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/