Ireland is at home in the vast network of gaming
Mobile gaming is where the opportunities lie. We have the resources to make games like Angry Birds, and we’re seeing a lot of start-ups in that area— Paul Hayes, Games Ireland
IN November the games industry continued its relentless assault on popular culture when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 broke the record for fastest $1 billion (€765 million) grossed by an entertainment product.
Hitting the mark in 16 days, the biggest video game of the year beating the previous winner, James Cameron’s 3D movie Avatar, by a whole 24 hours. Costing $150m to make and pulling together talent from military advisers to developers that model how walls become pock-marked with bullets, Modern Warfare 3 represents the state-of-the-art in graphics, storytelling and that vital multiplayer component that keeps people coming back for more.
At the last count, that community accounted for 30m people — bigger than the population of New York, London and Paris combined. It’s a high maintenance entertainment juggernaut full of swagger and trash talk.
So how do you knock that kind of power off its perch? In true David and Goliath fashion: With a slingshot. Mobile games developer Rovio’s Angry Birds is a simple game where the player uses a slingshot to shoot birds at pigs standing atop precariously built structures. The aim is to take down the pigs either directly or by breaking the structure beneath them.
Costing $100,000 to develop, the colourful and unsophisticated distraction earns over $1m a month from advertising and has a reputation for being incredibly addictive; just ask any of the 500m people who have downloaded it over the last two years.
This dichotomy debunks the traditional perception of gamers from loners to social creatures, from an obsessive hobby to lifestyle accessory. Like it or not, whether we tether ourselves to consoles and PCs or just kill time on smartphones, we are all someone’s target market. This opens up a wealth of opportunities for developers, designers, entrepreneurs, writers, composers, IT professionals and animators to be part of an industry expected to be worth $82.4bn by 2015.
But what is Ireland’s position in the global games industry? Are we destined to be reliant on foreign investment or is there potential for homegrown talent to create and manage new intellectual property?
For the moment the games sector remains small but well represented by a mix of big brands and local enterprises with international reach, and start-ups focusing on the mobile space.
A list of companies with operations here reads like a whose who of the industry: EA Bioware, Activision Blizzard, PopCap Games, Gala Networks Europe, Zynga and Big Fish Games, not to mention local success stories Havok, Demonware and Jolt to name but a few.
The names are impressive but it’s arguable the sector’s actual size is less so, employing 2,000 people spread throughout the country. EA Bioware’s facility in Galway employs 200 for the massive multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Activision Blizzard’s Cork facility provides similar services for games like World of Warcraft and Star Craft and employs 600. The arrival of Farmville and Mafia Wars publisher Zynga to Dublin last June was hailed by IDA chief Barry O’Leary as further evidence of how Ireland was becoming “the internet capital of Europe”.
Another big win for the smart economy? Not necessarily. While these firms are hiring, most positions are in customer service where languages are valued more than research. If you have a problem with your account you call Ireland; if you’re looking to work on metrics like how long people stick with one game over another, the jobs are here but less plentiful; and if you want to write dialogue or music for a blockbuster, those limited opportunities remain overseas.
It’s unlikely we’ll see a triple-A title like Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim or Gears of War coming from an Irish studio, but if the mobile space has shown anything it’s that good ideas are as powerful as corporate backing.
Paul Hayes, director of industry group Games Ireland, says the likes of Big Fish Games provide a valuable service by making locally produced material available on its platform, which are localised (translated and modified for different markets) free of charge and made available in 150 countries.
“I have been working in the games industry for 10 years, and mobile gaming is where the opportunities lie,” says Hayes. “We have the resources to make games like Angry Birds, and we’re seeing a lot of start-ups in that area. Companies like Redwind Software and Ideal Binary are almost self-publishing thanks to new technology. The consoles have pretty much passed us by.”
Mobile gaming has also thrived in CoderDojo clubs around the country. Established last June by teenage “iPod nano hacker” James Whelton and philanthropist Bill Liao, the not-for-profit organisation teaches programming to children.
CoderDojo began in Cork and now operates in Dublin, Drogheda, Limerick, Kerry and London. Its first success story was 12-year-old Harry Moran from Cork, whose Pizzabot game managed to get to the top of the Mac App Store’s gaming chart.
The potential of the games industry to deliver jobs was recognised by government in a report by policy advisory board Forfás last October. Titled The Games Sector in Ireland: An Action Plan for Growth, the report was greeted positively by Jobs Minister Richard Bruton as showing the sector represented “particularly high potential for jobs growth in the coming years”.
This was a sentiment echoed by Forfás chief executive Martin Shanahan, who called the industry a “catalyst for growth”. What’s encouraging is Forfás sees an additional 2,500 jobs being created over the next three years, with call centres forming but one part of its vision.
While parts of the report could be considered obvious — the need for better broadband, mobile devices and 3D will place new demands on developers — the report envisions a gaming cluster akin to the Digital Hub, bringing creatives, coders and business people together to share ideas and skills. Such a project would require new ground not simply in geographical terms but in legal and educational spheres with the support of state agencies.
Forfás is preaching to the choir. Enterprise Ireland, Shannon Development and Údarás na Gaeltachta have been engaging with new businesses through funding competitions and connecting start-ups with venture capitalists, and the IDA has been at work attracting companies from abroad. Measures in the budget to allow tax credits for start-ups on the first €100,000 spent on research and development will prove a boon.
A gaming cluster will also require a shift in how the law sees intellectual property. Whether it’s a graphics engine, how a search engine renders a game in a web browser, character design or a soundtrack, there need to be clear definitions of just how far companies can replicate or take inspiration from each others’ work before patents are infringed.
In the US, “patent trolling” has seen small companies sued for infringements and end up paying license fees rather than enter lengthy and expensive litigation, regardless of whether any wrongdoing has taken place.
A more difficult restructuring effort will have to be made in the education system, particularly at second level, but Forfás has an ally in the National Council for Curriculum Assessment. The latter’s report on how to overhaul the junior cycle has ambitious plans to focus on acquiring skills over making grades and encouraging students will be encouraged to see technology as a learning tool integrated into all classes.
These measures might seem to be pandering to multinationals with limited interest in Ireland beyond the low corporate tax rate, but even if gaming in itself doesn’t pay off, the benefits to ancillary industries like social networking and software development will be too great to pass up.
Even without a cluster, Forfás’s efforts will create a cultural climate as favourable to tech companies as the weather is to keeping data centres naturally cool. In any case, it’s time to get serious about play.
* Niall Kitson is editor of TechCentral.ie
I see platforms living side-by-side, appealing to different types of gamers, with some crossover
US GAMES studio and publisher PopCap Games arrived in Ireland in 2005 and employs 85 people in its office in Pearse St, Dublin.
The Irish operation consists of a team of developers working on creating games and a wing that localises games to suit different markets, be it through language translation or adjusting content to reflect cultural differences.
Famous for the infectious shoot ‘em up Plants vs Zombies (300,000 copies sold from the Apple App Store in nine days) and puzzle game Bejeweled (500m downloads and counting), PopCap develops games that are easy to play, and can be played anywhere.
“When we started the ethos was to make gamers out of non-gamers,” says press officer Cathy Orr. “The business strategy is to have games in as many places as there are there are people to play them. We see video games as lifestyle entertainment alongside movies and books. Our job is to create games that will speak to different audiences.”
Now owned by the world’s largest games publisher EA, PopCap began with titles for Mac and PC, but expanded its reach to include mobile platforms such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, and social networks such as Facebook and Google+.
The importance of social networks to the future of games was underlined in a study by the company, which found a 71% increase in the number of users playing games on social networks since February 2010, over half of which were female. So are we seeing a growing audience of “platform agnostic” gamers who will play anything anywhere, or is this a sign of dark times ahead for services like Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network as gamers migrate to more convenient devices?
“I see both platforms living side-by-side, appealing to different types of gamers, with some crossover,” says Paul Breslin, PopCap Games country manager for Ireland. “We see a particular skew towards female players on Facebook, which is quite different to the core Xbox or PlayStation audience.
“Where traditional videogames appealed to 15%-20% of a total consumer audience, casual games like those found on Facebook have the potential to engage that other 80%.”
Where top franchises like Gears of War and Call of Duty have veered into increasingly cinematic territory, Breslin says narrative has always had a role in video games, regardless of their complexity.
“Even in the most simple puzzle games there is a story. As video games become more widely accepted as a lifestyle entertainment like books, films or music, it makes sense that we will see narrative continue to evolve further.”
As one of the founders of industry body Games Ireland, PopCap maintains a strong relationship with the IDA, but its commitment to Ireland is not dependent on financial incentives, but rather the talent pool and how it can be deepened to the benefit of the entire industry.
“In Ireland we found the talent and a core team we can work with,” says Cathy Orr.
“If you have a senior level professional coming here it’s very likely you’ll get a good team around them. Once you get that momentum it’s important to keep it going.”
GNE began with one game in two languages in 2007 and now has eight titles in up to six languages each
THE Gala Group develops and publishes free to play massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) and makes money from optional premium services than can be purchased via a virtual currency.
The company is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with offices in South Korea, USA, Europe and Brazil, and employs more than 400 worldwide.
Gala Networks Europe (GNE) set up its Dublin operation in 2006 with IDA support. The centre of its business is gaming portal Gpotato.eu. It employs a multi-cultural staff of 120 professionals working in IT, localisation, customer support, design, administration and marketing.
Chief operating officer Nicolas Pajot says that while support was there from the IDA, there was a learning curve involved.
“When Gala established its European office in Ireland, there were already some game companies here and the overall needs of our industry were quite clear,” he says.
“However, online game publishers like us which operate games as a full service can have very specific needs, and being one of the very first in this field it was important to explain the challenges our company faces.”
GNE began with one game in two languages in 2007 and now has eight titles in up to six languages each. About 8m have played its games and “hundreds of thousands” are logging on daily. The European marketing is expanding by an average of 15% per year in terms of new players and 2012 will be another big year for GNE as it launches two new games: Age of Wulin and SEVENCORE.
GNE’s games are generally more expansive than traditional PC fare and allow for different styles of gameplay based on the user’s preference.
Pajot says some games have greater potential for exploring an environment, others lean towards strategy and civilisation building, while a third group gravitate towards those with more prominent social and community elements.
Despite the proliferation of casual games, Pajot believes PC gaming, and MMORPGs in particular, still serve a particular style of play better, offering longer gameplay experiences and a deeper level of personal engagement through real time interactions between players — something casual games, by nature cannot achieve.
“Casual games are typically easy to access and play with simpler (though no less compelling) gameplay, and have less real time communication.
“In a casual game you might send a gift to another player, and they might accept it and send one in return later. In a PC MMORPG, you’re having a real time conversation. The community elements are usually different between these two genres.
“MMORPGs were originally designed for PCs, where you had to download the game. Now, as the technical capabilities of mobile devices improve, MMORPGs are evolving to be available on those platforms as well.”
When it comes to mobile platforms, Pajot sees the potential for players to move seamlessly.
“Initially, we saw product extensions where some of the features of the PC game were accessible on the mobile devices. Now we have MMORPGs being designed for web browsers that can run on smartphones and tablets as well as PCs. These can be fully fledged games with all the depth and content of PC ones, yet with the accessibility and mobility of browser and smartphone games. Perhaps such cross-media experiences, are not far away.”
For the moment, community remains king and for now that community resides in the PC realm, but Pajot believes the days of games being tied to single platforms will end when real time communication rolls out on mobile devices.
“Community follows and surrounds the game. So we can expect to see the real time interactions connect and extend beyond the PC to include other devices that are part of gamers’ lives.”
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