Here are the questions you asked our panel of people who work in the games industry and app development.
- Aaron, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Mark Lambe (NeverMind Games): Actually I get emails about this quite often. Unfortunately there are a few barriers to it actually happening. Firstly, as most Irish games developers are start-ups, they don’t have the resources to bring in TY students. We had a meeting about it at NeverMind Games and decided that even if we did bring a student in, they wouldn’t learn a great deal without us greatly slowing down our development cycle.
I would suggest applying to some of the bigger companies in Dublin, they tend not to have a huge development focus, but they may be more willing to bring in TY students. In saying that, maybe there is a Dublin-based start-up that would bring you in. I’d suggest looking at the list on GameDevelopers.ie and emailing a few of the studios.
If you have some spare time, I wrote a blog post a while ago about how you can use some basic game development technologies as a beginner to get a handle on how the industry works called “Game Industry 101”.
Marian Garvey (CPL): Hi Aaron, most software companies in Ireland would be delighted to have a student join them for a week or two on work experience. Dublin in particular has many different software companies so I am sure you can choose yourself which one you want to focus on.
If you are interested in the gaming sector you should use the internet to research gaming companies based in Dublin. When you have made a list I would recommend you type up a well worded and brief email and include your CV. Outline what type of experience you are looking for and the length of the work experience required.
When you send the email and if you haven’t received a response I would follow up with a call to the office in 1-2 weeks. If you follow this process you will be sure to secure a useful work experience in a gaming company.
