GDC 2016: Want to be a game maker? Unity certification can upgrade your resume for cheap

sincity · March 15, 2016

We gamers all have a point in our lives in which we want to become game designers. But expensive university programs, pesky unpaid internships and seemingly impossible-to-master material stop us from turning that one million-dollar idea into a tangible product.

Thanks to Unity, soon, we won't have such an easy excuse.

The company behind the eponymous game development software that's used to make thousands of games per year, announced its own certification program. It's called, as you might expect, the Unity Certified Developer Program.

The program's aim is to standardize the knowledge that fledgling game developers are expected to have before landing that first gig at a big time game studio.

More certified developers means more, better games

Dr. Damon Daylamani-Zad, Senior Lecturer for the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Greenwich, believes that this could make all the difference for both newly graduated students and those self-taught savvy coders who are looking for a way to prove their skills.

"It also reduces the risk of employing developers and graduates as they can now support their CVs with an official evaluation," Daylamani-Zad says. "Finally, this approach also helps the Higher Education to align their focus with the industry standards."

But what about the most base level game developers, starting from zero, like you and me? For us, Unity is releasing the Unity Certified Developer Courseware, an online learning program that helps potential game developers prepare for the surprisingly affordable certification exam.

The certification will cost $250 (about £175, AU$330) and the first public certification session is to be held at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. The online course will be available later this spring in English, but Unity says other languages are in the works.