DIGITALWORLD
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L–r: JensUwe Intat,EA’s head of publishing for Europe; JasonKapalka, co-founder, PopCapGames;BarryO’Neill, director,Games Ireland
keen to continue that partnership and dialogue to ensure that Ireland remains a competitivemarket for us to grow our busi- ness,” Dr Intat says.
OPPORTUNITY IS THERE At the other end of the spectrum of various games genres is PopCap Games, which focuses on casual games formobile de- vices and web browsers and which employs 110 people in Dublin. Jason Kapalka, co-founder of PopCap Games says op- portunities to enter the games business are there for anyone with the right drive and plenty of ideas. On the question ofwhere gaming – especially casual gaming
– is headed, Kapalka says the propellant of the last few years has certainly been social and mobile but he suspects that ca- sual games accessible via browsers on TVsmight be one of the big disruptive changes coming. I ask himwhat key lessons he learned along the way as Pop-
Cap grewfromthree friends building games into a multimillion takeover target. “Well, we didn’t set out to do any of that.We were just three guys who just wanted to create games and it grew organically. We’d be different from your classic Silicon Valley venture capital thing where they set out to create this big company. “From where we did start – as a small group of like-minded
individuals making something we were passionate about – that’s something you can easily do in Ireland and many are starting to do that. The possibility of doing something similar to that in Ireland is very high. You have a well-educated, pas- sionate group of people here who have a lot of experience in related industries like the internet and other computer related things. “All the conditions are right so I wouldn’t be surprised in a
couple of years if you saw a couple of home-grown Irish com- panies that came out of nowhere and went on to create great games. “We’ve been here for five years in Dublin and it’s been great.
Over the years the operation has developed from localisation to now where doing a lot more of the actual development for things like iOS version of PlantsVs Zombies, all of that is being done by our Dublin studios.We’re seeing the team being a lot more creative andworking on game-based content rather than localisation or customer support. “That’s been great for us and the idea is to let Dublin take
onmore of its own identity as a game development studio in its own right rather than be dependent on other parts of PopCap,” Kapalka says. The sheer cost and scale of making bestselling console and
PC video game titles until nowmeant Ireland had to content it- self with making middleware and providing business support to the video games industry, but that’s about to change. Games Ireland director Barry O’Neill believes the country’s
rich tapestry of social networking activities involving Face- book, LinkedIn, Google and soon Twitter, along with it being home to strategic operations belonging to Activision Blizzard, EA, Riot Games and many others, will stand Ireland in good stead as social, mobile and casual gaming merges with high- end console and PC titles. A case in point would be the growth of EA’s BioWare opera-
tion in theWest of Ireland, which is creating 400 jobs to sup- port the next big Star Wars title Old Republic, which will create a whole new ecosystem of virtual goods and m-com- merce and e-commerce opportunities. The country is home to a number ofmajor casual and social
gaming companies such as PopCap Games, Gala, Big Fish Games and, more lately, Zynga. “The games industry press has made a lot of the fact that
the social gaming and casual gaming space may take up to 50pc of the games market next year,” O’Neill says. “What’s often lost in that message is the console industry hasn’t nec- essarily contracted and that social is bringing in a lot of new revenues into consoles. “I thinkwe have the scope for a very balanced industry here.
We would all love to see a studio infrastructure grow up here, building on our animation industry where we have console- gradematerial in production. These projects typically involve hundreds of people working on a game for three years, com- pared with social or mobile games that can be created with a small team.We need to see a balance of both in Ireland.” O’Neill says initiatives by Enterprise Ireland, such as iGap
and the Competitive Start Fund, are helping Irish gaming start-ups to overcome the barriers to growth that usually im- pede firms during the critical growth phase involved inmoving from 10 to 50 to 100 employees. “There’s great scope for indigenous companies and multi-
nationals to create a balanced industry – we just need to create the graduates.”
Issue 3 Autumn/Winter 2011 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW 53
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