By Tan Weizhen

WANTED: Skilled hands for the fast-growing gaming industry, which Singapore has pegged as one of the next big growth areas for the country.

To boost numbers, working professionals in non-related jobs, such as engineering, are now being courted.

To sweeten the deal, full-time, heavily subsidised gaming courses are being offered to those who want to make a mid-career switch.

The subsidies will come from the Workforce Development Agency (WDA).

Applicants can choose between game art, game design or game programming, and will have to pay $3,000 for a 10-month course.

Trainees will also get a monthly allowance of $1,000.

Successful applicants for the 90 slots available will spend five months at the Digipen Institute of Technology campus here and another five months at game publisher Ubisoft, which will provide hands-on training.

Those who do well will be rewarded: The top 36 trainees will get jobs at Ubisoft, which publishes games like Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Double Agent and Rainbow Six.

The plan to attract more people to the industry was announced yesterday by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State (Manpower, and Trade and Industry) at an event to give out inaugural Digipen scholarships.

Eight scholarships worth $160,000 were awarded. Recipients will begin their undergraduate courses at the Digipen campus here later this year.

On the subsidised gaming courses, Mr Lee said: 'Gaming is a very fast-growing industry. There are many job opportunities...and big demand in gaming content. I see this as an emerging and very promising industry.'

The interactive digital media industry in Singapore - of which gaming is a big part - has taken off in a big way.

In recent years, major game publishers and studios like Ubisoft, Lucasfilm and Koei Entertainment have set up shop here, employing thousands of workers. The Media Development Authority has also pumped in $500 million in hopes of boosting the industry's worth - from $4.7 billion in 2005 to $10 billion a year by 2015 - and adding another 10,000 jobs.

Despite all these moves, companies such as Activate Interactive, an online and mobile game developer, say they have trouble finding skilled workers.

Mr Leslie Wou, 38, Activate's chief executive, said one skill set the company sorely needs is game programming.

Another game developer, Tyler Projects, is facing a different problem. It wants to hire people who are trained in new Web games such as Facebook games, which have been very popular in recent times, but is finding the going tough.

'Most of the schools train people to develop console games. Our games require a different skill set so we have to do most of the retraining ourselves,' said Tyler's founder, Mr Leonard Lin, 27.

To apply or get more information, go to http://singapore.digipen.edu

This article was first published in The Straits Times.