To celebrate six years supporting the Irish games industry, GameDevelopers.ie is tonight holding an event that focuses on casual gaming, with speakers talking about their experience in both the online space and on developing games for the Apple iTunes App Store.
The sold-out event, taking place in Trinity’s Science Gallery, will see Barry O’Moore, senior producer of PlayFirst International, as well as Paul Breslin, operations director at PopCap Games, talking about development and business issues in the Irish gaming industry.
Following this, there will be several talks by and for developers on creating successful applications for the iPhone, as well as advice on how to succeed in the App Store from DIT student and creator of the popular Lights Off game, Steven Troughton-Smith.
Although the event itself is sold out, there will be a further opportunity for games developers to network and showcase their work at a follow-on event in the Lombard Pub near the Science Gallery.
GameDevelopers.ie came out of a 2001/02 research project on the digital games industry from Dr Aphra Kerr who was working at the Centre for Society, Technology and Media (STeM) at Dublin City University. Since then it has been an important networking and information community for Irish games developers.
“The past six years have seen a huge growth in the visibility of the Irish games industry, with Irish companies such as Havok and Demonware becoming well known internationally, and many multinational companies such as Activision, Blizzard, Big Fish, Playfirst and Gala Networks Europe establishing operations in Ireland,” said Kerr, founder of GameDevelopers.ie.
“There has also been a massive increase in the number of game-related degree and masters courses available to Irish students.
“We are proud of the work we have done over the past six years, and look forward to building on our achievements to date by nurturing and supporting the Irish games development industry over the next decade.”
By Marie Boran
Pictured: casual gaming in World of Warcraft
