We recently carried out the yearly Imirt Survey. Below the graphs summarise what people felt worked well and what areas they’d like us to focus on for the next year.
Initiatives
For the initiatives the Inspire series is well regarded, including the live talks and evening talks. A big thanks to Colm Larkin for running those podcasts and thanks to everyone involved in setting up the live events. We gratefully received help from Screen Training, DIT, Enterprise Ireland, as well as the board members who put those events together. Thanks to those who attended and members who have suggested speakers in the past.
The next highest rated initiative is the newsletter. The newsletter provides a way to inform members about the latest activities of Imirt or Irish games development in a succinct way. Thanks to the community for providing news items. Also thanks to Brenda Romero, and more recently Kevin Murphy for gathering and putting together the newsletter regularly.
Another well rated initiative was the Imirt Irish Games Awards. This provides an opportunity to promote and showcase games made in Ireland. It also aids developers and studios in their own self promotional work. Thanks to Corona Labs for providing the awards, the Trinity Long Room Hub for hosting them, and Animation Skillnet for sponsorship on the night. Also thanks to our speakers and members of the community who attended.
Mentoring & Lobbying Government support
Mentoring developers or startup studios, and lobbying the government for support were two areas that rated averagely and could do with improvement. These were also the top two topics in terms of comments.
One suggestion for mentoring was to ask Irish developers who’ve been through the game development hurdles to give talks on their experiences. Another theme was involving more people in Imirt and the games industry here. That included students, new and diverse creators, and expanding to involve all parts of games creation and development including (e.g. middleware, qa, & localisation). Another suggestion was to mentor on what funding opportunities already exist and help startups through their first years.
In terms of government support comments suggested the need for help in terms of tax breaks and grants. Possibly in related way, some comments suggested that Imirt should position itself to represent larger studios with more of a focus on the commercial side of things.
Future focus
The most popular activity members want to see Imirt do is getting more government support for developers here. Comments see this as challenging task of course, but as a worthy thing to do.
From the survey votes, the top three areas for Imirt to focus on in future are:
Lobbying the government and other bodies for support
Organising networking events
Mentoring Irish game developers.
Thank you to all the members who participated in the survey, especially to those who provided suggestions, feedback and comments. Everyone on the board of directors read the comments and your thoughts are very helpful in directing how Imirt proceeds in future.
Results
