Games Fleadh (Irish for "Games Festival"), is a 2 day mid-week convention held each year in LIT-Tipperary (formally Tipperary Institute), usually held in early March, for computer games enthusiasts and developers to showcase their talent and programming skills.[1] It is part funded by LIT-Tipperary's Centre for Entertainment & Game Technology Research. Each year, there is a major gaming theme, usually to do with an anniversary of a game.
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Games Fleadh was originally a competition called RoboCode Ireland Challenge, which was a artificial intelligence programming language challenge for first year college students. Teams of students designed a robot that would compete against another colleges robot, and the with robot with the best algorithm receiving the Robocode Marshal title . As this competition grew, Games Fleadh was established as an over arching event. Games Fleadh started in 2008, by the festivals driving force Philip Bourke, a lecturer of Games Design and Development at LIT-Tipperary, when he saw no other strong festival for the growing Irish Games design industry. It started off small, with a small number of colleges being invited to participate. RoboCode is now an event inside the convention of Games Fleadh.
Usually all the challenge competitions are judged by 3rd party industry professionals. Previous Judges have been from Microsoft, Havok, Playfirst, NeverMind Games, and OpenEmotion Studios.
Over the years, There has been a number of different themes
Robocode Ireland Challenge Champions[2]
XNA Game Studio Ireland Challenge
DirectX Ireland Challenge Honours List:
Another Highlight of Games Fleadh, is GamesPro. GamesPro, is a panel of games and software developers, and companies, highly respected in industry, that give small talks on a specific point from their prospective. GamesPro ends with all the representatives, sitting down together to answer questions or queries students may have.
Global Game Jam GGJ brings together thousands of game creation enthusiasts around the world, all with a common purpose of building computer games in forty eight hours. Game developers create games during Global Game Jam and exhibit during Games Fleadh
New in the 2012 convention will be the introduction of Games Fleadh:Evolved.[5]
Every year Games Fleadh is supported by (but not limited to): Microsoft, PopCap Games, Demonware
Games Fleadh:Expo is a new addition to Games Fleadh 2012. Games Fleadh 2012 is proported to include Ireland’s first Digital Game Expo. The exhibit is expected to include indie developer titles.