Hi all,
I've worked for the last ten years in the video games industry here in Ireland, and along the way wrote a lot over the years.
I published a report three years ago, The Games Industry in Ireland 2012, which was an attempt to map out visually the irish games industry. Cue eight months of getting help from people locally here, filling in surveys, and got a decent amount of responses, and was able to put together a "first look" at
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1115/345765-games-industry/ But as soon as I made it, it was out of date. My Northern Irish figures were blank, and about thirty developers put their hands up. The following year, I had testicular cancer, and while convalescing, instead of sitting around moping, I began picking up the data, while at the same time technically setting up a way for people to buy games in Ireland, with the GetIrishGames.ie site, now shut down. Was ready, but noone had software to sell at the time, on pc. But it's archived.
For that, I set up the map, which is at
http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/irish-gaming-developer-map-1443124-May2014/ and I had to shut down the project a year later, after being made redundant from my job, and being refused dole. I took a final snapshot and put up
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamieMcCormick/20140420/215845/Map_of_the_Irish_Games_Industry.phpI then spent last summer, going to every single place in Ireland where I could apply for a grant. They all thought it was a cool idea, but it didn't fit into any of the funding categories. The site wasn't selling it's own stuff, so it couldn't get enterprise funding, and there wasn't a commercial focus to the map, so it didn't go there. Elsewhere, it was just not on the list, so couldn't go in.
So the project finished, and I shut down Scraggly Dog Games, and reincorporated my company. Working with seven indie devs for 18 months I made €200, and without my job to subsidise it, i couldn't afford to continue it, so everything came offline.
Once it came offline, the phone calls began, with people looking for the information, and a couple of journalists who have written several articles on the industry over the last few weeks and months. But yesterday, the last piece in the current research was published, at
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/games/indo-indie/ireland-spent-an-estimated-206m-on-video-games-last-year-but-how-many-were-irish-30984063.html and I wrote a piece explaining it at
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantifying-market-value-irish-consumer-games-jamie-mccormickSo here's the situation. I have the interactive map, timeline etc all ready to go, and just need to hire a few people to do research on the 250 companies i have on the list, to find out when they started/died over the last 40 odd years since atari were here, and finish that, with graphics, bios etc.
Then I have the database of these, and I know where they are to manually place them on the map, but again this needs to be done by contacting each person. I spend a lot of volunteering time on non-profit GameDevelopers.ie which we are working on to bring back an archive of the last 10 years of the irish industry (old site got hacked, we had to upgrade), which has taken all of our spare time, and this very cool project is in limbo.
I'm working in the bitcoin space, doing primary research and publishing as I go, like I did for the last ten years in games, and it's a very similar industry. just grown up, more financie, equally geeky and counter culture, but with real money behind it.
I live right in the middle of Dublin, and would love to add all the bitcoin companies to a separate or intergrated map to go with this, and also a timeline. But it'll let all the bitcoin companies in Ireland put their hands up, and then for the rest of you around the blockchain to see what's here.
So can the bitcoin community help me raise some funding to hire a team of researchers, which will put out it's research as a free information source, for both the games and bitcoin industries? I've exhausted all of my options here, so worth taking a punt.
I've set up a wallet 15wLG4CJ97uJfG3SUsjRSdQSjxPLBBjTco for donations.
Any questions, feedback or whatever are all welcome, please help!
Cheers
Jamie
