From classroom to console: Suffolk event spotlights East Anglia's fast-growing games industry

A former teacher who left the profession at 28 because of chronic illness now earns twice her old salary running her own games-sector consultancy, and she used a Suffolk visit to urge young people to consider the "many pathways" into video games.

Jarvs Tasker, director and founder of Jarvs Indie Insights, a firm providing communications and marketing services to the games industry, was 28 when she was forced to abandon her teaching career in 2019. Seven years on, she says the career change has paid off handsomely.

Speaking at an event at the University of Suffolk's e-sport building in Ipswich, Tasker said it would probably have taken her about 20 years of teaching to reach the income she makes today. She now lives in Exeter but returned to Suffolk on Wednesday to help celebrate independent game developers and studios.

The event was hosted by Game Anglia, a group working to raise awareness of careers in the gaming industry across the East of England, and it was designed to showcase the region's growing independent games sector.

Tasker's route into the industry was not a conventional one. After leaving the classroom, she began volunteering for PlayStation's YouTube channel, where she found that the skills she had developed in education transferred directly to games. Managing a community, she explained, is a lot like managing a class of children, and there is considerable overlap between the two skill sets.

She was also struck by how many people come into video games later in life. That experience, she believes, is something young people do not necessarily appreciate when they are choosing a route into employment.

"The video games community is very strong, and they will champion people that love what they do, but they'll also notice if you're in it just for the money," Tasker said. Her advice was blunt: passion is the single most important quality.

One of the biggest questions hanging over the sector is artificial intelligence. Tasker believes the industry has done a "really great job" of rejecting AI, arguing that audiences and players have made their preferences clear. She said the industry should be proud of continuing to champion human creativity, and that the audience is on board with that position.

Mark Backler, who was also at the event, agreed that it remains difficult to predict how AI will reshape the industry, but noted that a significant number of players are opposed to its use. He described games as one of the UK's biggest industries, and acknowledged that while it is competitive, it has never been easier to build and release your own independent title.

"It's like being a content creator — it's tricky to be one of the standout ones, but it is doable," Backler said.

Sam Read-Graves, a developer with Read Graves working specifically in the East of England, said the sector has "grown massively in the past 10 years". He credited regional schemes spanning Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk with creating dense clusters of students and developers.

Those clusters, he said, are beginning to attract studios capable of making bigger games. He was realistic about the limits, however: blockbuster franchises such as Call of Duty and FIFA are not yet coming out of the East of England, because the region does not host the large studios that produce them. But for independent developers, he sees no reason such games cannot be financially successful on a comparable scale.

The pipeline appears to be working. Abbygale Dunn, 22, studied game design and programming at university before founding Astral Forge, an independent game development company based in Essex.

Dunn said there is "so much space for women" in the industry today, but acknowledged how daunting that can feel in practice. When she was studying, she said, there were only about three women on her course.

She was quick to add a note of reassurance. "Everyone is so kind; it's really not as bad as it seems, especially nowadays." Working as a programmer — a role she notes is less common for women — she has never felt out of place.

Not everyone is convinced the sector delivers on its promises, however. Omar Khalil, game scout lead at Entity, said there is "no shortage of talent in the UK", but the real difficulty lies in standing out. With so many games already in the market, the challenge is no longer making something good; it is getting noticed.

"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?" Khalil said. "I think that's the biggest challenge."

Taken together, the speakers at the Ipswich event painted a picture of a regional industry that is expanding quickly, opening doors for people with unconventional backgrounds, and still grappling with the visibility problem that defines the wider market. The University of Suffolk's e-sport building provided a fitting backdrop: a physical space designed for the next generation of East Anglian developers, and a symbol of the pathways Tasker wishes more young people would recognise.