From classroom to console: Suffolk event spotlights the East of England's fast-growing games sector

For years, the video games industry was treated as a career reserved for the young and the formally trained. But at an event held at the University of Suffolk's e-sport building in Ipswich on Wednesday, that assumption was challenged from every angle — by a former teacher who doubled her salary after switching sides, by a 22-year-old founder running her own studio, and by a talent scout warning that Britain's biggest problem is not a shortage of skill but a shortage of attention.

The event was hosted by Game Anglia, a network established to raise awareness of career routes into gaming, and it brought together independent developers, studios and students from across the East of England. Its purpose was to showcase a sector that campaigners say has quietly become one of the country's largest creative industries, and to argue that the region is now a genuine cluster rather than a fringe outpost.

The attendee whose story attracted most attention was Jarvs Tasker, the director and founder of Jarvs Indie Insights, a firm providing communication and marketing support within the gaming sector. In 2019, at the age of just 28, she was forced to abandon her teaching career because of chronic illness. Seven years on, she says she now earns roughly double her previous annual salary.

"It probably would have taken me about 20 years in teaching to earn what I make now," Tasker said, speaking during the Ipswich visit. Her trajectory was not a planned one. After leaving the classroom, she began volunteering for PlayStation's YouTube channel, and discovered that the crossover between education and gaming was far greater than she had expected.

The skills, she argued, transfer remarkably well. "Managing a community is very similar to managing a class of kids, so there's a lot of crossover skills there," she said, adding that games is one of several industries in which people routinely arrive later in life, often bringing experience from elsewhere with them. Now living in Exeter, she remains a vocal advocate for widening the door: young people, she believes, often have no idea how many "pathways" exist within the sector.

Tasker is equally blunt about what the industry demands in return. The games community, in her view, is fiercely loyal to people who genuinely care about the craft, and equally quick to identify those who are only chasing a pay cheque. "They will champion people that love what they do, but they'll also notice if you're in it just for the money," she said. "Passion is the most important thing."

Her comments on artificial intelligence were similarly pointed. Asked about the technology's impact on the sector, she said she believed the industry was doing a "really great job" at rejecting it, largely because players resented its introduction. She argued that the sector should take pride in continuing to champion human creativity, and that audiences have broadly endorsed that stance — a position echoed by Mark Backler of Game Anglia, who said it remains difficult to predict how AI will ultimately reshape the business, but noted that a significant number of players are opposed to its use.

Backler, whose organisation works to raise awareness about careers in gaming, described the industry as now one of the biggest in the UK. He acknowledged that it is competitive, but insisted it has never been more possible for individuals to develop and release their own games. "It's like being a content creator — it's tricky to be one of the standout ones, but it is doable," he said.

Others at the event painted a picture of rapid regional growth. Sam Read-Graves, a developer with Read Graves who works specifically in the East, said the industry had "grown massively in the past 10 years". He credited schemes such as Game Anglia, which spans Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, with creating dense concentrations of students and developers — and with attracting studios capable of making larger-scale titles.

He was realistic about the limits, however. Blockbusters in the mould of Call of Duty or FIFA are unlikely to emerge from the East of England for now, because the region lacks the big studios capable of producing them. But for independent developers, he argued, there is no reason such games cannot be financially as significant.

That optimism was shared by Abbygale Dunn, 22, founder and director of Astral Forge, an independent game development company based in Essex. Having studied game design and programming at university, she said there is "so much space for women" in the sector today — and described an industry that is far more welcoming than its reputation suggests. "When I studied, there were only about three women in my course," she said. "Everyone is so kind; it's really not as bad as it seems, especially nowadays. As a programmer myself, which is more rare for women to be in, I've never felt out of place."

The final word came from a more sobering vantage point. Omar Khalil, game scout lead at Entity, said there is "no shortage of talent in the UK", but creating the next breakout title remains difficult. In his view the issue is not quality or quantity: "There are so many games out there right now, and it's not like there aren't enough good games; it's how do you get visibility on those games?" He called that the biggest challenge facing the sector.

Taken together, the speakers offered a mixed but ultimately encouraging verdict: the East of England has depth, ambition and genuine diversity in its emerging games workforce, but success in the sector depends less on raw ability than on sustained passion, and on finding a way through a crowded market to reach the players already looking for something new.