Why Northern Ireland is the BEST location for game development!

So yesterday I attended a guest lecture by Declan Kelly the US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland, and lets just say it was inspirational and gave me the drive to come and create this blog post!

US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland Declan Kelly @ University of Ulster Jordanstown

Well this blog post is about the gaming industry, and why NI is the ideal location for developers to locate in the future.  I say this at a time where there are 0 games developers located here, there may be a small number of idevices developers that also provide other services like web design and marketing graphic design.  But in Northern Ireland there are no games developers here what so ever.  Now in Mr. Kelly’s speech he does identify that the Creative Industry is has a key role to play in the development of NI, and as what I see as the current leader of the creative media it is a shame that anyone who wants a job developing games has to move away from NI.  I would like to remind you that one of the old gaming developing greats David Doak who was studio head for RARE back when they were under the control of Nintendo is from NI, he set up Free Radical Design and the Timesplitters franchise.  Northern Ireland has such raw talent in its students, and it is recognised by American corporations as identified in MR. Kelly’s speech that they show more drive, fore thinking, ambition and they work harder to get what they want.  Northern Ireland it focuses on the creative industries, business and financial services as well as the high tech arena such as cloud computing and personalised health as identified by Mr. Kelly as well as having 2 world class universities, University of Ulster with its 4 campuses and Queens University Belfast.

So lets move into the reasons as to why NI should be the target location for game studios to locate in the near future.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 16 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 68 posts. There were 9 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 7mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was March 17th with 97 views. The most popular post that day was Ireland 5 Year Tax Holiday!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were gonintendo.com, neogaf.com, google.co.uk, boards.ign.com, and youtube.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for 4od wii, 4od on wii, ireland flag, wii 4od, and irish flag.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Ireland 5 Year Tax Holiday! October 2009

2

Channel 4oD – No Wii Plans October 2009
66 comments

3

4oD Coming To Games Consoles December 2009
7 comments

4

Nintendo Updates Opera Browser! (iPlayer suffers) September 2009
5 comments

5

What Tech could we find inside the Vitality Sensor? December 2009
1 comment