www.gamedevelopers.ie is partnering the IDA Ireland to organize the event, Irish Game Development 2.0, on Friday the 15th of May from 6.00pm in the Trinity Science Gallery on Pearse Street in Dublin.
This event will see speakers from PlayFirst and PopCap talking about both the technical and business side of developing casual games for PC and iPhone.
Speaking on the night will be Barry O’Moore, Senior Producer of PlayFirst International Inc (www.playfirst.com), a recent startup in the Guinness Enterprise Centre and a branch of a highly successful US based casual games company. He will be followed by Viktorya Hollings, Senior Director of Mobile Games, and Cathy Orr, European PR Director, of PopCap Games International Ltd (www.popcap.com), the well known and regarded casual games company with offices in Dublin.
The industry speakers will be followed by a ‘show n’ tell’ event where indie, company and individual developers show current projects. This will be accompanied by finger food, wine and soft drinks.
Current confirmed demonstrations:
1. “Porting PlayFirst’s games to iPhone†by Chris Gregan.
2. “Coretex: An indie iPhone game made for under 500 euro” by David Kelly
3. “A demo of Digital Sideburns first iPhone game†by Alan Taylor & David Sims
Sadly the event is already sold out. The event was only posted on the 24th April (Friday) and today is Monday. It sold out in 24 hours. Considering the number of no-shows for DevDays Dublin (400 pre-reg, 170 showed up) I reckon there will be a lot of no-shows on the day.
Colour me frustrated.
I’d call myself a casual gamer, but I don’t play these ‘casual’ games much.
Assuming the big players are absent and being a bit ignorant of Irish games development in general, always wanted to know what the local indy scene is like? Are there outfits toiling away with established titles or is it still a potential thing?
The only team I heard of before was a 3D engine being produced by some Donegal/Londonderry guys, Torc Interactive I think.
As far as I’m aware, Torc and Dark Water have ceased trading.
There’s a heap of small developers like CanDo in Belfast, Blue Pilot Software in Newtownabbey and a heap more in startup mode. Plus a decent amount of activity in Belfast Met and UUColeraine. I heard nothing back from QUB games.
DevDays last week had a slight games influence and I’ll be doing more in the games arena as part of my day job.