Games Development in Ireland

Greenbean

I just wanted to try gather all this information together, using the people on this forum as the researchers: What games development companies are there in ireland? Even anything vaguely connected is worth mentioning.

What I know so far:

Torc Interactive, http://www.torcinteractive.com/ -

Kapooki Games, http://www.kapookigames.com/ -

Havok, http://www.havok.com/

I think Microsoft Ireland is doing some games testing/ localisation stuff.

I don't know what else exists beyond this. The old dublin Funcom setup dissappeared almost overnight less than a year ago

Share what you know.

tHE vAGGABOND

Yea, Microsoft do games Localisation and localisation testing. Fun stuff indeed. I did a couple of interviews up there, and they offered me a job, but at £12k a year. The chap was not impressed when I told him I earned more than that working behind a bar while I was still in College

Be prepated to take a pay cut, whereever you end up working. You would get paid X and after 6/12 months you would become part of the company bonus program. The more your game sells the more you get. Other benifits like medical, gym membership etc are not the norm - but do exist in some companies. Good example would be myself, I was working in typical .con type company at home <rant>that went bust cos the upper management and sales people were utter pe0ns</rant> doing unix and oracle stuff, paid quite well. I came over here, to a good job in a great games company. I get paid above average for what I do. My basic is still a LARGE percentage less than it was in Ireland if you look at it punt for pound. You dont work in the Games Buniness to get rich, you work in it cos you love games and/or love making games.

To cut a long story short - To get into the games business you pretty much have to come to England. Ala Shinji and Myself. Unless your lucky to be one of the 10 or 15 people employed at home (and I would not think that figure changes/grows much).

Greenbean

Cheers for the info Vagga, I must chat to you some more about the state of things. The post wasn't actually based on my personal job aims though (though I certainly do plan to push into games dev if possible <read, if I'm good enough> in the next month or two), its based on a request for info I received from the IDA about the state of games dev in Ireland. I was just trying to gather what everyone knows before I reply.

On the note of moving to England, yeah I pretty much imagined that was the way to go. I've connected up with Torc to help them out, on a skeletal animation system and I have to admit they/we (still new) are a very positive outfit and might actually make Ireland proud some day soon. To be honest, I would probably move to anywhere for the right job, never been an issue for me.

Back on topic, if anyone knows of any people, even just mates who are doing a shareware game etc, its probably worth mentioning.

Biffa Bacon

There's also Vivendi Universal, but they only do localisation.

Biffa Bacon

Also eirplaygames.