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I would assume that anyone studying at a games course in Ireland must surely be prepared to leave the country. They must know this upon entering the courses that there are not the indigenous companies here to employ them. I never see this situation changing.
I hope the colleges make potential students aware of this (if they don’t already know).
Its almost as if the UK government should be sharing the cost of the game courses fees in Ireland as those wishing to pursue a career need to emigrate.
I’ve worked with two Ballyfermot grads, both moved to the UK for employment, both are not returning home any time soon (if ever).
Personally I can’t see myself ever returning to Ireland unless I change career (or unlikely; a large studio gets set up)
:?
(oh and wb, and goodbye again I guess :p)
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I think there is potentially an opportunity for a body, most likely governmental, but perhaps private or college, to create a games ip incubator. The basic idea being: to create an ameniable and lively hub centre for small teams to work in, along side paid adjacent accomodation with a stipend / wage for living. Something a cross between the digital hub and an artists commune, with free muffins, coffee and machines.
Lets suggest a set of figures as a talking point:
The "body" takes part (50% say) ownership of the ip in return. The candidates are quality creative people in teams of 3 or 4, so not necessarily students, but people who pass the competitive requirements for the position – ideally ex-games devs from all over the world or competition winners. This is very much NOT a technological incubator. This is a games ip incubator but like any incubator with commerical aims at the end of the day. Deliverables are simple, a 6 month interm report and a 1 year game prototype. The first year is guaranteed and everyone is pretty much left alone. But after the year an aggressive cull or continue takes place with an eye towards getting a publisher by month 18. Reviews are independent and publisher based.In a way the above is basically lots of pre-production ideas being generated and potentially put in the "can" for a better time or date. Games companies talk a good game about how "ideas are cheap", but the right idea, done with a prototype is not. No games company can really afford to do this, so this is why this "body" needs to front the large capital incubator costs, but for a longer term gain. I suggest government because the secondary effects on the economy may be worth more than the direct ip, at least later on; so it would make most sense that they would move on this rather than a private company. The publisher in the equation may be a very tricky step, given that we’d be yokels working with foreign entities who’d take us for a ride. Perhaps for that reason the aim should be direct digital distribution only (website direct downloads and things like itunes) then working towards online distributors like Valve or Impulse.
Aims:
1) Create dublin as an appealling and enabling place to generate new ip.
2) For every 9 ip attempts that fail to generate revenue, 1 might make up for the rest.
3) Secondary effects of introducing/training game talent in Dublin, e.g. create a critical mass of talent to kick start a better dev scene.
4) More quality labour in the market for the current companies that are here.
5) Potentially in the long run generate a sustainable competitive advantage from clustering.That last point is very important and I advise reading the link. In a world where everyone can use the internet and work remote then it becomes MORE of an advantage to network face to face to get the edge.
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They are not just two people in isolation though. There’s a difference between my grand dad making games 60 years ago and you. Similarly these guys, Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel are ex-EA, living in San Fran – a bohemian city suited to the software startup with plenty of games culture inter-mixing. They submitted to indie games festivals like the IGF and got to know good people before publishing. Those opportunities are more available there than here.
But Ireland is a cool place to many people. Drinking with an Irish person is often a good ice-breaker for business. This can be an appealling place for people to come and participate through demo’s and commerical aims. It’s not all about cheap broadband either – it needs to be also about having a deep pool of talented resources. Right now our games industry is in the the UK, anyone who can typically ends up there, or to a lesser extent Canada. But the UK is also relatively decentralised. This is one thing Ireland might be able to take advantage of, one decent sized capital city in which a critical mass can be created.
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Right, I’m not sure where to start when it comes to replying to this thread so I’m going to start with 2 questions:
What are ye smoking?
Did ye save some for me?Irish colleges didn’t being their games courses to supply Ireland with game development graduates. They began these course to keep their Computer Science departments popular as regular CS was losing appeal. If anyone applied to one of these course using the logic that ‘if there’s courses here then there’ll be jobs here’ then they are very naive and obviously didn’t do their homework.
It’s worth noting that just because Ireland is producing game development graduates it doesn’t mean that it’s producing quality graduates.
How many Irish graduates have been taught by someone that worked on a AAA game?Most of the mobile companies here are home grown so they would have been helped by Enterprise Ireland not the IDA. The IDA attracts foreign companies here, EI helps Irish companies to get off the ground. It’s going to be very hard for the IDA to attract foreign companies to set up a dev studio here when they don’t have a successful past case that they can shove into peoples faces and go "Hey, look what we can do". It’s also very hard to EI to go pumping hundreds of thousands of euro into a start up knowing that it won’t get them past a prototype. Saying that they could put this money into a team working on a small downloadable game isn’t realistic either as they’ll never get a return on their investment that could justify the risk.
A small team banging out mobile games could get somewhere with that investment and have a chance of standing on their own 2 feet. This is what has happened in the past, not because people didn’t have the desire to do something bigger but rather because they knew it wasn’t practical to try to do anything bigger. Ireland is a very expensive place to do business.I don’t see how a game dev incubator could work either. A small team, that’s inexperienced commercially, going into meetings with publishers or investors and they only own 50% of their IP will be laughed out of the room. That’s the cold, harsh truth of business.
It’s important to stop and think about the fact that the games industry is just that, an industry. Low risk and high reward is always going be the driving force behind all the discussions on where money should be spent.
I’m not usually this pessimistic, honest. This is just the reality. There are a couple of ways for Ireland to have a successful PC/console developer based here, such as:
Experienced Irish developers return home, as an experienced team, to start a studio and bring their investment capital with them.
Bedroom developers have a few successes and go commercial with a small scale operation and try to grow from their.
We all chip in together and buy a shit load of Euromillions ticketsBut expecting the IDA or EI to pull off some sort of magic is just unrealistic.
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Well ye get me a few million euro in investment and a few experienced guys who are willing to start back up in Ireland in 2-3 years time and i’ll jump on board. lol
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Experienced Irish developers return home, as an experienced team, to start a studio and bring their investment capital with them. [/quote:b8e405d962]
That’s would be one way, but its going to be hard to manage for various reasons.
Its a bit of chicken and egg situation, It would be better if a large publisher decided to set up a studio and starting recruiting. You could beat your arse that tonnes of ex-pats would apply and be bolstered by other nationalities.
Then graduates would have somewhere to go and learn their trade.
The incentive for the publisher to set up needs to massive and it has to be located in Dublin (sorry!).
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I don’t see how a game dev incubator could work either. A small team, that’s inexperienced commercially, going into meetings with publishers or investors and they only own 50% of their IP will be laughed out of the room. That’s the cold, harsh truth of business.[/quote:b8ccf37dd4]
Well lets not trash ideas on figures, suggest something different; come stay and chat. I’m saying the dev&incubator company represents 100% of ip, to then be negotiated with a publisher. To be honest, I’m fairly bullish about this – the main interest is getting these people to come to Ireland for x amount of time under terms that are attactive to give a brave new concept a try with failure a real but acceptable outcome. Safe and steady isn’t the point, innovation is. Also, I’m thinking small teams of 3 or 4 people, very much a small prototyping team, very much the appealling indie dream that so many staff would like to try. Hopefully they would stay, work or startup afterwards. The ideal of success would be World of Goo type outputs. Also handing over the ip isn’t exactly an ideal outcome, keeping it in Ireland is, even if smaller sales. Specialising in digital distribution and online marketing could be an incubator skill.
It’s important to stop and think about the fact that the games industry is just that, an industry. Low risk and high reward is always going be the driving force behind all the discussions on where money should be spent.
I’m not usually this pessimistic, honest. This is just the reality. There are a couple of ways for Ireland to have a successful PC/console developer based here, such as:
Experienced Irish developers return home, as an experienced team, to start a studio and bring their investment capital with them.
Bedroom developers have a few successes and go commercial with a small scale operation and try to grow from their.[/quote:b8ccf37dd4]We’ve seen console developers come home, note that it’s like 30% dearer than when they left and erm actually, we rather like the sun in California or the local in Brighton. After 10 years of immigration to an Ireland of an increasingly improving standard of living hardly any team has setup this way. The game dev mentality seems to be happy enough to leave and setup live elsewhere and the barriers to setting up at home are just not worth it. There also aren’t that many devs who leave and generate huge capital, games doesn’t pay that well.
Actually this whole "kerazy" pitch is based on providing a means for those sorts of people, who have what we want: skill experience and talent, to give Ireland a try. They don’t even need to be Irish, just talented and able.
But expecting the IDA or EI to pull off some sort of magic is just unrealistic.[/quote:b8ccf37dd4]
As you so pessimistically say, low risk, high reward is where the money goes. This is why we can’t rely on pure industry creating the kick-start, they need to see quicker money more reliably. Governments on the other hand should have the foresight and captial to see potential wider and long term benefits to the economy.
Never waste a good crisis as they say. This is probably the best chance to try out daring new directions. The government have talked before about investing in a knowledge economy – you never know, they might actually start to try it at a grass roots level rather than investing in manufacturing for sillicon companies owned elsewhere. Even there, design is now where the money is at, as manufacturing becomes an outsourced thing. Now is a time for shifting industries, away from construction and agriculture and towards some sort of sustainable advantage in the knowledge economy sector.
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I would like to reiterate the point that an incubator idea isn’t necessarily for graduates, it’s for attracting skilled talent into Ireland for a period to use their skills to try out new things. Graduates, as everyone has been saying, are often lacking in experience. Of course there are always exceptions and those could be catered for.
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Now is a time for shifting industries, away from construction and agriculture and towards some sort of sustainable advantage in the knowledge economy sector.[/quote:5dbc120deb]
Wasn’t that mean to be the 90’s –>
:p
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Now is a time for shifting industries, away from construction and agriculture and towards some sort of sustainable advantage in the knowledge economy sector.[/quote:335a03afd3]
Wasn’t that mean to be the 90’s –>
:p[/quote:335a03afd3]
Yeah it was.. :/
Still, things are resetting somewhat now, good time to shift focus.
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Project leaders, team leaders and senior staff in general should have experience but I would be strongly opposed to any Incubator catering exclusively for those who already have experience. When building any thing you start from the ground up. The foundation of the industry is our graduates, experienced or not they are the future. I would insist that every department of the development has to hire a minimum number of graduates creating a situation ware half of all those involved are graduates with no formal experience in the Games Industry. With the right selection process , Graduates taken on as Interns under continual assessment and if they don’t meet the mark they are gone, you’ll have more than a enough graduates waiting to fill the spot.
The Ideas, Work flow and Direction come from those with experience but the graduates/interns are the key.What I am proposing is some what different to the Incubator mentioned by Greenbean ( sorry for the 3rd person). A Larger number of people involved in development for one but the key to it is turning all our graduates into fully fledged GD’s. This way your generating more and more people with experience and in turn boosting the potential for a viable Industry.
I do agree that there should be an Incubator that caters solely for those with experience wishing to produce a Title. However I think an Incubator modelled around Graduates as Interns making up a large number of the manpower would be a better tool in boosting the industry in the long-term.
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There are a couple of ways for Ireland to have a successful PC/console developer based here, such as:
Experienced Irish developers return home, as an experienced team, to start a studio and bring their investment capital with them. [/quote:63c87c6e09]I am not sure on the game developer front but I know in other industries like Research in Science ppl are encouraged to spend a few years abroad to build up experience before coming back home. Most Irish I have met abroad all talk about coming home, how many do that I am not sure. Teagasc was set up to encourage Irish in Research in Science to come home, and alot did come home but many left again when they saw what a shambles Teagasc is. So seems there are in the Science world atleast alot of Irish willing to come back but if what they come back to is alot worse and unprofessional to what they are used to they wont stay.
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I think the incubator idea is good in principle. I’d be surprised to see something like it happening for games, considering we don’t really do similar things for business software or biotech, which are probably more profitable. But we do need to grow an indigenous high tech industry at some point, and it’d be nice to see some more effort going to seed that, rather than attracting FDI.
The big question in my mind, however, reading the posts, is about whether a games incubator could be a profitable venture.[/quote:0ea7494b0a]
I’m not sure on a team to team basis it is. But it sure is an appealling industry to be in for a government. Good paying jobs across a spread of demographics and talents. A sustainable advantage if we can become a design & production centre. Low capital spend to kick start (in comparison to say a silcon prefab or an oil distillery), no obvious externality issues with the environment or carbon footprint.
I’m just not sure the numbers would work out enough to make the venture profitable?
Maybe it could be done for reasons other than profit, or for some sort of longer term benefit, but that’s a hard sell.
Maybe a different structure where you cull teams earlier? Still hard to make the figures work out, which is sort of the crux of the issue.
Is there another way of looking at it, that looks better, or more profitable?[/quote:0ea7494b0a]You have indeed nailed an issue with running costs. I was estimating more like 2 or 3m a year inc accommodation. Refining the pitch (or in other words changing it) I would then suggest the hub/studio is not like anything commerical, it’s more like an art studio benefiting the economy in secondary ways – mostly by introducing talent to Ireland and creating an appealling place to work. So the hub is based more on creativity, design ability and production skills (to take an idea, prototype it and to understand the requirements for full scale production) than on producing say a saleable technology or game directly – although a saleable game should be commericalised if it comes up. Perhaps an earlier cull makes sense or perhaps a continous thinning process.
Ideally though you would attract the sort of people that many publishers would bank on, but somehow through the weight of their size can’t seem to ultilise. This is a common cry of complaint, the creative process in many studios just doesn’t happen. A smaller leaner laboratory of gameplay experiments giving the developers with the skills that dream chance to spend their working day on their masterpiece that will show the world. If this venture wouldn’t attract ex-blizzard, ex-valve, ex-sci people then it probably isn’t right – it has got to be at that level of talent imo.
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Tax relief on ip acquisition. http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12695/business/budget-update-new-tax-reliefs-on-ip-will-stimulate-smart-economy
Signs the government is moving further towards an environment suitable for thought workers?
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Alan Duggan of Nephin (he’s probably on here and I’m a n00b) has said he’s going to have a panel discussion on an "Irish Games Publisher" at the event I’m running in Dublin on the 23rd April ( http://devdays.info )
I reckon it might be a good chat considering it’s going to be populated with a lot of folk chasing the iPhone as a platform.
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Looks good! Alan is a good speaker imo.
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So the hub is based more on creativity, design ability and production skills (to take an idea, prototype it and to understand the requirements for full scale production) than on producing say a saleable technology or game directly – although a saleable game should be commericalised if it comes up. Perhaps an earlier cull makes sense or perhaps a continous thinning process.
Ideally though you would attract the sort of people that many publishers would bank on, but somehow through the weight of their size can’t seem to ultilise. This is a common cry of complaint, the creative process in many studios just doesn’t happen. A smaller leaner laboratory of gameplay experiments giving the developers with the skills that dream chance to spend their working day on their masterpiece that will show the world. If this venture wouldn’t attract ex-blizzard, ex-valve, ex-sci people then it probably isn’t right – it has got to be at that level of talent imo.[/quote:9dbb5fd27a]
The Gameplay Lab TM :)
Good for the Irish dev scene long term, potentially very lucrative and very exciting from a creative point of view. Most big commercial studios are simply too busy for this level of creative freedom. The stakes are definitely high though, it would have to have a focus and deliver the goods. Who might fund it?Always one step ahead….
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2009/04/65236891/1Best thread in years.
Ian
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To be honest, I think the RoI has a huge lead potentially here.
A comment made yesterday by a relatively senior in the Scottish industry person to me was that Scotland is now the second most expensive place in the world to have videogames* made – and their lead, their hold on the industry is ripe for the taking with the right coordination.
*I know we don’t call them videogames any more :)
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*I know we don’t call them videogames any more [/quote:abac168ffe]
What do we call them then?
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"games"?
"Videogames" seems so 80s :) Like we’re all in TRON or something.
Sorry for the threadcrapping. This isn’t about the definition of "games".
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games is a catch all category that covers videogames, most sports, traditional card games, hobby card games, boardgames, mechanical games (such as pinball) and most forms of gambling.
Video games are technically illegal in quite a few countries because of how broad the term ‘games’ is. Even video games can be too broad a term as it is sometimes used to refer to games such as video poker.
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"games"?
"Videogames" seems so 80s [/quote:e30a9b5a4d]
Yeah, it’s a horrible name that we’re going to be stuck with forever. It’s part of our heritage now. Our kids will be asking why are videogames called videogames just as we asked why are vacuum cleaners called hoovers and why other such examples that are failing to spring to mind.
Everyone has at some point talked about having a better name, but I can’t see it ever changing. My biggest problem with it is how geeky it sounds. That said, one thing has been done to largely get over our industry’s geek past. And that’s the fact a lot of people these days identify themselves as ‘gamers’. That’s a much more suave term. All sorts of sporty chaps and fashionable broads are coming out of the closet to happily call themselves gamers.
Anyway, back to the discussion. Or perhaps if someone felt inclined we could continue in a new thread?
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So the hub is based more on creativity, design ability and production skills (to take an idea, prototype it and to understand the requirements for full scale production) than on producing say a saleable technology or game directly – although a saleable game should be commericalised if it comes up. Perhaps an earlier cull makes sense or perhaps a continous thinning process.
Ideally though you would attract the sort of people that many publishers would bank on, but somehow through the weight of their size can’t seem to ultilise. This is a common cry of complaint, the creative process in many studios just doesn’t happen. A smaller leaner laboratory of gameplay experiments giving the developers with the skills that dream chance to spend their working day on their masterpiece that will show the world. If this venture wouldn’t attract ex-blizzard, ex-valve, ex-sci people then it probably isn’t right – it has got to be at that level of talent imo.[/quote:6e940da01f]
The Gameplay Lab TM :)
Good for the Irish dev scene long term, potentially very lucrative and very exciting from a creative point of view. Most big commercial studios are simply too busy for this level of creative freedom. The stakes are definitely high though, it would have to have a focus and deliver the goods. Who might fund it?
[/quote:6e940da01f]Yeah a gameplay lab would be great in a city like Vancouver, that’s littered with studios, and the lab could act as a place for people to show what they can do and the studios can review their projects and hire the people that are showing talents that are relevant to their current projects. Or even take an entire project team on board, like what Valve did with the Narbacular Drop team from Digipen.
Trying to use such a lab as the starting point for a mainstream games industry here is just not practical imho. As the wise Mr. Hannigan has already asked, who would fund such a lab? The government certainly won’t.They can bare keep the country going. No publisher is going to get involved in something like this in a country where they don’t have a development presence and I don’t see how a lab like this could be put under the funding umbrella of any state agency either.
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Does anyone remember the "Media Lab" or "Media Lab Ireland" or something to that effect?
I know they were based somewhere around the hub a few years back, but haven’t heard much from them in a while. They are somehow related to the lab of the same name out of MIT in the states.
A "gameplay lab" could be something that would tie in with their R&D…
On a similar note, I think there was a university in Denmark, (possibly Aalborg) that had a Nintendo-sponsored R&D interface lab. Again, this was a few years back (and may not have been Aalborg), but similar initiatives could be worth looking at for the Ireland.
(In my opinion…)
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I think the Media Lab is no more, money was pumped into it apparently and very little came out of it from what I heard. Saw this on silicon republic this morning, could something like this work for the Game Lab?
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Does anyone remember the "Media Lab" or "Media Lab Ireland" or something to that effect?[/quote:c7cfc22f4e]
Yeah, they closed up shop in 2005. They still maintain a website here: -
Some observations:
* Will Wright gets his own blue sky lab because he’s made EA an amazing amount of money with the Sims, and he has a stellar track record (it’s patchy, but this is games).
It’s probably worth paying him to sit in a lab they have 50% equity in, even if it doesn’t produce anything, to just keep the ‘Will Wright’ brand from their competitors.* Pitching something as ‘like Media Lab Europe, but for Games’ is probably not the passport to lots of Irish government funding at this point, or ever.
Refining the pitch (or in other words changing it) I would then suggest the hub/studio is not like anything commerical, it’s more like an art studio benefiting the economy in secondary ways – mostly by introducing talent to Ireland and creating an appealling place to work. So the hub is based more on creativity, design ability and production skills (to take an idea, prototype it and to understand the requirements for full scale production) than on producing say a saleable technology or game directly – although a saleable game should be commericalised if it comes up.[/quote:ae0d26fd7a]
At that stage you’d basically be saying ‘fund us, because we like making games’. Which is the crux of the issue, games development is expensive, and the risk/reward equation is dubious, especially with a new team; probably too risky for government or commercial investment here.
Anyway, I’d say a blue sky lab, funded by stipend, would not be likely to produce successful games.
Video games are engineering artefacts rather than research projects – as such they require large, cohesively directed, disciplined team effort.
I reckon if you setup a lab in Ireland, in a blue sky manner, it’d be unlikely to produce anything worth while. (For instance, look at the relative lack of open source games, and the high failure rate of ‘lets build a game’ projects.)I think you are more likely to have successful games development here with either:
a) bedroom programmers that get lucky (Introversion model)
or
b) group of experienced people are fired/unemployed, can’t find work elsewhere, mortgage their houses to try make games.I think a small amount of state funding, which would help pay peoples living costs, where they can show they are in one of these situations, provided in return for hitting agreed milestones, might be more worthwhile then a lab.
But talking about this sort of thing is all pie in the sky, I don’t think it’s remotely likely to happen. -
Again dont know about game development, I know the EU floods money into a project to keep it going, as they think of movies as Art rather than business like the Americans.
Still it might be possible to get funding if you can convince them that the game is "art" or some such, as there seems to be quite a bit of funding out there for art projects, in EU and in Ireland.
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There’s bound to be an opportunity with Scotland shouting out for tax breaks for their game development centres.
Let’s say there’s a finite number of changes that can be made. Let’s say three. What would they be?
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There’s bound to be an opportunity with Scotland shouting out for tax breaks for their game development centres.
Let’s say there’s a finite number of changes that can be made. Let’s say three. What would they be?[/quote:e49ee2b7dc]
What sort of changes do you mean?
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