News

Irish Games Students Head Hunted by San Francisco’s Game Closure

17/10/2011

The innovation of two of IT Carlow’s Games Development students has lead to their recognition across the technological world.  Carl Lange, aged 20, from Boyle, Co. Roscommon and Ciarán McCann, aged 21 from Enfield, Co. Meath, set up their own technology based blog www.flax.ie with a main focus on the HTML 5 engine they are developing.  HTML 5 is the newest web browser technology and skills in this area are highly sought after in the gaming world.  San Francisco based gaming company, Game Closure, searched the technology community to find the best people to work with them on their HTML 5 games.  Game Closure’s search lead them to IT Carlow’s brightest Gaming Students, Carl Lang and Ciarán McCann.  They invited both students to have an all expenses paid trip to San Francisco on the 17th October 2011 to work with Game Closure staff for three weeks.  Game Closure is featured on the world renowned technology blog “techcrunch”.

Carl and Ciarán have also been invited to numerous technology based events, such as the Dublin Google Technologies User Group event held at the Google European HQ and the Dublin Web Summit, Ireland's Largest Tech and Business Event.  “We are delighted with the opportunity to travel to the States and work with industry leaders.  The Honours Degree in Games Development at IT Carlow has opened so many doors for us.  The course is very practical based and is rated as one of the best in the county.  Through our blog we regularly get to use the skills that we have learnt in our software engineering lectures.  Thanks to the lecturers and support at IT Carlow we are now in a position to be associated with some of the leading technological companies in the world. ” commented Carl. 

Speaking about the student’s achievement, IT Carlow Games Development Lecturer, Ken Power said, “We think this is a great opportunity for Ciaran and Carl to get firsthand experience working at the forefront of Web and mobile technology.  The lecturing staff on the games development programme have been making special arrangements to ensure that Ciaran and Carl are given time off for this trip without unduly disturbing their normal course studies.  We encourage and support all our games development students to build online portfolios for their work so that they can show off their work to potential employers.  Flax.ie shows how effective this strategy can be.”

To find out more about Carl and Ciarán’s trip to San Francisco log onto their blog www.flax.ie