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Ok, so I’ve been on this site for about 6 years and I’ve become bored of reading my own posts. The place has seemed to have died apart from a few occasional posts.
There doesn’t seem to be any plan for the site or more importantly the forums. I realise it is volunteer run but *still* so are 95% of the ones out there. I’m a VERY grateful to skyclad for keeping the ship afloat, but it would be nice to upgrade to some fancier boards – there must be other guys on here who would help with the web side of things. I know there are – I browsed the skills section :) On other forums I am on they have fundraisers to pay for server\time costs. Perhaps we could approach local business OR put some adverts up?
There are LOADS of game courses in Ireland, where are all the students\teachers posts? ;)
There just doesn’t seem to be a fostering atmosphere here at the moment, we keep getting the same posts over and over again from people wanting to know how to break in \ are there any games studios about. On that note, I want to do an article on how Irish students can get into games. I would need help from people on here – especially those studying atm.
I had a quick look at who has filled out profiles (art\design\code) and it surprises me that there doesn’t seem to be any game collaborations. We have lots of talented arts (and coders) and yet no-one seems interested in doing joint projects. I’m thinking I might want to work with some of the people here on a little project, I need to wrap up some work though, but there isn’t a creative atmosphere. I have to go hunting for artists & coders, its not very apparent who is active\interested.
We have lots of ex-pats working in Dev studios, who don’t post – they could share their experiences of how they got to where they are. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be any reason why they would post here. It’s not a good resource. We have lots of admins who don’t post. Perhaps we need new ones (who are the current ones?)
Where are Activision, Popcap, Havok, Demonware etc.. These are the places that people look to represent the Irish game scene. I know there is some history with Darkwater, but that is in the past now. We need to have some articles written by all these guys.
If we did shift to a new board (http://www.phpbb.com/) perhaps we could re-organise things.
* Code <– Code talk
* Art \ Design <– Art\Design Links & Discussions
* Irish Dev Scene <— Irish Game Co’s would post here, even if its a one man shop. It would have Active Company listings. This is also where people can post looking for project collaborations.
* Game Courses + Jobs <—We need to get Irish game course people onto this, I would be willing to chase after people.
* General Discussion <—Links \ Shindigs
Note – I have got rid of IDGA Ireland, its pointless to have it there.
So…opinions?
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Its interesting to read and even though I don’t post alot here, i do come here to read and I agree that the main focus of this place seems to be "How do I get in the games industry?" or "What tool should I use here?"
I was actually only thinking of approaching a few people I know about a joint project as we were all graduates of IT Carlow’s Game Development Course but few enough of us went into the games industry afterwards.
I think a joint project could actually help this place alot, people could get experience working with tools and teams, people could bulk up their CV’s and with the amount of talent around here, it’s hard to imagine how we couldn’t come up with an impressive end product.
As for the forums themselves, that doesn’t bother me too much but I must make more of an effort to get to the gd shindigs :D
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Yep, I can get links elsewhere.
I love hearing about people’s projects (even to find posts about it I had to dig out the forum’s hidden search function).
This should be a place for like minded people to meet and work together…
The artists here should be working with the coders on projects and telling others about their progress, hurdles.
Now more than ever people have the capability of releasing games onto iPhone\psn\xbla.
Do our admins have any thoughts on this? I frankly am giving up hope and I cant see the point of checking this site anymore.
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I am kind of the same way. I mostly stick around world of level design and map core these days because there is a great flow new work from people and other good topics. Great for getting feedback and help too.
The layout could do with an update, I check the home page now because the actual forum layout is hard to use.
I just feel like there could be a lot more actual things going on and involvement with studios etc. Hell when was the last time there was a post about an actual game?
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Hi folks, I’m just starting an Msc in Digital Games in DIT in September. Have a background in web and graphic design but decided to go down this route and see how things go. Have been looking over the forum and it does look bare in some parts. Hopefully Kyotokid’s suggestions can be taken on board to keep things going with the forum and get more fresh faces on here with regular posts.
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I couldn’t agree more with everything said. I would hate to see this place to go down, but it could definitely use more life with posts for example from the irish game industry but also posts from people regarding hobby projects they are working on and the problems they meet.
Myself I am working on a small physics engine (links to come soon) as this interests me a lot and want to get down and dirty implementing the basics myself to better understand everything.
In my opinion this forum missing a lot of essential modern forum functionalities such as RSS feeds for example but without more posts on the forum this would be pointless anyway
Hope to see more updates from the admins about gd.ie future :wink:
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I must admit that I do like visiting this site, I’m not sure why, maybe its sentimental reasons, but to be honest, I’m never really expecting to find anything exciting here anymore.
There was a period where there was the possibility of a company relocating to Ireland, but it hasn’t happened, and I really can’t see it happening without there being at least one successful home-grown company.
But alas, we don’t hear from any of the movers-and-shakers here any more. There was talk of big personal projects people were working on, but they seem to have dried up, or moved on. We had discussions involving some of the pre-eminent development and university people in the country, again, those seem to have moved on.
Is the problem that people have grown weary here and found better pastures, are move poeple looking abroad and given up on keeping an eye on Ireland?
I’m living in the UK and to be honest, can’t see myself moving back to Ireland any time soon, but I still like to see what’s happening there and if there was anything I could help / advise people about, that’s why I continue to check in here. -
Lot of points in there. Good to have the discussion.
New Forum: I don’t get the impact a new forum tech will have? Is that really the reason we have so few posts? Kyotokid can you give a link to a site that shows how forum should be.
Forum Help: That said I can do web app dev (java backend & jsp frontend stuff), not php though. Holler if there is something I could do.
Fundraiser: I understood DemonWare kindly help with server costs no?
Would a monthly prize for new articles make sense? Maybe just a sponsored voucher for Game/GameStop.Lack of students\teachers posts: Yeah that is poor, but events like the recent game jam have to be raising the profile.
Lack of fostering atmosphere: People are tired of writing the same responses for 1 time posters, I think it is fair to say "google it" and come back and show us you have tried. Hand-ups not handouts. And we can’t support what we can’t see, if someone shows gameplay or screenshots or even design docs I’m sure they would get constructive feedback. If that becomes the main direction of the site the space may indeed need to change to make that process easier.
Profiles & collaboration: I agree wholly. Collaboration would be great. But except for dare and Phil’s hard work I just don’t hear about any indie projects more than once a year (And then aim is usually way to high). What would it take to stimulate? More competitions? Hit up dell for an xps, MS for windows phone 7…
I call on people from time to time with opportunities (however lowly paid :) ) but those I know for sure have the skill set to deliver are always in too high demand. Portfolios and better profiles would help me find other people to call on.
Ex-pats: I guess we should all ask for articles from anyone we know.
Company Involvement: Again events that show off talent and initiative will attract them to be involved. After all they want a handy hiring pool. Can’t leave it to John and Aphra every time though. Mind you I couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery.
People make the site. We know there are interesting projects and talented people out there with sage advice but god damn if they don’t make it hard to find them.
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Lots of great points there Dillion!
If people are interested in kick starting the indie dev aspect of gd.ie again then they should start a project that is suited to that working style, like an education game. People who want to work on an indie FPS or racer are more likely to work on their own game or one with their friends rather than giving their work to people they don’t really know. [/quote:e99033d4ee]
I (politely) disagree :) There are lots of artists here who could help take iPhone projects to the next level. If people collaborate they can make more appealing games and share the bounty. In any other country people would team up and make games. We don’t seem to have this culture :? Why isn’t there an indie racer coming out, I’ve seem some prototypes posted here (forgive me I forget who it was) but I am puzzled by the lack of small teams. They can even be in different parts of the country. Lots of people want to get into games development, but lets face it, no studio is going to locate in Ireland so its about time people start something themselves. If this forum should be be the fostering\meeting point…& shindigs ofcourse!
As for company involvement in keeping the site alive and relevant, forget it. Having a company pay to keep the site up is a luxury but expecting companies to contribute content and resources when the general members of the site aren’t doing that is naive. If the member are active and there is something to attract them then the companies will make their presence know here but right now there’s nothing much for them to see. [/quote:e99033d4ee]
I don’t want them to pay anything, I want them to show an interest. havok moaned about not being able to find any Irish engineers, who when was the last time we heard a peep from them. They are thee most successful Irish game company after all. I guess its up to us to chase after the likes of Popcap for an interview (like gamesindustry.biz did). How about a studio tour of Activision or an insight into what these places are like to work for etc…Requires a bit of work I know :D
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I was actually only thinking of approaching a few people I know about a joint project as we were all graduates of IT Carlow’s Game Development Course but few enough of us went into the games industry afterwards.
I think a joint project could actually help this place alot, people could get experience working with tools and teams, people could bulk up their CV’s and with the amount of talent around here, it’s hard to imagine how we couldn’t come up with an impressive end product.
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Good idea!
Imagine if the forum had art galleries or even simple things like better profiles where you could look for skilled artists or coders willing to work on collaborations.
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I guess its up to us to chase after the likes of Popcap for an interview (like gamesindustry.biz did). How about a studio tour of Activision or an insight into what these places are like to work for etc…Requires a bit of work I know :D[/quote:a939c5611f]
Well this doesn’t involve them contributing money but something more valuable, time, and I don’t see them doing that until gd.ie can prove that it won’t be time wasted on it’s members and right now there’s nothing on the site to prove that. We should remember that this site has a relatively small target audience, since it’s an Irish centric site, so expecting the same attention that site with an international focus get it a bit ambitious, for now at lease :)
As for the whole indie project thing, I have no major experience in this area I just can’t see the drop in open indie projects and the rise in digital distribution platforms with limited barriers of entry as a coincidence.
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I just want to point out that both Havok and PopCap got involved recently at the recent Summer Games Jam (which is more than tangentially related to gamedevelopers.ie being as gd.ie sponsored it and Aphra was there on the day to help out). There are also a lot of companies who interact with Phil at GamesFleadh.ie not to forget the Peter Molyneux talk at DIT. I think we have more games related events happening than ever really. I think meeting in the flesh is the more important aspect of any games/indie community and definitely something we do better than most. I think gd.ie has been hurt a bit by the advance in other social networking technologies, linkedin, thechaosengine, twitter etc; but it can still be a good place to discuss the latest irish related news or indeed a place for people from Ireland starting out.
Specifically focusing on the indie scene I’d say the best thing is for people to try Jam together more, it’s a great way to push yourself, learn fast and meet people. A simple idea that keeps with the online-only nature of things is to hold online weekend jams once in a while. Conceptually a theme is thrown out there on a Friday afternoon on the forums (without too much thought) and anyone who’s participating gets until Sunday 6pm to finish. Everyone keeps a separate thread per game – people can collab or whatever and results / pics are thrown up at the end. Anyone on for that?
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A few people have already make reference to colleges and the games related course that are on offer in Ireland but if I’m completely blunt most of these course are a waste of students time, if their main focus is to get into games development. There are about 3 institutes in the country who have made a decent attempt to put together a syllabus of relevant content for students who want to get into the games industry, the rest have just taken their Computer Science degree and maybe added one games related module to it. This is a complete con and it just created graduates who aren’t qualified to do the job that they think they are. The main reason that I can see for this is that the lecturers in most college lack interest in games development and the course only exist to get students in through the door.
This is relevant to gd.ie for two reasons:
1. The Course sections should have testimonials from past students where the course that aren’t up to scratch should be easily identifiable (this would obviously need to be extremely well regulated). Metrics on the number of graduates from each course who actually get a job in the industry (and what country they’re in) should also be available here
2. The lectures from the courses that get good reviews should be invited to contribute to the site on a regular basis. This could be in the form of articles, Q&A sessions on the forums or even assisting with game dev workshops if they have the time.
[/quote:2fe836bc49]Very interesting, and yes I agree a large number of universities and colleges are failing perhaps even conning prospective students. However getting students to review their course is just not going to work.
1) Current students are not going to voice their opinion for fear of insulting/upsetting or will just suck up to their lecturers.
2) Students will use it as a platform for airing grievances and quiet likely unfairly. Look at the abuse of sites like ratemyteacher.ie etc. I remember one particular interesting review that said a past teacher of mine ate babies.
3) Students and many graduates will not give honest opinions on their course. You want to get into the industry, you’re banking on your degree to get you in. Are you really going to say the course you did was bad? Nope. You’re going to say it was a great course that really prepared you for the industry.
4) Universities/colleges will NOT be happy about it. They won’t participate.
I would really like to see people being more open and honest about their college experiences but I just don’t see it happening.Net effect you wouldn’t be able to trust either positive or negative feedback on courses. I’ve seen a lot of advice on here to the effect of "do research on your course before you do it" which IS good advice. However many students will probably significantly underestimate how deep they really need to dig.
As for contributing more to the site, yeah it would be great but many indies would be really nervous about doing it too soon. So you’ll get lots of silence and then gluts of content . For collaborative projects there are bigger and better equipped sites and communities to support them (moddb.com and indiedb.com). I would be very interested in getting involved and supporting a "hackspace" for games if it were possible though.
In the end I think Gamedevelopers.ie is going to continue as it is until we get more indies going in Ireland, then it will become more meaningful I think. Still it’s current role is very handy, allowing us to make contact with each other when we need.
It might be interesting if we get a series of articles going, kinda like the featured blogs on gamasutra from people with industry experience. Or even if a few of us started posting code/design/art discussions on a more indepth level.
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Specifically focusing on the indie scene I’d say the best thing is for people to try Jam together more, it’s a great way to push yourself, learn fast and meet people. A simple idea that keeps with the online-only nature of things is to hold online weekend jams once in a while. Conceptually a theme is thrown out there on a Friday afternoon on the forums (without too much thought) and anyone who’s participating gets until Sunday 6pm to finish. Everyone keeps a separate thread per game – people can collab or whatever and results / pics are thrown up at the end. Anyone on for that?[/quote:548b913b20]
I really like that idea, and although this is for single developers we could use it for inspiration: http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/
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Im relatively new here however I am a mod over on boards.ie and a regular poster on there so I’m familiar with online forums etc. What I notice on here is the lack of stickied posts and FAQ type threads. Im starting a Masters in Sept however its my first real step into the game design site of things and there is no stickied thread in either the programming or creative section to say heres the best software to look at starting out, or heres the best to start off, or recommended articles or blogs etc.
IMO that kind of information is vital on a forum which aims to act as a resource and a community for game developers and to encourage new students and people who are interested to use the forum and help it grow. Just my 2 cents on things.
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I know I dont post too often but finally I have something to say.
There is a lot that can be done the site, IF people really want to.
I think what is interesting to note is that the admins haven’t put in anything to it. If they dont care about the site anymore why not move over and let someone else do it.
I personally would love to see the site updated and the forum changed in a major way.As John said people wouldnt be able to speak freely about the courses they are doing here without either sucking up or getting annoyed by some aspect of their course and using this site to slate it. If there was to be a place where people talked about the courses they did then they should have to say something positive as well as negative to keep it fair or the post gets removed and the person creating it gets a little ban……
Getting people in the industry to help out is a fantastic idea, but if we could just start off with some of the lectures on courses here keeping an eye on the and helping out anyone with a legitimate question. Not the "how do I get into games" ones, but real questions. It wouldnt take long out of their day. Then if this really kicked off well, maybe people working in the industry might start wanting to be apart of it.
Just as an example of how the admins might have lost all hope for the course, the companies page desperately needs to be updated, a quarter of links for the companies listed dont work anymore and there is non mention of Activision or any of the others.
Id love to see this site really start to do well, but it is going to take alot of work by people. Not sure if there is that much dedication left (cept for the people posting on this thread of course). It always seems to be the same people posting. I do think everyone has a good idea for what need to be done to the site, lets hope someone can get it done now though.
Oh and the co-lab idea I think is great.
Would love to do some work with other people in Ireland, even if its just for fun. -
I says a lot about either my memory or how long it’s been since I contributed to the site that I have to reset my password to make this post :shock:
There are some great points listed in the above posts (hopefully I will not repeat what was already said…)
I think the first thing that all of us here must realise is that if we want and expect more we must all be willing to give more. I say this with myself in mind, there are plenty of you seniors guys here that are a great source of information and support to the newer ones of us. As for the admins (I am not sure of the complete list so I will not attempt listing them in case I miss someone), I think that their service is often forgotten.
I think that there is a tendency, where voluntary work is involved, of forgetting that the various changes that we may be asking for (valid or not) take only a moment to suggest but a lot longer to flesh out and implement. I know that my involvement to date has been reading posts and replying to others (the odd time), so I am speaking after considering my own involvement and am only too aware that there are those here that give a lot more than I do.
Like one of you guys mentioned above I think that we all need to see what we have to offer and then contribute where possible to keep the site and organisation growing and improving. I suppose the time that it would take to manage and coordinate this is something that make it difficult to do.
I know that this is just another contribution to the list of ideas (even though I was saying that we all need to do more than just make suggestions :wink: ). I suppose that what many of us might need is someone to start the ball rolling and point us in the right direction. I think that it was mentioned but the idea of getting local chapters (especially in the various colleges) up and running feeding into the larger organisation seems like a good one. I am sure that there are probably active game development clubs in some colleges. If this is the case perhaps visibility and collaboration at this level is a problem. If we could share and collaborate at this smaller level while feeding into the higher level of the organisation.
I better get back to work…
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Would it be possible to get more articles?
My mate runs a football website, and he gets lots of reports done voluntarily as budding journalists are usually willing to do some volunteer work if it means that their work gets published in a public forum. This would be a great way to get more articles on here if we could source some people. Articles on news / reviews / what ever is actually happening. -
I’m not really interested in doing any Jams, they’re fun and all but kind of a waste of time IMO. Really the only thing I’m interested in is running some sort of hackspace for games. It’s be really interesting to meet up and do projects. Like if you take a look at the Dublin hackspace (tog.ie) they’re doing alot of interesting things, it’d be great to do some sort of community thing like that for games.[/quote:a616d73a53]
I find the Jam’s pretty educational myself, they are the quickest way to move from vaguely enthusiastic to learning how to get things done. They’re also a practical means of getting together, not everyone who is working has a lot of free time or legal room to spare to get involved in side projects. I can definitely concede that they result in a specific constrained sort of game that limits the exploration that can be done, but dealing with constraints is a normal every day reality of industry.
I would love a Dublin hackspace, or if you are prepared to drop the notion of educators/tutors at the location, a collective games creation space where people can work on their games. They do something like this every Tuesday for some professional indies in Cambridge: http://cambridgeindies.com/. But first you will need to find a location that comes for free/sponsored/price of a cup of tea. I’d recommend trying some of the cafes/pubs/hotels around Dublin that might have an upstairs spare room with tables and chairs and wireless. If you get it going please let me know, I’ll be sure to show up when I can.
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I’m starting the MSc in Digital Games at DIT this september as well. I really like the fact that the site exists as a community where Irish developers can get together.
I think it would be great to see the site get a boost in terms of content, I’m willing to to put my hand up and offer to help out in any way I can. I think it would be great to try run some IGDA/GD.ie style shindigs, I’ll be living in Dublin soon so I’d definitely be interested in going, helping out on the day or trying to organise.
I just realised I’m not giving any new ideas so how’s about we make a transformers MMORPG about the struggling/exploding games industry in Ireland set in the year 2358(j/k).
I’d also be interested in some collaborative projects or anything really, however my game development skills at present are very slim but I’m eager to learn!
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stuff…[/quote:a6bbd8dd83]
Hey Ronny, long time no hear :) I didn’t know you were in Australia.
Do you know who are the current Admins\Moderators for GD.ie?
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I’m currently a moderator, although, I couldn’t tell you exactly who the others currently are.
It might be worth making this information visible on the site somewhere, or at least a way of contacting them. -
The problem with writing articles for the site is twofold: 1. time and 2. topics.
I don’t have a problem writing games industry articles for the site, but as the site has pretty much focused on just the development side of the industry, whereas i’m in marketing/pr/publishing there isn’t really much scope for me to write articles.
That said though, if the remit of the site broadens a lot (ie the games industry in Ireland, not just development) wbich would more accurately reflect the actual industry we have in the country, then it would certainly help attract a lot more people into the site. Most of the people I work with are in QA, Customer Services, Producers, IT support. Not the glamourous lead programmer roles or artist roles.
I’m a lot less active than I used to be, and there was no birthday event, no 7th birthday and it seems like a lot of people on the site who were active aren’t any more. Also shindigs haven’t been organised with much notice, so I haven’t been able to attend the last couple.
Most of the people working in the games industry in Ireland do not work in development, or come from Ireland. I know when the site started we all hoped that there would be big developers coming here etc etc etc. It didn’t happen, but we got a large number of publishers setting up.
I’d be more than happy to write up some articles on the business/marketing/pr side of things if people are interested in them, and can actually tell me what it is you want to know.
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I’m currently a moderator, although, I couldn’t tell you exactly who the others currently are.
It might be worth making this information visible on the site somewhere, or at least a way of contacting them.[/quote:faff09939f]Found them!
Forum Administrators:
Aphra Kerr, Maynooth, Kildare.
Dave Kearney, Dublin.
Ronny Southwood, Belfast and Dublin.
John O’Kane, researcher, TCD, Dublin.http://www.gamedevelopers.ie/home/aboutus.php
Also I get bounced back from these type of email addresses :(
aphra <<at>> gamedevelopers.ie -
You can easily contact people through a private message? I’m admin, but only to clean up spam if I see it.
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I’d be more than happy to write up some articles on the business/marketing/pr side of things if people are interested in them, and can actually tell me what it is you want to know.[/quote:c2ae61e11d]
That would be really interesting indeed! It’s true, there aren’t many developers based in Ireland (the only ones I can think of are Jolt, Popcap, Havok and DemonWare; please correct if I’m wrong or if there are others), but on the other hand going Indie these days couldn’t be easier. Of course it could be hard and not so rewarding at the beginning, might not even produce profit, but still if making games is what we really want, we must try.
I think there’s a lack of knowledge (speaking for myself as a developer) on how the business/marketing sides work: how do you get your game known, which platform could be the best to publish given the type of game, how to write a business plan to eventually get funding, what are the smaller events to show your work, etc.
These are the area I think are worth exploring, together with creating an active community where everyone can contribute and with a fixed meeting schedule, so that people can organise in time.
As for the website, maybe adding a little bit of integration with 2.0 features (like link with twitter accounts), a Facebook fanpage where people can get news while not frequenting the forum could be helpful as well. I’ve done a little bit of web development lately, so if you need and hand on that side, just give me a shout.
Just my two cents.
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I’d certainly be very interested in an article about any experiences in setting up a games-related business in Ireland, and I’m sure a lot of other people would too. Funding, running costs, where you looked for government assistance, staffing, major hurdles – the more detail the better.
While there isn’t a huge amount of chat about day-to-day development issues, there are plenty of places you can go to chat about that. I think the most valuable thing about gd.ie is connecting Irish developers around the world. There isn’t really any other place you can do that.
Until the Irish games industry reaches a tipping point, all gd.ie can be is a place for keeping people in touch with a hope that someday those connections will help in kick-starting the industry. And I think it does that pretty well at the moment (although more articles could only be a good thing).
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marco: Kore.net, PlayFirst and meez.com are doing development work here as well, I’m sure there’s a few others.
jamiemc has a good point, most of the people working in the games industry here aren’t actually developers. What about rebranding the site to a name that sounds a bit more inclusive? gamesbiz.ie? irishgames.ie?
I think what’s really missing is a key person to drive the development of the site. Thinking big, if one or two people were really keen on running the site on a fulltime basis, what about about setting it up as a company dedicated to advocating for the games industry in Ireland? Games companies seem to be about the only ones creating jobs in Ireland at the minute, so government funding for something like this might not be that hard to get.
Whatever way it works out, I’d be happy to contribute the occasional article/blog/flaming rant to the site.
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I just realised I’m not giving any new ideas so how’s about we make a transformers MMORPG about the struggling/exploding games industry in Ireland set in the year 2358(j/k).![/quote:43393860ac]
Thats a fantastic Idea. I would so be up for working on something like that. and having a facebook page that links would be amazing, you could just check the site from facebook whenever you are logged in.
We will need to make one big bad idea list and then PM the Admins and see what they can do and see if they get back to us. I would be up for helping as much as I can [/u]
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The more i’ve been thinking about this, the more ambitious I’m getting. For the last day or two, I’ve been formulating an idea of either a dedicated section on this site or possibly a whole new one.
It may have been done a dozen times before but from my own experience, the key to getting a games job is a good portfolio and collaborative projects are usually more impressive as well as showing an ability to work in a team. With the number of game specific courses in Ireland and the interest that is displayed online, I think it could indeed be feasible to have and keep afloat a section/website dedicated to projects for people to work on. People would be able to learn new skills, build contacts and flesh out their portfolios and for senior guys who are already in the industry could perhaps mentor groups?
Personally, I’d be interested in getting back into game development and i did enjoy working in teams so hopefully i’m not alone :oops:
Also, as someone who started a games company and had to shut it down a year later, I’d be happy to contribute to buisness side (mainly on what NOT to do :P )
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marco: Kore.net, PlayFirst and meez.com are doing development work here as well, I’m sure there’s a few others.
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We are too! (Popcap)
I thought Kore were more working on technologies?
Personally, If I want to find out info about the industry I will check out the usual suspects: gamesindustry.biz, gamasutra.com, Joystiq/Kotaku etc.
I come here more for the Irish scene, see what people are doing and what kind of discussions are happening.
It appears to be mostly people looking for how to get into the industry, which is grand, but you seldom here from them again.
I would agree with a lot of what has been said and that articles relating to the industry here, job availabilities, new companies etc are what needs to be focused on.
The occasional meet up would be awesome too.
The best thing that I have seen from Gd.ie over the past year was the talk by Peter Molyneux et al in DIT. That kind of thing really draws people to the site to check schedules etc.As with any mod I have attempted to do with people in the past, the hardest thing is to keep people motivated.
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well this is a nice welcome back from my holidays!
Let me first say there is nothing mentioned here so far that has not been discussed already and mostly it comes down to time and manpower to do things.
I will let Dave talk about the technical side of the forums because it looks like changing the forums since they are pretty big at this stage is far from straight forward. It is not a problem however to edit or reorganise threads or create stickies. Rather than remove the IGDA one entirely it might be one to archive in some way, in case it is ever resurrected by the industry.
Re features: great to see people offering to write them. We have one ready to go towards the end of this week which interviews PopCap, Jolt and a new company Wee Man Studios. However we need more people to volunteer to write them. They are generally about 1,000 words so feel free to suggest topics or write them and send them in. Interviews with companies do happen here but not all companies are willing to give day in the life interviews or details of current projects.
Re profiles and companies: agree they need updating but they needed some technical fixes and we met just after Christmas to plan these and now it is up to me or someone that I can get to update them.
Re regionalised shindigs: to be honest it is up to you to organise these…I don’t mind travelling to some part of the country or working with someone to co-publicise shindigs. Getting dublin based company people to travel is another thing – we have moved the shindigs around in Dublin to try and get the most convenient place for people. We have been in discussion with some partners about doing a cross-border event.
re colleges: all the major college courses are on here and colleges like DIT, TCD and Tipp have lecturers who are regularly on here. We have also worked with/sponsored/publicised Ballyfermot on their animation event last January, DIT on the Peter Molyneux talk and Tipp on the Fleadh. The Games Jam was in association with TCD. Lecturers have written features. I am not sure what else you think we can do here? I agree with John Monkey – we are not going to get into course evaluations here as TIGA or Skillset do in the UK although some of our links there could probably be updated as things change year to year.
So to be honest I am happy to hear people talk here about things to do but what we need are a: technical volunteers and b: writers (features/FAQs/forums).
We now have many years working collaboratively with colleges and companies on a small scale. I don’t see this site becoming a gamesindustry.biz, or a gamers site since they both exist elsewhere. The developers part of the name was meant to signal a focus on doing rather than playing, even if not everyone on here is working in a commercial company.
I am happy to discuss what type of support or collaborative we can offer to indie projects or companies based in Ireland above and beyond what we already do. But these have to be realistic – we do not have a staff or significant resources here ready to project manage major new projects.
Aphra.
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I may as well chime in. I used to be quite active on here and got a lot out of it but have been quiet for a few years now.
What was gd like back then? As far as I remember it was vibrant and active with a lot going on online and with special events dotted about the place.
In reality there were only a handful of events, most of which were shindigs, and the forums only seemed more vibrant to me then rather than now because of how involved I chose to be at the time. What I’m trying to say is that it was great back then, but on paper it should be even better now.
So what is wrong with the site? Nothing really. Honestly. This site more than meets the needs of the community it tries to represent .
If there is any issue its one of expectation. We’re the Irish dev community, not the Canadians or the Scots or the English. There is a limited pool to draw from whether that be a pool of press releases, dev advice or even juicy gossip.
So what did we have then that we don’t have now? IMHO critical mass.
How do you build critical mass? Haven’t the foggiest. I doubt its by committee, and I doubt its achieved the same way twice.
Here’s my take on the factors:
People: Guessing by the number of posts by people I don’t know I’d say that active subscribers are up. What is missing as far as I can tell are authoritative voices, preferably a few of which that are active developers. Maybe power user is the right term, 3 years ago we had a few they still post occasionally post but not in the same way or volume. If the omens were right I’d ‘ora something so we could re-clad the site with a quick hannig… ok that joke isn’t working out I’ll move on.
Industry focal point: A forum is just some opinions floating in space, for identity we need to be grounded someplace. We’ve always bemoaned the lack of a AAA dev house. Years back we didn’t have one either but we had the IGDA chapter. Maybe you loved them, maybe you loathed them but they were a talking point and they did get a few things done. I’m guessing now we need something bigger, maybe nothing short of that AAA dev house will do the job. Maybe another association like TIGA can get us at each other’s throats again.
Perception: Reading back over some of my posts I realised that a lot of what makes this site great isn’t on the site. I haven’t been to a shindig in years but I feel that they were more frequent and that this community was almost exactly mirrored in its real world interactions. There’s no site upgrade that will tell make people realise how good things really are. Take a step back, look around, find something you care about and get involved. Above all just be involved.
Right that’s it for this crotchety old man. Maybe I’ll double my annual input later and explain why I stopped contributing myself.
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I think deciding on clear concise aims/targets/goals would be a good start.
Put together some polls, surveys, etc.
Then draw up the roadmap(s) and see where it goes.
Could have regular updates at shindigs.
If this all sounds too much like "The Office" – here’s a quick idea.
Goal. Win the IGF student showcase. Raise an eyebrow and attract showcase student grads.
Surveys. Brainstory some concepts, vote on them.
Roadmap. Have them *mentored* by industry people, then let the student/indie guys loose on them.
Utilise google code or sourceforge so the community can/could chip in with bugs as needed.
Art brigade will find no shortage of critique (as usual) around here.
Polish / Marketing / Promo material can also be no doubt mentored.
Right. There’s my two cents.
Deadline: (INDIE) October 18th, 2010 at 11:59pm PDT.
Deadline: (STUDENT) November 1st, 2010 at 11:59pm PDT.B.
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You’ve lost me. I may have missed something or is there a bullet point missing?
Do you mean that as a community we try to win IGF with industry people mentoring the students?
Sounds like a good idea if that’s what you meant.
I have some reservations about the method listed but I’m sure they’d be put to rest with a more detailed pitch.
One clarification needed though. What’s industry mean if it doesn’t include indie? (implied by having industry people mentoring student/indie types)
I’m industry, but my company is independent….
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Both, I guess.
Students do the work and get high level mentoring from any one who is willing to read their pitch, design, concepts, wip, etc.
Indie grown up types could do likewise for the indie comp. Same peer review critique-ing could occur.
Make more sense?
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hi all..
i have been reading this site for a good while and although i agree with a lot of the issues raised in this thread i feel i should give my two cents.
personally I’m a dipper. I drop into the site every few days and check out the recent posts and read any info that’s been submitted but i don’t get involved with forum posts as such. I have just finished a course in programming including flash/action-script. java, html etc and am now a class room assistant helping to teach these languages.
Yes, i agree that the site would benefit from expansion in some areas but lets not get carried away with the Irish angle. It is true that there are a lot of software houses and developers based in Ireland and that the number is growing but the majority of these are service/call centers and can really only be attached to the games arena by default. The small amount of successful developers within Eire are focusing on either mobile or browser based gaming and as such this reduces the options regarding articles and posts about dev.
Maybe a more structured developers areas regarding programming languages and software use (art etc) would benefit the readers. Maybe this site could help grow Ireland’s games growth by informing and helping the readers learn and grow and get together to make and showcase games.
The games jam is a great idea and although i missed the last one in dublin i shall definitely be attending the next.
all in all there is a vast wealth of experience on this site, by sharing and nurturing this experience maybe we can build some games of our own to propel both the site and the industry here in Ireland.
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