You: “Man, I’m so sick of having to travel to Dublin for Gamecrafts - if only they’d run one in Galway!”
Us: “Yeah, okay. We can do that.”
You: ”...Wait, what?”
You heard right my West coast lovelies. Gamecraft has been happening all over the world and now in association with Insight at NUIG, we’re coming to Galway to lather you in a bath of frantic game development!
Gamecraft is a game jam, which means you and yours have a ludicrously short amount of time to turn an idea into a computer game (and you’ll have even less thyme). In this case you’ll get 10 hours to make your digital opus. It’s a great way to meet new folk, have some fun and most importantly make more games!
Insight at NUIG in Galway (formerly DERI), on May 10th from 9am to 9pm, which includes playing one anothers’ games and followed by a few sociables in a nearby pub (to be super-determined). You can even visit the computer museum while you take a break.
(** Lunch is included)
Plus you get a chance to visit the first computer museum in Ireland when you are taking a break from the game jam craziness.
The vision of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics is to create a healthier,safer, more productive world by empowering a data-driven society to enablebetter decisions by individuals, communities, businesses and governments. The centre opened on July 1st 2013 and has received funding in excess of €72 million from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and industry for research programmes that involves over 300 researchers and more than 150 industry partners. Insight is a joint initiative between University College Dublin, the National University of Ireland at Galway, University College Cork and Dublin City University.
Having firmly established itself as a leader in creative media education in Ireland, Pulse College arrived in Galway in 2013 and is currently offering courses in Games development, with further courses to be offered in 2014.
091 Labs is a collaborative community space, also known as a “Makerspace” or “Hackerspace”, based in Galway City, Ireland.
Located at DERI at NUI Galway, this collaboration with eGalway tells the fascinating story of key moments in the history of communications. Yet it is designed to be more than just a tribute to the past and a collection of historical artifacts. For it has a central tenet of inspiring today’s youth to consider science and engineering careers by highlighting the importance of ‘innovation’ to human progress and the crucial but oftentimes overlooked contributions of young people and of Ireland to advances in global communications technologies.
Galway Game Jam is a regular event that aspires to encourage interaction, collaboration and creativity for those interested in games development in Galway.
GameCraft is a games jam event designed around building the gaming community. We aim to create events which allow game-makers to meet, share ideas, have fun, compete for prizes and most importantly make games!
Before moving to Ireland many moons ago Chris made his living designing video games in London, however after an incident involving a jumbo tub of mayonnaise and those guards in the funny hats, he now teaches game development with a handful of colleges in the west of Ireland while avoiding extradition…
Aside from this he’s also the co-founder and designer over at PunchScreen Games in Galway.
You can contact him on twitter @robotic_bears but his twitter feed was recently described as “pathetic” so it’s probably best just to speak to him in person…
Paul Conway is a freelance videogame artist who runs the Galway based graphics service known as DoomCube.com. He has worked in the games industry for almost 9 years and has over 80 games on his list of credits. His clients include notable names such as EA Mobile, Square Enix, Chillingo, Eidos Mobile & Fox Mobile Entertainment.
Research code monkey at NUIG, game developer, electronics hacker, railway modeler, nerd.
Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Computer Science (University of Bari, Italy); PhD student at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG); Google developer during the Google Summer of Code 2009; Rails Girls Galway organiser, volunteer coach and web admin; Galway Game Jam co-organizer, Coding Grace Galway organiser and coach; Galway Autism Partnership volunteer (organizing and running electronic crafting workshops for teens) and web admin. Committee member of the NUIG Karate Club (koryu uchinadi). My-Ambrosia founder. I love surfing in Bundoran (Co. Donegal, Ireland), cooking sugar-free and gluten-free meals and crafting (electronic and non).