GamesPro Talks 2010

Insight into the casual games industry – it beginnings and growth over the past 10 years. And why PopCap believes the best is yet to come.

With Dylan Collins (CEO) he grew the company to about 30 people between Vancouver and Dublin, and soon became the dominant technology provider in their area. In 2007 DemonWare was acquired by Activision Blizzard Inc, the largest publisher of computer games in the world.

Sean is now teamed up again with Dylan in Jolt Online Gaming, developing browser games such as Legends of Zork and Playboy Manager, with many more in the pipeline.

Drawing on his experiences developing major online games first for consoles and then for the web, Sean will outline some of the lessons he has learned along the way. He will describe the changes to both technology and process that he hadn’t initially anticipated when the browser became his new target platform, and give some insight into how games are now developed in Jolt.

Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) launched in November 2009. It grossed $310 million on its first day of sales, making it the largest entertainment launch in history. An Irish based company known as Demonware is responsible for hosting the services that allows millions of players in MW2, as well as in other popular franchises such as Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk, compete against each other across the globe. This talk presents an overview of the technology that Demonware uses to support such franchises, and also describes at a high level the preparation required in order to support a title such as MW2.

2000 – 2010 – How the Naughties revolutionised the Irish Games Industry indegionously and internationally

How ten years of innovation, hard graft, Irish charm and fresh ideas have established Ireland as one of the most promising and well placed hubs for the current and future games industries. It will look at the range of game related developers here, and examine how distribution, marketing and pr has evolved over the last ten years while also take a look at the “average” Irish gamer. It will then discuss how and why the Irish Games Industry is attracting local and international attention through the efforts of the government, education local enterprise and a changing media landscape.