For a long time we told ourselves that the notion of Ireland producing big-budget gaming titles was a myth, deluded even. But I’m becoming less sure that it is impossible. Let’s just say the Games Ireland Gathering 2012 this week revealed a wealth of pent-up ambition. The genie is out of the bottle.

Some 350 games industry professionals crowded a room at GIG 2012 in the Gibson Hotel in Dublin yesterday to attend master classes, demos, workshops, you name it, to put Ireland on the map for video games. In addition, there are understood to be 350 jobs available among the firms that attended yesterday.

Entrepreneurs rubbed shoulders with seasoned professionals from Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, PopCap Games, Demonware, Big Fish Games and Electronic Arts.

Read the full article on SiliconRepublic.com

Ireland’s prime minister Enda Kenny has today announced plans to attract more games development to the country using flexible incentive packages.

Games Ireland, a newly formed trade body representing the industry in Ireland, supports the move, which it hopes will change the culture of games development in the country.

“All the biggest brands in the world are almost here now,” Games Ireland’s communications director Paul Hayes told GamesIndustry.biz. “We just need to change the narrative and the types of projects they’re doing. A lot of them are here in a support function.”

A government report published yesterday by Forfás outlined the areas that the government is willing to look at in terms of the incentives, which include tax based incentives, and R&D and project grants.

Hayes explained that these packages would be fluid, and dependent on the needs of each company.

“The industry is evolving so fast that we kind of have to stay flexible in terms of the package of incentives that might work, and almost individually tailor them,” he said.

“We’ll take the best that we can from the Korean or the French or the Canadian experience, and just try and add what we can. I think as a country we’ve been pretty good at that and this is the first time that we’ve really focussed on games with a bit of a laser beam.”

Games Ireland already counts Activision, BigFish, Popcap, Havok and Demonware among its members.

The full article can be read here.

Details on the Forfas report here.

The IGAI website can be found here.

Which video game titles top gamers’ wish lists this year?

Nielsen’s Top 20 Games to Watch reveals the most anticipated games of the 2011 holiday season, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 the most coveted among active U.S. gamers. The list was developed by examining a variety of consumer measures from Nielsen’s Video Game Tracking survey, including the top five titles active gamers are considering for purchase.

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, an expected juggernaut for this holiday season, is desired by more than one quarter (27%) of active gamers.

Full article here.

As of mid-September, COD:MW3 is also ahead based on annual pre-orders info.

The computer gaming sector’s growth over the past decade has taken many in the IT sector by surprise. Enterprise Ireland, however, have had their eyes on its potential for some time.

The video games market is the fastest-growing area of the global entertainment and media sector, and the Programme for Government includes a commitment to support the digital games industry and promote Ireland as a gaming hub.

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Richard Bruton TD, has asked Forfás to produce a report on the potential of the industry – which he hopes will pinpoint what Ireland needs to do to optimise Digital Gaming in Ireland.

Read the full article.

DemonWare has been using Erlang to help scale our servers for over four years now, and a few weeks ago we had the pleasure of giving a talk about our use of Erlang at Erlang Factory London 2011. The slides from this presentation are now online, and have got quite a bit of coverage on Twitter, Reddit and Hacker News.

So, we’d like to say a big thank you to the organisers for inviting us. It was nice to hear about the new developments in the Erlang world, and we got tons of great feedback from the gurus who were present.

Posted by Malcolm Dowse