I'm 95% convinced, but there is still a small niggle...

Hello people,

Over the past fews days I have been doing a lot of research into the legitmacy of this course and the qualification, as there seems to be an awful lot of bad press towards the T2G courses. Having looked deeper and past all the trolls and dullards who have nothing better to do than slag off things with absolutely no proof to back up their claims, I have found out a few things...

So from the beginning then...

Train2Game is a training business, used by TIGA, that is specifically designed to produce qualified designers and developers for the games industry. Now who is TIGA you ask? Well TIGA represent the UK games industry. They have an ever expanding portfolio of games companies and universities who are members. For more info follow the link below:-
http://www.tiga.org/Train2Game.aspx and to see their current portfolio of games developers who have recently joined see here:- http://www.tiga.org/NewCompanyPortfolio.aspx and there are some well known games developers on here! But I for one wanted to make sure that these companies were actually members of TIGA, as I had not heard of them before T2G, and endorsed the courses set by them so I looked at some the games companies sites (via google) to see if I could find any evidence of a collaboration, here is what I found...

Now the Train2Game course has a games design studio making sure that the content of the course is up to date and people from the studio, DR studios, make appearances as guest lecturers and Clive Robert, the CEO for DR studios, can often be seen on the T2G forums lending a helping hand http://www.forum.train2game.com/showthread.php?t=437 and DR studios input into the course was obvious as soon as you enter their website they have a tab on their homepage which leads to T2G info:- http://drstudios.co.uk/ So far so good, everything checks out.

Ideonic are a games developer for learning and training simulation games and are members of TIGA.
http://www.ideonic.com/about

Realtime UK, creators of games like- Buzz!, The Club, Total War: Napoleon, Juiced 2 etc, are members of TIGA, look for the logo:-
http://www.realtimeuk.com/about

Blitz game studios are responsible for the Dead to rights series, and have titles on all the consoles back to at least 1998 and are also members of TIGA http://www.blitzgamesstudios.com/ (look at the bottom of the page) but also state "that we do NOT endorse any other courses including distance learning courses such as Train2Game." on their Blitz academy overview page, to view this follow the link below:-
http://www.blitzgamesstudios.com/blitz_academy/

Iguana entertainment ltd have recently released Empire Builder and are members of TIGA:-
http://www.iguana-entertainment.com/

Eiconic Games ltd have have created a web game called Polar Panic and have a family game called squeeballs coming next year to XBOX 360, PS3 and Wii. They are members of TIGA:-
http://www.eiconic.com/Links.html

This has taken along time to compile this much info but other games companies that are most definately members of TIGA are as follows:-

http://www.tag-games.com/
http://www.airplayuk.com/home/
http://www.monumentalgames.com/partners.php
http://www.fourdoorlemon.com/about/
http://www.jagex.com/corporate/Press/pressRelease.ws

There are other company names added to the TIGA portfolio over the past three months that might be TIGA members too but they just don't have the TIGA logo tattooed on their websites, some of whom are fairly big hitters in the games industry. I have started emailling some of these companies to find out if they would consider the 'TIGA diploma' as a recognised qualification. Nothing yet but I will keep you informed.

And just in case you haven't read enough yet here is a little more:-
http://www.develop-online.net/news/31907/Tiga-to-partner-in-UK-game-design-course

So I believe TIGA is legit and that it is doing good things for the games industry however I still have some questions about Train2Game.

Train2Game's co-founder is a man named, Jan Telensky, who also has the title of CEO for an IT training company called 'Skillstrain'. Now skillstrain have been on the BBC's program 'Watchdog' for racking up 200 complaints for it's IT courses being out of date etc. Now in my opinion 200 complaints is not a lot for a company who netted £18 million in 2008. Now I know this is difficult but keep an open mind when watching this:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2008/10/the_skills_training_thats_off.html
also read some of the comments underneath.

But, this does not take into account what must be thousands of success stories and is therefore a very one sided arguement.

I have looked into Jan Telensky a little more and he has come from nothing and he seems to be a generous man who has donated a lot of money to charities and schools. But you don't need to take my word for it, he has his own blog!! http://jantelensky.blogspot.com/

As to whether the course is completely cosher, I think we will have to wait on this interview for some answers:-
http://forums.hexus.net/general-discussion/164222-train2game-best-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xx-xxxxx.html

That's it for now, I'm going to scoop my brain back into my skull after all that research.

As always, all the best,

Tommy.