Imirt - The Irish Game Makers Association, in partnership with Screen Ireland through the Screen Ireland Digital Games Portfolio have had the honour of running the Irish Games Fund, a first of its kind, staged development fund for Ireland.
The Irish Games Fund is a staged development fund in order to maximise the use of funding on projects with the highest potential. The fund is judged by external talent from games publishing, allowing the games to be properly judged with no bias and by those who fully understand the market and market conditions.
Stage One of the fund recently wrapped, with all six teams hitting their milestones. We’re delighted to announce that following the successful stage one, three teams have advanced to Stage Two of the fund.
These teams are;
Outlier
ENIGMA Studio
Dreamfeel
Below you can find quotes from each of the teams about how Stage Two of the Irish Games Fund will help them bring these unique stories to life, and even get a glimpse of some of these games.
Outlier
“Outlier is delighted to be supported by the Irish Games Fund for our next game. IGF Stage 2 enables us to push the prototype even further, developing it to an industry-leading benchmark and pitching it to potential commercial partners prior to the game's announcement. The funding also helps us build out the team in Ireland and support local talent in the industry.” - Paul Froggat [Outlier]
ENIGMA Studio
“Receiving funding to help develop TÖLT with stage 2 of the Irish Games Fund has been nothing short of transformative for the project as well as for my life, both professionally and personally. Having never received funding in the 8 years that I've been releasing games under ENIGMA STUDIO, this funding has enabled a paradigm shift in the way I design and develop games. For the first time ever, I've been able to bring on another programmer whom I work with incredibly closely to enable new design possibilities for the game at 10x the speed of doing it alone, as well as an additional audio designer to compose new totally unique music alongside introducing middleware I've never used before.
On a different note, this newfound financial certainty and its accompanying production schedule also allowed me to take a two week period off over the holidays for the first time since going full-time with ENIGMA STUDIO, meaning I could properly rest with the confidence that my production schedule doesn't begin until January. Approaching development in a more healthy way like this has allowed me to enjoy making it which ultimately results in a better product.” - Jamie Gavin [ENIGMA Studio]
Dreamfeel
“The entire Dreamfeel team is delighted to be selected for Stage 2 of the Irish Games Fund. The Stage 1 participants set a very high bar of quality, no doubt given the high demand that there is for such funding in Ireland, so it is a particularly huge honour.
We’re all excited to get stuck back into development and to work with Imirt again as they were already fantastic throughout Stage 1, and their expertise has made it a uniquely valuable accelerator to be a part of.
Dreamfeel are working on a game, Bog Bodies, that’s draws on Ireland’s rich history and our famous flair for storytelling so I especially hope our game will showcase not just the abilities and potential of Irish creators in this global industry, but also to give the rest of the world the stories and the experiences no one else can.
Before Stage 1 development on Bog Bodies had temporarily stalled because although we had incredible art and an incredible story, the gameplay, ie: the player’s experience, wasn’t up to the same high standards. We suspected the key problem might be that it was far too “linear”, in that there was only one thing to do at a time. So our plan for stage 1 was to design a much more open experience but particularly (and trickily) one in which our powerful story would still work. I’m very grateful that the funding gives us the chance to solve and test this, because it does indeed work incredibly well!
Now in Stage 2 we’re going to build upon that breakthrough and fully develop a mini region of the game’s world, incorporating open exploration and multiple quest lines that players can decide to undertake or not, however they choose. Additionally now that the game’s core identity is fully fleshed out we’re also going to start sharing our game publicly to build a following, both fans of our previous games and new fans alike. So by late Spring the game should be in a fantastic position for the final stretch of development.
We’re very excited to continue this journey and it is with much appreciation and admiration that we’d like to once again thank all the judges who selected us and Imirt for facilitating this fund.” - Llaura McGee [Dreamfeel]
We’re delighted to continue this fund and explore the unique and incredible stories that developers can tell through the medium of games. We look forward to seeing how these projects evolve throughout Stage Two of the Irish Games Fund.