There are some very valid points made in all the above posts.
While some debate surrounds the title of the research project out in BIT, it is very good for the people out there that they were able to get funding in the first place and congratulations to those who got the funding. The fact that it is happening in Ireland is a massive leap in itself and I hope something very fruitful can come out of it for the people involved and I wish them the very best of luck with their project.
Can it be used in games? I severely doubt it, due to the reason that you gave yourself but you certainly can’t discount it.
Generally they just end up with an army of modellers\texture kids to model a city around a game spec, mostly because there is a lot of tweaking of the envirnoments to suit the ongoing/changing game design and generally games are very linear anyway.
[/quote:06c1fc25bc]But on a more positive light, it’s all about building the Irish game industry’s profile as a whole and having 3rd level institutions researching possible games related technologies can only enhance that profile internationally.
But onto a slightly different matter of where will the programmers go once they have finished that research is a bone of contention with me. I worked as a programmer for a couple of years (6+) within the games industry and have also had to work abroad, and as you mentioned, have met some very talented Irish people who work abroad and if I wasn’t talking to them, I was certainly hearing about them from their colleagues so there’s plenty of Irish out there, no mistaking that. There are already a number of Irish people on these boards who are working on AAA rated titles all with companies based outside of Ireland.
I was recently talking about this ‘export industry’ to a friend of mine, especially in relation to TCD starting up their MSc course in games. Here is a scenario where we will be producing very highly skilled programmers, whereby at the end of the course, they will most likely have to emigrate.
I can only laugh at what them clowns in the Government/ Enterprise Ireland are doing to try and promote the games industry in this country. For an industry that could create so much employment in the high skills section and such a talented workforce with a very favourable corporate tax regime you really have to wonder why so little activity is taking place.
But let’s not try to be too despondent. There are companies based in Ireland who are doing very well for themselves. Again they are also adding to Ireland’s profile internationally and with the passage of time, hopefully our profile will be raised enough to make the CEOs of the development houses take notice and setup shop here and create an environment whereby industry and academia will be able to work together in deciding research projects and also creating a highly skilled talent pool that can see great career progression within the games industry in Ireland.
Let hope that day comes about sooner rather than later.