Ireland aims to grow in gaming sector

The international CGames06 conference took place in Dublin for the first time last week, but Ireland has yet to gain a significant foothold in the gaming industry, writes Eamon McGrane

Ireland's position in the world of gaming has been highlighted by the recent CGames06 conference.

The aim of the conference was to bring together international researchers, scientists and games developers to discuss advances in design methods, tools, programming techniques, games concepts and their applications. The event was held in Dublin for the first time last week.

Ireland has been working feverishly over the past few years to gain a foothold in the gaming industry and, while not yet a powerhouse in the field, it is certainly doing enough to warrant the arrival of the CGames06 conference.

The conference was held in Dublin to help stimulate the Irish and European industry and to assist researchers in improving the quality of their work, according to Quasim Mehdi from the school of computing at Wolverhampton University, who chaired the conference.

"We want to show that Europe is a major player in this area and this event helps to create a network of excellence for digital computer games in Europe," he says.

Ireland has an international reputation as a major software producer and exporter so there should be a natural transition into the gaming industry.

That, however, hasn't been entirely the case. The Irish games industry hosts about 20 companies. These include businesses that perform localisation work, such as Microsoft and Vivendi, as well firms who develop middleware, such as Havok and Demonware. There are about 400 people employed in the industry - half of them in localisation.

Ireland's major difficulty has been in attracting a games publisher such as Electronics Arts and, according to the cognoscenti in the industry here, that is unlikely to happen due to size and market distribution criteria.

Hugh McAtamney, lecturer at DIT and local organiser of CGames06, says there are several sides to the digital games industry - content, story, design and programming.

"We definitely have the opportunity to provide the content because that's what people are looking for, whereas there's not enough companies here developing games technology so there's less requirement for games programmers," he says.

"The mainstay of the industry here is for mobile or casual games because we have a mass market for them and mobile phone penetration is huge. Mobile games are big everywhere and casual games is a growing market, along with online games. But we'll never really get the blockbuster console games being developed here."

As the upcoming console generation begins to make gaming a ubiquitous leisure activity, what does the future hold for the Irish games industry?

"We don't have an indigenous market here as such, so we will either develop technology that enables games, such as middleware, or we will provide content as part of an outsourced publishing deal," McAtamney predicts.