Online games firm to create 400 jobs

THE DECISION of an online interactive gaming company to set up in Dublin and employ more than 400 people was announced yesterday.

Goa Games Services Ltd is a subsidiary of France Telecom and has an exclusive contract with its US partners, Mythic Entertainment, to operate the new online game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (War).

The chief executive of Goa, former KPMG accountant David Ryan, said War had sold three- quarters of a million copies in the past three to four weeks.

Online games have a value of approximately $42 billion worldwide and are expected to be double the size of the music industry by 2011, he said.

"This is an expanding marketplace and there will be good jobs in this business for years to come."

He said knowledge of the game was crucial for employees and so the building up of a knowledge base in Ireland would anchor the business here.

The new multilingual customer and operations support centre in the Digital Hub area of the Coombe, in Dublin, is already in operation and employs about 200 people. The fact of its being in operation had not been formally announced until yesterday.

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan said it was a "terrific announcement" and "demonstrates the changing nature of our increasingly knowledge-based economy".

She said interactive entertainment was one of the areas being targeted for inward investment into Ireland. The sector is one of the fastest-growing and most popular recreational sectors worldwide. Goa is in receipt of support from IDA Ireland. "This is a seismic announcement here in Dublin," she said. "This is an exemplary example of what can and will be done."

The new centre supports War and other online games across Europe in five languages. These are English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Mr Ryan said the company chose to set up in Ireland because of its demographics, the skills that are available and because it is an English-speaking country.

"We considered eastern Europe but in the round Ireland is still attractive. You have to assess cost against the value you might be getting."

Mr Ryan said he had been involved in the establishment of customer service organisations in the past for large customers. He joined Goa eight months ago.

War is "a perpetual world that never stops. It continues when you are in bed. We have five years of content in the can," said Mr Ryan.

After France Telecom assigned its licence to operate the game in 27 European countries to Goa, the company took out a lease on its Dublin premises in early 2007. It began employing staff and had employed more than 135 people by the end of 2007, working to prepare for the launch this year of War.