The worldwide gaming industry is not running out of lives any time soon. Last year gamers spent an estimated $99.6bn on games and consoles. Liam Geraghty and The Business took a look at some of the Irish companies that are making a play for this market.
Emmet O’Neill, Chief Product Officer at Story Toys and Touch Press told Liam about adapting the classic children’s book, “The Hungry Caterpillar” into an augmented reality app.
“I find it’s an amazing opportunity to dip into a universe that you love, add your own little piece to it and then also, walk away from it. You're not sort of shackled to the one thing.”
Vin McCreith from EMC Sound makes music for video games. He pointed out that it’s not just animators who benefit from the gaming industry.
“It’s harder and harder for musicians to make ‘a living’. The amount of games that are getting made in Ireland…it just kind of opens up for musicians.“
Richard Barnwell from Digit Games described his company’s strategy for making a profit on free-to-play games. He explained that 96% of their players do not pay anything while playing the game but that minority of “super fans” that do, cover the costs of the 96%. Barnwell doesn't think that Ireland has a gaming “industry” quite yet but he’s cautiously optimistic.
“That’s going to take time to build it but I’m afraid it’s going to be another 5 or 10 years before it’s an established industry...but it’s getting there. There’s a lot of people trying really hard to get it there.“
Listen back to the full segment on The Business here.