplayer online game. I can tell you right now, VCs are highly interested in that space.
Money is pouring in north of the border - already home to the University of Abertay at Dundee's flagship games course and the Dare to be Digital game design competition.
So the third bit of news is actually a bit of a backhand plug. Jemima and I will be in Edinburgh to discuss these and other stories next Friday for a Scottish-based edition of The Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast (join the Facebook group!). We have a limited number of places for the Coffee Morning, so if you're interested in getting your penneth in, sign up for the event on Upcoming and come discuss.
