As reported in the games press in January Dark Water is the newest games development studio on these shores. I caught up with Mike Brown recently to ask him briefly about recent developments and of course job opportunities.

Located in Derry/LondonDerry in Northern Ireland the studio is ‘related’ to Instinct Technology in Muff but as Mike states, it is a separate legal entity with a different board of directors and investors, different business model and a different management team in place. There will be of course some movement of staff between the two companies and the new studio will use the Instinct engine in their first project. According to Mike they will work closely together as ‘business partners.’ The new offices are located at the Northside Enterprise Centre on Glengalliagh Road.

The first project the company will work on is a multiplayer PC game developed in cooperation with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Northern Ireland as part of their Broadband Content Initiative. (If only we were so lucky south of the border!) Mike Brown told me ‘The game will be free-to-market and based around an original Dark Water IP but it’s too early yet for us to be making any announcements on the game title or genre.’

Dark Water currently have 12 staff working on their first title and have plans to increase the headcount to 25 by the end of the year. They are however flexible in terms of numbers and have ‘plans to get a second core team in place’ which will happen ‘sooner rather than later’. Mike explained they have ‘the office space to accommodate around 50.’

Currently Dark Water have four key vacancies to fill: Lead Programmer, Senior Graphics Programmer, Senior Network Programmer and Senior Modeller/Artist.

More programming and art jobs will be released in the next couple of months once these key positions have been filled. They are also on the look out for talented Level Designers.

More info at http://www.dark-water-studios.com/

This may be an opportunity for people to reuse game projects or Dare concepts.

FuturePlay 2007 is asking for teams to submit games for their competition this year.

They are asking for games in the following
categories: Indie Games, Student Games and Serious Games.

Important dates:
March 16, 2007 – deadline for a 1 or 2 page concept via email;
August 1, 2007 – deadline for winners of round 1 to submit a fully working game; November 15-17
FuturePlay conference in Toronto, Canada where winners will exhibit their games and collect their prizes.

Full details are available on www.futureplay.org/games

This year women in games is being held in a design school in the University of Wales, Newport and will focus on ‘Aesthetics in play: new platforms, new perspectives, new players’.

This year will see some high profile industry people from the US, the UK and Europe speaking as well as more academic papers and demos of work in progresss.

The deadline for proposals and papers was extended by two weeks and the new deadline is the 16th of Feb so there is still time to send in your ideas.

There is also now a womeningames blog at http://womeningames.wordpress.com/

Original call can be found at http://www.gamedevelopers.ie/news/viewnews.php?article=296

Submissions can be made within the following categories: full paper, short paper, poster, panel or student forum. All submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed by the Women in Games steering committee.

for full details on different types of submissions, formats and cover sheets see http://www.womeningames.com/

The IIA and Online-Marketing.ie present the second in a series of four Online Marketing seminars.

The second in the series focuses on Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and Google Adwords. It explores the advantages of a PPC campaign, how the process works with the most frequently used search engines, and most importantly how to monitor your results. You will be taken through a live tutorial to set up your own Pay Per Click campaign.

The seminar will be presented by Anthony Quigley, CEO of Online-Marketing.ie.

Date: Thursday, 22nd February 2007
Time: 9am – 1pm
Venue: Engineers Ireland, 22 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
Cost: €145 Members (€195 Non-Members)

Places are limited, book now to avoid disappointment.

To register, view the agenda and full details, visit
http://iia.chtah.com/a/tBFyu2iAbbNMLA9YyhUAbc-ciID/event120 or email events@iia.ie

The call for applications for Dare to be Digital this year is now open.

Applicants can enter online and find out more applications at the following URL:

http://www.daretobedigital.com/applications/apply.php

If interested don’t forget the information day is this Thurs and there is an industry talk that evening.

All events take place in the Digital Hub in Dublin.