Virtual currency behind gaming job creation

Bringing potatoes to Ireland may sound like bringing coal to Newcastle in terms of job creation here.
However, more than 100 jobs are to be created in Dublin thanks to the success of a virtual currency called gPotato and used by players of free online games published by the Digital Hub-based Gala Networks Europe.
The company which started in 2006 with a handful employees in Ireland currently employs 90 in Dublin and is to more than double in size, creating 103 jobs over a three-year period in Dublin city centre.
Jamie McCormick, English Marketing Manager, Gala Networks Europe, explains that the company, known to online gamers as gPotato, uses the Korean business model ‘free to play’. Gala Networks Europe, owned by Japanese company Gala Inc is one of the pioneers of this business model in Europe.
“Instead of the games being a product that you buy in the shops, it’s a service that’s all delivered online. You download our games, connect to our servers and play away with tens of thousands of other players at the same time.”
The company makes its money through micro transactions. A small percentage of players purchase, using real money, the virtual currency gPotato to spend on items in games e.g. something to make their sword into a baseball bat. What people can buy depends on the game, but they tend to be costumes, functional items or time saving resources for game play.

With 3 million users across Europe, it’s a market Gala Networks Europe is opening up. “We’ve gone from having one game in one market to having seven games in six markets: English, French, German, Turkish, Polish and Italian,” says McCormick.
“A lot of the jobs will relate to the game teams for that. There will be management roles like producers or assistant producers, I believe. The bulk of the jobs will be filled with what is called games masters, community managers or translators.”
There will be other roles in management, for system engineers, programmers and designers. But McCormick, stresses that the company is not a games developer, it’s a games publisher. “So for people who are looking to make games, it’s not the company for them. But for people who are looking to get into the games industry, we’re in a very particular growing sector.”
Play gPotato games online for free at gPotato.eu.