Irish Developers Week : Nevermind’s Mark Lambe Talks to Bone-idle.ie
Irish Developers Week
Featured Studio : Nevermind Studio
Interviewee : Mark Lambe
Date Dec 2nd 2011
First question, tell us a little bit about your studio, when you started out, who is involved and what was your initial mantra?
NeverMind Games was established last summer in Thurles, Co. Tipperary. There are four of us involved, Alan Boyce, James Sadlier and I have programming backgrounds, and Kevin McGarry is an artist. We all have the qualifications necessary to make games, and the passion and commitment to make our own games. I suppose one of our initial desires was to create games of a certain standard. We’ve spent a while working on TroubleSum, our first title, out of a need to see it become a quality product, in all aspects.
What games have you already released so far and how have they been received?
TroubleSum will be released on iOS.
Have you any projects in the pipeline that you can share with us?
We’ll be finishing development of TroubleSum quite soon, and we’ll have an official release date shortly after that.
What made you decide to move to Ireland/set up in Ireland and remain in Ireland.
We’re all from Ireland, and though we’ve worked abroad before, I think everyone wanted to start NeverMind Games here. The support we’ve received so far has been fantastic, from Enterprise Ireland straight through to L.I.T. Tipperary where we’re based.
How difficult did you find it starting out?
Initially information was tough to come by. Once we found out about the L.E.A.P. program everything fell into place.
Who/what was the biggest help while finding your feet?
Initially Phil Bourke from L.I.T. Tipperary was our biggest help. He was hugely interested in seeing us succeed and has given us a lot of support. Graham Royce from L.E.A.P. has been fantastic too, we couldn’t have gotten TroubleSum to the level it’s at without either of them.
What was the biggest obstacles you faced in the initial start-up process?
Finding office space, it was something we knew we needed but the amount of hothouse programs and the like around the country can offer more confusion than anything. Fortunately L.E.A.P. gave us exactly what we needed.
What was the best piece of advice you got from someone else, when starting out that proved invaluable?
Plan. Plan everything, development, business goals, schedules. When everything is up in the air planning is the only thing that you can rely on. Initially I wasn’t sure if I’d be great at this, it’s not something I relied heavily on until now, but as time went on I discovered just how valuable it really is.
Taking in your own experiences, what would be the best piece of advice you could now give to others looking to set up in Ireland?
Seek out someone on a program like L.E.A.P. or someone from a start-up games company, and ask them what they think. They’ll probably have some pretty good ideas.
How have you found other studio’s is there a good community between the developers in Ireland?
Yeah it’s great every time we get a chance to meet up and see how the other companies are doing. It’s something that’s constantly growing and being developed further, and rightly so.
Is there any support groups or associations that Irish developers should join to get the help form the community?
gameDevelopers.ie is always a good start.
Where do you see the Irish scene going in the future especially with so many big studio’s now setting up shop here?
We need to fundamentally look at education, and try to encourage students to do college courses such as software engineering etc. A lot of the big studios are here with buildings full of support staff. That’s still great but having large development studios in Ireland would be fantastic, and adding to the already strong numbers of techies coming on stream every year would be a brilliant place to start. I wrote a blog about something similar recently, check it out on NeverMindGames.com
Find us at: www.NeverMindGames.com
FaceBook: NeverMind Games.
Twitter @NeverMindGames.
My Twitter: @MarkJLambe
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