While we’re waiting for Elon Musk to get us all to Mars, an Irish computer games company thinks we should be careful what we wish for.
At Gamescom in Cologne, the world’s largest computer game fair, Outlier Games attracted crowds and praise for Mars Attracts.
It’s a colourful and cheeky new strategy game that, like Tim Burton’s 1996 comedy, is based on the Topps sci-fi trading card game.
Instead of invading Earth, the Martians are now abducting humans – from across the centuries – to populate a theme park on their home planet.
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“We had a concept of the game and wanted to make it a simulation with a reverse zoo concept,” said Paul Froggatt, Outlier co-founder and technical director. “We were lucky: that Mars Attacks was our first choice and that the licence-holders were interested in such an offbeat approach.”
Early access to Mars Attracts starts next month, making this year’s Gamescom well-timed for Outlier.
The fair offered the usual annual opportunities to meet gamers, industry colleagues and – against growing pressure from deep-pocketed corporate players – to fly the flag for independent developers. But this year Irish developers had another reason to fly another flag: for their homeland.
In 2023 the Government introduced a tax credits system for gaming, similar to those for movie and animation industries. The credit is available at a rate of 32 per cent of eligible expenditure to a limit of €25 million per project.
“Historically, Ireland has been somewhat behind the times as we didn’t really have incentives on the gaming side like on the movie and animation side,” said Froggatt.
Following up on that, Ireland has just launched a new fund to help games developers through the prototype phase.
“This is the most difficult part as it’s hard to get a [corporate] partner on board until you have the prototype,” said Froggatt, who grew up near Manchester and came to Ireland 15 years ago for a decade with Google.
Five years after setting up Outlier, with offices in Belfast and Dublin, Froggatt is hopeful the new incentives mean Ireland can harness creatives from other fields – art design, animation, writers, musicians – to shift Ireland from a gaming outlier to leader.
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His firm, behind the 2022 game This Means Warp, has already attracted seed investment worth €583,000 from angel investors and from Enterprise Ireand’s own High-Potential Start-ups unit.
But Outlier is a small fish in Cologne’s vast Gamescom pool. With nearly 350,000 visitors expected to visit more than 1,500 exhibitors, the Cologne show is just the tip of the massive gaming iceberg with annual revenues that, by some calculations, top €260 billion – more than the movie and music industries combined.
Among the big-name games unveiled in Cologne were Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Hollow Knight: Silkson and Resident Evil Requiem. Two separate Lego-linked games – Voyager and Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight – got their first airings, too.
“Batman has constantly evolved – shaped by the world around him while remaining a timeless symbol,” said Jim Lee, chief creative officer of DC, calling the latest tie-in game “a love letter to the world of Batman”.
Not to be outdone by its main comic rival, Marvel Studios offered a first trailer and November 18th release date for Deadpool VR.
PlayStation classic Onimusha has been reworked for a new generation, even if console-maker Sony stayed away.
Entertainment rival Nintendo was back this year after skipping 2024, riding a record sales wave for its Switch 2.
Meanwhile, Xbox-makers Microsoft had a tricky time in Cologne, weeks after announcing a record 9,000 gaming redundancies, including at subsidiary King – developer of Candy Crush.
Microsoft executives were unable to put a price on its upcoming hand-held ROG Xbox Ally X gaming device. And they were unwilling to comment on reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are using Microsoft’s Azure technology to surveil en masse Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Microsoft has already announced a review into the claims while, according to German tech website Heise, an Xbox spokesperson intervened at a press event in Cologne to insist talk remained focused on Microsoft gaming products.
German politicians avoided controversy on opening day, praising instead the size of the gaming cake, of which they, too, are determined to take an even bigger slice with their own funding and tax credit plans.
“Video games create jobs, promote creative thinking and connect people across borders,” said Hendrik Wüst, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne is located.
Gaming had a rough pandemic and about 30,000 jobs have been lost in the sector globally since 2023, yet industry analysts say revenue remains stable.
While big names such as Fortnite and Roblox attract armies of gamers, Froggatt says independent developers such as his are struggling for attention and sales.
Galway computer science university professor Sam Redfern, also in Cologne, says things have always been a challenge for smaller players. He has been a gaming enthusiast – and part-time games developer – for nearly 40 years: “all my life, really”.
Redfern started writing games for the BBC Micro and Apple 2 in the 1980s because “when you got a computer, then you learned to programme because they arrived with nothing. We wanted games – so we made them.”
In Cologne he is presenting The Necromancer’s Tale, a lovingly-made old-school sprawling role-playing game (RPG) from his Psychic Software games studio.
The development team were all part-timers: a writers’ team generating a story of 400,000 words – a third more than James Joyce’s Ulysses – two musicians, two artists “and a bunch of voice actors”.
“The final credits list 35 people, we released a month ago and the reviews have been good and sales strong,” he said.
Like Froggatt, Redfern is optimistic that recent Government sweeteners will help Ireland match in gaming its film and animation success.
As important as the fiscal incentives, he says, is the gradual mental shift in Ireland towards the field – and the rise of gamers to positions of influence in public life.
“Until recently many in Ireland, including at my university, viewed creative work as doing poetry or a play – not gaming,” he said. “With gaming you can play Angry Birds, Fifa or Call of Duty. It’s a vast creative space and games are, bar none, the most diverse media out there.”
