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‘Father of the PlayStation’ to attract Game Companies to Malta Games industry to produce a solid base of economic development for Malta as well as more jobs within the industry. This is great news from a recruitment perspective as Malta is increasingly being perceived to be a high quality location to work from, to base people or to create. As Chris Deering said. Described as being a ‘games evangelist’, Chris Deering is a veteran of the games, technology and entertainment industry. Recently interviewed by The Times Business, Mr Deering was chief executive for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe between 1995 and 2005 and is a graduate of Harvard Business School. Mr Deering, Malta’s recently named special envoy for digital games, has pledged to be an evangelist for the island’s potential to be a base for game design firms on his travels, especially after his own firm’s initial expectations have been exceeded. He is impressed with the inroads Malta was making in technology and games. Malta Enterprise has in fact appointed him as TRC Family Media Entertainment, of which he is chairman. He moved a team to Malta just before Christmas to work on an ambitious multi-player online game designed for family entertainment. The original $6 million investment is supported by intellectual property worth $18 million which has also been relocated to Malta. Speaking about Malta, he said that the fact that there are online gaming companies means there is a headstart of sorts. Malta also does have a number of graduates in C++ programming. Mr Deering is set to evangelise on behalf of Malta and plans to help companies decide if Malta suited them and their aspirations. He was also keen to help Maltese companies identify outposts for international projects. He plans to do this in fields of high tech entertainment that are not specifically about gambling or video games. It could be about internet companies that are doing games for social networks. He continued by saying that the more game companies that are based in Malta, the better the talent pool. Game design can take anything between a few months to a couple of years with. Thus, staffing levels cannot be maintained but if there are more projects in the region, then the labour force will move around the circuit, seeking freelance or contract posts in programming, music or post-production. He also expressed satisfaction saying he was impressed how many people in the wider technology industry had heard of Malta at some time or other, especially Europeans. Outside of Europe, Malta required a proper business introduction. In this respect, the games industry to produce a solid base of economic development for Malta as well as more recruitment in the sector. If this is an area in which you are interested and would like to know more, please send your CV to jobs@vacancycentre.com |
