Bioware opening in Galway

hal9000

Good news for Galway and the Video Games Industry in Ireland, hopefully it will encourage others!

http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/jobs/galway_jobs/

Gunmonkey

Wow, thats quite cool. Wonder if the GM's and customer service centre for The Old Republic will be there??

hal9000

I dont think its a game development site, but a online support centre for europe, but it's still good news

Burning Eclipse

Gunmonkey wrote: »

Wow, thats quite cool. Wonder if the GM's and customer service centre for The Old Republic will be there??

Heard the item on the news this morning and that's what I thought immediately. Now to apply for a job

witnessmenow

The fact that they are hiring a "Project Manager/Analyst " hints that they might have some development here?

Burning Eclipse

witnessmenow wrote: »

The fact that they are hiring a "Project Manager/Analyst " hints that they might have some development here?

It's more about running the customer services teams, making sure they meet their goals, etc.

Some responsibilities...

Bioware wrote:

• Understand and master the company customer services strategy and vision and champion these across the business units.
• Build, develop, and manage the project plans for the CS team. This includes working closely with the CS Director, Global Coordinator, and Senior CS leaders of operations, services, and fraud prevention to meet and identify their various program requirements, timetables, resources, interdependencies, and tasks.
• Develop and maintain the CS project plan tool and product.
• Build, develop, and manage the CS reporting product working closely with the CS Technology, Platform, and Data Warehousing teams.
• Provide CS dashboards and reporting as required by the Director of Customer Services.
• Manage communication of goals and objectives, status and progress of project to management and to the team.
• Documents, communicates and administers key project management processes within the project team and across the company. Coach others on project management processes and best practices.

gizmo

Doubt it unfortunately, as the article says, it'll more than likely be a Customer Service and Network Operations Centre. If you follow the links to EA's HR site you'll also see a pretty precise description of that job.

dloob

witnessmenow wrote: »

The fact that they are hiring a "Project Manager/Analyst " hints that they might have some development here?

Sounds like they will have some development of tools and systems used by the Knights of the Old Republic support team.

Some tricky qualifications required like this one
"You must be able to relate to and communicate with "gamers" on their level and gain their confidence."
Bonus points for mentioning LOL and teabagging in your application maybe.

Antar Bolaeisk

dloob wrote: »

Sounds like they will have some development of tools and systems used by the Knights of the Old Republic support team.

Some tricky qualifications required like this one
"You must be able to relate to and communicate with "gamers" on their level and gain their confidence."
Bonus points for mentioning LOL and teabagging in your application maybe.

Use of l33t sp34k will get you a job instantly

Sierra Oscar

Still though, even if it is only for support information it is a positive trend all the same . . . at least it puts Ireland on the map for games developers in some way.:D

Krieg

Rte says

This new centre will be involved in developing online computer games and supporting customers.

But yeah Id more believe its support, given the positions advertised

The Freeman

hal9000 wrote: »

Good news for Galway and the Video Games Industry in Ireland, hopefully it will encourage others!

http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/jobs/galway_jobs/

hmm, just out of work a couple of weeks, how cool would it be to work for bioware.

when did they say they were opening up shop over here?

Shiminay

I'm hearing that it might be SW:TOR support, but that's unconfirmed.

Mr. K

I assume the low corporation tax is what brought them here? Great stuff either way.

cherryghost

While you've all been blabbering on about it, I went and applied for a job :pac:

Burning Eclipse

cherryghost wrote: »

While you've all been blabbering on about it, I went and applied for a job :pac:

orly... which one?

Holsten

First thing that popped into my head was GM support for Star Wars haha.

Will deffo be applying for that, love Galway city!

tman

Kharn wrote: »

I'm hearing that it might be SW:TOR support, but that's unconfirmed.

Can't really picture it being anything else tbh...
Anyone know whereabouts in Galway they'll be setting up camp?

Zeouterlimits

One of the business/technology parks probably.
Maybe Parkmore.

dr gonzo

Heard this recently and it brought a smile to my face. I was worried for a while that the recession might destroy Irelands reputation for drawing these kinds of companies.

Absolutely fantastic news. Welcome to Ireland Bioware, we bloody love ye's!

BlastedGlute

So did anyone apply for the new positions they posted the other day? Any feedback about it all? Quite a lot of CSR positions there!

ShadowHearth

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Still though, even if it is only for support information it is a positive trend all the same . . . at least it puts Ireland on the map for games developers in some way.:D

Blizzard is in cork for ages. I even was in interview.

Then you got xbox live support centre in Dublin. Bioware in Galway...

They know about Ireland m8. It's just more and more jumping on a ship

Magill

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Blizzard is in cork for ages. I even was in interview.

Then you got xbox live support centre in Dublin. Bioware in Galway...

They know about Ireland m8. It's just more and more jumping on a ship

Are there any developement studios tho ?

I'd love to actually talk to a few programmers in the games industry and pick their brain for a bit as its something i'd love to move into when i finish my degree.

Zombrex

Magill wrote: »

Are there any developement studios tho ?

I'd love to actually talk to a few programmers in the games industry and pick their brain for a bit as its something i'd love to move into when i finish my degree.

Hardly any. I work in one of the few game development studios in Ireland and we are quite small.

If you are looking to work for someone like Ubisoft, EA or Blizzard you are probably going to have to look at emigrating.

Hopefully that will change in the future, the IDA do seem to be trying to get companies to locate here, Popcap and Zynga are opening here but again it seems more support localization, which traditionally has been what Ireland has done in terms of game development (Activision have been here for years, doing support and running Demonware)

Gunmonkey

Ireland never seemed to have the bedroom coders that Britain had in the 80's. So we dont have a solid base of game makers to hire unfortunately. Add to that the lack of game related courses in university, only seen a few pop up in the past 4 or 5 years, compared to the dozens being run in England means people who might want to get into it have no point to go learn the skills needed. They would have to rely on self-teaching and it would take a while to get to the level of coding AAA games that way.

Think we will be stuck with the support centres for games in the near future, better than nothing anyways.

Trevor451

Microsoft kind of do development In Ireland. They do localization/bug testing in sandyford

Korvanica

Trevor451 wrote: »

Microsoft kind of do development here. They do localization/bug testing in sandyford

Office is developed here too... As far as ms games goes i think its localisation etc.

Activision have a test center here too...

Wossack

Dont lets forget about Havok

Zombrex

Gunmonkey wrote: »

Ireland never seemed to have the bedroom coders that Britain had in the 80's. So we dont have a solid base of game makers to hire unfortunately. Add to that the lack of game related courses in university, only seen a few pop up in the past 4 or 5 years, compared to the dozens being run in England means people who might want to get into it have no point to go learn the skills needed. They would have to rely on self-teaching and it would take a while to get to the level of coding AAA games that way.

Think we will be stuck with the support centres for games in the near future, better than nothing anyways.

Government's fault to be honest. In Canada you can find development studios in the far North of the country where there is nothing else but sheep. This could have been Ireland if we had had proper support from the government. But the government has never been particularly good at developing home grown IT industry, and when they did show an interest games was not considered that valuable an industry. I would imagine most government minsters don't know the difference between a support center for Blizzard that could move anywhere tomorrow and an actual development house that is producing products and more importantly is invested in the local.

This is what should have happened in Ireland

http://www.develop-online.net/features/31/Oh-Canada

joe123

I really dislike that Ea jobs wesbite. Can anyone tell me is there any way to upload a cover note along with your CV?

Only recently I applied for another job on the website not relating to bioware with a covernote, but I dont see any place to upload specific cover notes?

Lab_Mouse

came across this site when I was messing about with C++.Its a good resource for games dev in ireland.Might give a few pointers for a game dev career a poster asked about

http://www.gamedevelopers.ie/home/