Games Fleadh 2014 video round-up

Games Fleadh 2014 took place at LIT Thurles in County Tipperary on Wednesday. This year's event wasn't without it's problems as it conincided this year with GDC which runs over the weekend.

 Many of the Irish development teams who were expected to speak couldn't make it as they prepared to fly to San Francisco.

 The annual Games Fleadh awards, in conjunction with Engineers Ireland, was posponed as a result but the student competition and industry talks went ahead as planned. And some of what was on offer was impressive.

Last year's Game Studio Ireland Challenge College Cup Champions Joseph Bentley & Ger Stone, or Alt Tab, won this year's Imagine Cup in Dublin last week. They were on site to show off their game CavernNauts. Other established developers like Exgamers Studio, with Source Control, and Atom Split Games with The Power Game were on site.

 Here's what else I saw on my travels.

LIT Thurles team take games prize at Imagine Cup

Building 3, Microsoft.
Photo: Wiki Commons

At lunchtime in Microsoft’s Sandyford offices in Dublin this Tuesday teams of young people gathered in corners, and around half eaten sandwiches, to talk in hushed tones. This was their last chance to prepare before the judging started.

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s annual competition for software innovation by students from across the Island. I had come for the games but stayed for some of the extraordinary apps on offer.

After a morning spent casually talking about their ideas in the brightly lit presentation room at the rear of Microsoft’s Building 3, the reality of the situation had set in. They were here from colleges across the country to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges from academia and industry.

These were the people who could take their ideas from a pastime to a product that they could sell. This is a high-stakes competition, and despite the shy smiles you could tell the pressure was on.

Stephen Howell (@saorog) is Academic Engagement Manager at Microsoft. He organised this year’s competition and he agrees that the set up is an intimidation one - “This is the only way to really put them on the spot.” he said as he showed me into the judging rooms.

Microsoft Imagine Cup judging in Dublin today

The Imagine Cup is Microsoft's annual innovation competition. And today is D-day for the teams involved.

Each of the teams has been busy developing their ideas - an innovative piece of software running on Microsoft's platrorms and today they need to pitch their work to real judges from industry.

Submissions closed in early February and today the top teams in Microsoft's three categories - Games, Innovation and World Citizenship - will compete.

I'll be going along to see what Ireland's young tech creatives are working on.

Video game start-ups shine at Enterprise Ireland event

Dublin Castle CC via [Dicky]

Ten Irish games companies were among the 103 businesses showcased by Enterprise Ireland this morning at Dublin Castle. Speaking on Morning Ireland, Enterprise Ireland's Chief Executive Julie Sinnamon said that there was a really high callibre of companies to showcase.

Enterprise Ireland is the government body tasked with developing Irish industries for international markets. The High Potential Start-Up Class of 2013 event is used by Enterprise Ireland to introduce companies that it has supported during the previous year.

Ms Sinnamon told RTE that technology companies were leading the pack over the past year.

"The biggest sector of all was really the technology, software, internet, games area... really dynamic, young companies and very enthusiastic and full of energy."

She said these companies were driven by really big ambitions.

The full report released by Enterprise Ireland divides the companies into two groups - 'High Potential Start-ups' that have sucessfully raised seed capital and 'Competetive Start-ups' or early stage companies. 

The list of games-specific companies includes Simteractive, a developer headed up by Elaine Reynolds, formerly of Lionhead and Sixminute - a team formed from the ashes of PopCap's Dublin office.

Here's a list of the games companies involved:

High Potential Start-ups
Gamesparks
Sixminute

Competitive Start-ups
Beat Your Manager
English Bubble
Hail Studios
Rainbow Rocket Studios
Sighter
Simteractive
Powwow
Thoughtbox

Watch it - Steam Dev Days

Valve, the US developer and owner of the Steam digital-distribution marketplace, has published a series of talks and panels from its Steam Dev Days event. The developer focused event was held over two days in Seattle this January.

The 28 videos and accompanying presentations have been published on http://steamdevdays.com/. The series includes both general information and highly technical talks.

There are talks on music in Valve games, on the company's push into virtual reality and the lauch of 'Steam Boxes' - Valve's new Linux-based hardware platform.

There are discussions on economics, Steam Early Access, developing for Linux and using OpenGL.

Below is a video looking at the development of the new Steam controller by Eric Hope and John McCaskey of Valve.