Lecturer eyes Donegal as video games capital

A college lecturer is hoping to end Donegal’s status as an employment blackspot by making it the video games capital of Ireland.

The county has suffered in recent weeks with the closure of the Hospira and Clubman factories and the loss of more than 600 jobs.

Thomas Dowling, the head of the computer department at Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LIT), has set up a new course in computer games development to bring a new type of employment to the area.

“We’d like to foster the notion that some of the graduates will have the skills to set up their own businesses rather than simply having the notion that we’ll sit back and wait for multinationals to provide all of the jobs,” he said.

The video games industry is estimated to be worth €85bn, which is more than the movie industry, and is expected to grow further with the introduction of the Playstation3 from Sony and the new X-Box 360 from Microsoft.

Mr Dowling said there was no reason why Donegal could not become a successful location for games companies and added that the cost of setting up a video games company was pretty low.

“You don’t need a huge manufacturing plant, you don’t need huge amount of research and development. All you need is a creative mind, a PC with the right software and away you go,” he said.

The four-year LIT degree course, which begins this month, will cater for up to 36 students and will be run in conjunction with a local video game company, Torc Interactive, which employs 15 people.

The students will learn computer programming, game design and 3D modelling, as well as working on projects in co-operation with video game companies.

Mr Dowling said that there were attractive salaries for top computer games developers but warned that it was a challenging profession.

“It’s something that changes rapidly and you need to spend a lot of time staying up to date with the latest technologies. You can’t just be nine to five, plodding your way through the day because of the turnaround time for new video games.”

He developed the course with the help of Abertay University in Dundee, whose stream of computer games graduates have made Scotland one of the strongest centres for games development in the world.

There are currently around 30 Irish-owned video games companies and 10 foreign-owned companies in the country.

The LIT course is the latest in a series of initiatives by third level institutions, following a Forfas report in 2001 which criticised the lack of training available for students.

Carlow IT set up its computer games course last year, while the University of Limerick is running a new course this year.

There are still some vacant places in the LIT course and students who are interested can apply via the CAO website.