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Applying standard industry rates, P45.net is siphoning off more than IEP300,000 of productivity from the new economy each month. That puts the site into the Premiership of On-line Gamers.
The best games are the ones where you lose track of time. Their design, interactivity and creative twists grab your attention and hold your interest.
It's challenging to make a compelling electronic game. Kevin O'Gorman, a programmer for Kompass.ie thinks multi-player games like Quake 3 and CounterStrike are much more compelling than single-player ones. "Many single player games are ridiculously easy," he says. "It's all about patterns, really. Even good Artificial Intelligence has standard patterns of play. One you learn them, you can beat the AI every time."
According to Attracta Brennan, whose doctoral work in Galway focused on human-computer interaction, "popular games help build better next generation interfaces." Noting how a great game has to excel in design, graphics and sound, she is also quick to point out that great games give players roles to play, activities to perform and constraints to meet.
Visit any Irish college on any afternoon and you can wade into on-line gaming sweatpits. The most intense activity swirls around highly addictive games of Quake. The Irish national team routinely sits at the top of the All-Europe competition.
"Quake rocks because of its excellent design," says Devore, an Irish Quake grandfather. "The graphics kick ass, the sound pumps and you get feedback in your face right now." Blind newcomers walking into a Quake Room could easily think they've just landed in an aerobics work-out session. The backing tracks sound the same and the perspiration level is high. The big difference is that you die in Quake but you only hurt after a good aerobics session.
"If you want to attract and retain discriminating on-line games players, it pays to incorporate the Quake model, great graphics, adaptabilty for personalisation, and real time game play," says Ruth Maher from Anamu Animation Base. Anamu have arranged for the November Irish Animation Festival to include master classes showcasing design elements behind vibrant on-line games.
Some of the best on-line single-player games experiences use development tools found in Macromedia Flash. The latest edition, Flash 5, lets programmers write scripts while animators draw the movie clips. When viewed in a LAN environment, it's a remarkable combination of programmers and designers working closely inside the same digital file.
When he was constructing the interface for Fortuneslive.com, Keith Jordan knew he needed to push the performance envelope of visiting computers. The site assumes visitors arrive with the Flash plug-in installed. The site offers horoscopes and fortune tellings. Its core features draw heavily from Flash, 3D rendered objects and a smooth interaction between your computer screen and the server-side database.
Quality games have quality programming inside them. Nils Olofsson, the technician and programmer inside Kilkenny's Cartoon Saloon has to get his head around programming routines that make Flash actions work smoothly. "You don't want to be too predictable in any of the sequences," he explains. He searches for the simplest way to program the interactivity because it puts less strain on the computer processor.
Low processor overhead means the merging of online games to handheld devices. Firepad.com shows technology that can stream video and audio to the Palm OS. The developers claims to have field tested the first high-speed streaming technology for the Palm, which can support video at up to 25 fps. This brings realistic action sequences for games into Palm devices.
When higher speed bandwidth appears for wireless devices, this streaming media content could arrive over TCP/IP. Motorola have their cloaks around similar technology splashing down in the Irish market in the run-up to Christmas.
Trends indicate the world will be carrying around mobile devices that can interact with online games. It's a huge market for designers and programmers. If it's to be successful, the first wave of software applications must be as compelling as the current generation of on-line games.
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