Thumbs up to the 'era of the geek'

‘WE ARE IN the era of the geek,” says Jason Scott Livingston, director of customer services at BioWare Ireland. Looking around the Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT) campus, it is hard to disagree.

Now in its ninth year, LIT’s Games Fleadh is – appropriately enough – an endearing mix of the light-hearted and the super-serious. Livingston’s keynote speech went on to describe what a privilege it is to work for BioWare, which now employs almost 400 staff at its Galway call centre.

His enthusiasm for BioWare is fuelled not least by his passion for their products, which include Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic, the fastest-growing multiplayer online game in history, but also because the industry is in an upswing. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” he told the students.

“The reality in Ireland is that you have a fantastic pool of resources to pull from,” he continues. “I really believe that the availability of jobs here is going to grow because it is recognised internationally that the pool of talent here is really strong.”

Tantalisingly, Livingston closes his talk with a vague promise that BioWare’s presence in Ireland will eventually involve more than customer relations: “We’re called a studio for a reason!”

Another speaker, Fine Gael TD Paschal Donohue said: “It is my belief that digital gaming will be the art form of choice for the 21st century, and that the impact on digital literacy will be equivalent to the impact of the novel on written literacy in the 19th century.

“This is more than a belief. The size of this industry reflects that this prediction could become a reality soon. A global business worth $56 billion with a predicted annual growth rate of nearly 10 per cent shows that people are voting with their feet – or indeed in this case, with their thumbs.”

The atmosphere at Games Fleadh is best described as playful. Students from all over the country compete in reinterpreting a classic game each year for the Microsoft XNA Game Studio and DirectX Challenge. This time it was Chopper Command, an Activision classic that is 30 years old this year.

Elsewhere, young developers showcased their wares alongside more-established international companies; industry veterans gave speeches; and game tournaments for the likes of Assassin’s Creed took place in the name of “research”.

Beneath the surface (and endless hoodies and baseball caps), this was a demonstration of the growth of gaming in Ireland, as well

as an opportunity for employers and students to press the flesh. Alan Duggan, chief executive of Galway-based independent

game development company Tribal City Interactive, was blunt: “I am here today to scout talent.”

The standard of the students’ competition games was remarkable, with a number of Chopper Command-inspired titles already at a production standard (especially Cascade, which was better than many casual games this writer has played in the past year).

The involvement of Activision, which granted use of Chopper Command for the anniversary tie-in (and provided a helicopter for the day), was important, according to Philip Bourke, course leader in games design and development for LIT and founder of the event.

“We license intellectual property from a publisher every year because we want students who are going out to industry and looking for their first job to talk about the great games that they’ve created,” he said.

“And I think one way of working on that, from a portfolio point of view, is to have worked officially on a publisher-owned title. So really, it cuts through. Instead of being interviewed about some game that they’re creating themselves and the interviewer not understanding what they’re talking about, they can say, ‘I reinvented Chopper Command and this is the game or coding technique I came up with’, and they can get into that straight away and show off their skills.

“So it’s an official portfolio piece they can show off and say, ‘This is mine, this is what I can do’. That’s really what it’s about. It’s important to have those publisher relationships.”

CASUAL AND MOBILEgames have made the industry much more accessible to start-ups. In the 1980s, numerous bestsellers began in from lone developer's bedrooms. Now, with the advent of the app game, simple, lo-fi games are making a huge impact in the marketplace. Diner Dash, for example (owned and published by PlayFirst, which has an office in Ireland) has been downloaded more than half a billion times.

The Irish games on display reflected this trend. One title, Joe v Bank, was a simple side-scrolling action game that poked fun at the recession (with the hero running

past closed shops, through ghost estates

and so on); another, Star Cobra, was a “freemium” (a free game, with a premium charged for advanced features) PC game that took inspiration from 1980s and 1990s classics.

Meanwhile, the Seattle-based casual games giant Big Fish was on hand to invite games suggestions from students and start-ups.

The first day ended with the Engineers Ireland Game Developer Awards. Big winners on the night included Limerick-based Open Emotion Studios, which took away three gongs, including best game for Ninjamurai, and Dublin-based companies Pufferfish Games and BatCat Games, which won two each: Pufferfish was awarded best mobile game and best strategy game (both for Power Grid); and BatCat won best console game and best original audio and music (both for P-3). Winners of the XNA Game Studio Ireland Challenge (sponsored by Microsoft and supported by Activision) were Queen’s University Belfast.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, a number of students were in fancy dress on the day, and a young man dressed in V for Vendetta garb won the best costume prize.

Bourke wouldn’t go into specifics about job placements for the event, but before the first day had finished, he did say: “Anecdotally, some people have already been hired today. Some have got their internship or graduate placement already.”

Playing the game to win: Who came top at Games Fleadh 2012?

The inaugural Engineers Ireland Game Developer Awards were announced at the two-day fleadh. The winners were:

Best GameNinjamurai (Open Emotion Studios)

Best Mobile GamePower Grid (PufferFish Games)

Best Console GameP-3 (BatCat Games)

Best in AnimationBubble Dreams (SuperFunPlay)

Best RPG GameAllods

Online(Astrum Nival/gPotato.eu)

Best Strategy GamePower Grid (PufferFish Games)

Best Casual GameFlip the Switch (Tribal City Interactive)

Best in Original Audio and MusicP-3 (BatCat Games)

Best ShooterReapers End 1 (Eysodic Games)

Best in GameplayNinjamurai (Open Emotion Studios)

Best Indie GameRevoltin' Youth (Open Emotion Studios)

Best Windows 7 GamePlants Vs Zombies (PopCap)

[ gamesfleadh.ie ]