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DIGITALWORLD
announced recently and that addresses the growingmarket shift towards social, casual and mobile gaming,” he says. Activision Blizzard would be well-ac-
quainted with Ireland’s native technology creation abilities, having acquired Dylan Collins’ Demonware five years ago. “Ireland has such a rich history here both
on the creative side and the technology side and in particular the infrastructure side in terms of tools, analytics and data mining,” saysWard. “There’s some famousmiddleware names
of course, but there’s such a great ecosys- tem here in terms of tie-ins with industry and educational institutions. It’s a great base upon which to build and encourage greater job growth. “I think Ireland is probably as well posi-
tioned as any jurisdiction in terms of being able to take advantage of the market shift to embrace social, casual and mobile. “If you asked me two years ago what
would attractmore console investment into Ireland, for big ticket games that would have been hard to answer because there wasn’t really a console development ecosys- tem.
“But nowwith the predominance of social
and casual games, the next wave and the next most popular games in those areas is likely to come fromIreland asmuch as any- where else,” Ward says. “I think anything that the Government and industry can do to foster development in this area is a high growth, high potential opportunity.”
‘All the conditions are right so I wouldn’t be surprised in a couple of years if you sawa couple of home-grown Irish companies that came out of nowhere andwent on to create great games’
MULTIPLE HARDWARE PLATFORMS EA’s head of publishing for Europe Dr Jens Uwe Intat says the key challenge for the games industry going forward is to create games that communicate across multiple hardware platforms. The company’s Galway facility is intended to provide
BioWare with greater proximity to European players of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Thesewill be peoplewhowill not only buy the game but could prove to be a vibrant marketplace for micro-payments for goods and abilities, from more powerful weapons to stronger ‘force push’ capabilities. Dr Intat points out that ensuring gamers can enjoy the same
game on any platform not only means more game sales but greater levels of engagement with customers. “Take FIFA 12 – three million units were sold in Europe in
the first week alone. There are 12 different platforms that the game can be played on.We’ve created FIFAUltimate Teambe- cause people are consuming and playingmore with the online components and will continue to pay money for better
52 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 3 Autumn/Winter 2011
features, players etc. “We are trying to move away from that
traditional business model where you bought the game once and then moved on, to a model where you could probably start playingwithout paying and then if youwant to keep playing and getting better you buy virtual goods.” An example of this would be The Sims
Social by EA’s PlayFish Studios which is now the No 2 gaming app on Facebook. But with the rise of social and online gam-
ing, what does thismean for the traditional games industry bulwarks of consoles and PC platforms? “Our vision is that you will be able to play an EA franchise on every platform that there is out there. “The challengewe’re having is those plat-
forms have to communicate and we have to give people a reason to play on multiple platforms for a holistic gaming experience. What’s the point in playing the same game on different platforms but not proceeding on your journey? That’s a challengewe have to solve with the hardware manufacturers to create that single experience acrossmul- tiple platforms. “The idea will be you can play FIFA on
the PlayStation 3 at home and enjoy a cine- matic experience and feel like you’re there. Then you could be travelling to work or school and play the game for 10 or 15 min- utes on your smartphone and still be pro- ceeding in the game. The same could be true forNeed for Speed or Battlefield 3 and that’s where we’re heading.” Ireland has benefited greatly already
from this emerging new future that com- bines the best of consoles, PCs, casual,mo- bile and socialwith the potential for buying virtual goods. I put it to Dr Intat that the country could play a greater role in content generation in terms of storytelling, music,
animation and more. “I think you are right that video games are an interesting
blend between graphical design, technological design and game play/storytelling, all those interesting components are very interesting. “The biggest difference toHollywoodwhich is also story and
technology but not game play, is we actually have three di- mensions. In order to be an attractive place for people towork in that space you just have to continue to offer what you have been offering – a good education, a good place to live for the people who are already educated and interesting conditions for companies, which Ireland is offering. “Ireland is in a good space in terms of the prerequisites and the Government has been a strong partner to date. We are
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