From classroom to console: Suffolk event spotlights the region's fast-growing games industry

A former teacher who swapped a chalkboard for a game controller told students at the University of Suffolk that she now earns roughly double her old salary working in video games. Jarvs Tasker, director and founder of Jarvs Indie Insights, a communications and marketing business serving the gaming sector, was 28 when chronic illness forced her to abandon her teaching career in 2019. Seven years on, the career change has proved dramatically lucrative.

Speaking at the university in Ipswich on Wednesday, Tasker said it probably would have taken her about 20 years in the classroom to reach the income she makes now. Her business provides communication and marketing support within the games industry, a sector she describes as one where enthusiasm matters more than almost anything else.

Her route in was unplanned. On leaving teaching, she began volunteering for PlayStation's YouTube channel, a decision that opened the door to everything that followed. What surprised her most was how much of her existing skill set transferred. Managing a community, she explained, is not far removed from managing a classroom, and games is one of several industries where people frequently arrive later in life.

Tasker, who lives in Exeter, is also keen to dispel the idea that gaming is only for teenagers. She believes young people may be unaware of the "many pathways" that exist within the industry — not just coding and development, but marketing, communications, scouting, community management and the rest. But entry is not enough. In her view, the games community is fiercely loyal to people who genuinely love the craft, while remaining alert to those motivated purely by money. "Passion is the most important thing," she said.

That community, she added, is also shaping how the industry confronts one of its biggest questions. Asked about artificial intelligence, Tasker said she believed games is doing a "really great job" of rejecting it, largely because players dislike it. She argued the sector should be proud of continuing to champion human creativity, and that audiences are largely supportive of that stance.

The event she was visiting was hosted by Game Anglia, a group working to raise awareness about careers in gaming. Its representative, Mark Backler, said the industry is now among the biggest in the UK. He acknowledged that it is competitive, but insisted it has never been "more possible than ever" for developers to build and release their own independent games. The comparison he used was that of the content creator: standing out is difficult, but entirely achievable for those prepared to work at it.

Backler was equally measured about AI. He said it remains difficult to predict how the technology will change the industry, but noted that a significant number of players are opposed to its use — a sentiment that mirrors Tasker's own assessment of audience sentiment.

Regional growth was the other theme of the morning. Sam Read-Graves, a developer who works specifically in the East of England, 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 genuine clusters of students and developers — and, he hopes, attracting studios capable of making larger titles.

There are limits, he cautioned. Blockbusters such as Call of Duty or FIFA are, for now, unlikely to originate in the region, because the East of England still lacks big studios. For independent developers, however, he sees no reason those same games cannot be financially as big.

That optimism is shared by the younger generation in the room. Abbygale Dunn, 22, is founder and director of Astral Forge, an independent game development company based in Essex. She said there is "so much space for women" in the industry now — something she can attest to from personal experience. When she studied game design and programming, she said, there were only about three women on her course. The reception she has met since has been overwhelmingly positive. "Everyone is so kind; it's really not as bad as it seems, especially nowadays," she said. As a programmer — a role that remains less common among women — she added, she has never felt out of place.

Others offered a less romanticised view. Omar Khalil, game scout lead at Entity, said there is "no shortage of talent in the UK", but that creating the next big game is genuinely hard. The obstacle, he explained, is not quality: "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?" That, he concluded, is the biggest challenge facing the sector.

The event brought together a mixture of executives, developers, students and advocates united by a shared message: the East of England's games scene is maturing quickly, opportunities are expanding beyond the traditional centres of the industry, and the people driving it argue that passion and visibility — not budgets or algorithms — remain the decisive factors.

*Reporting by Zoie O'Brien at the University of Suffolk and Laura Devlin, with additional reporting by Alice Cunningham. Images by John Fairhall/BBC.*