Hi. I’m a freelance developer. I make web apps and games. I organise community events that give people their first taste of game development. I also deliver one day workshops and short training courses in prototyping skills, web development and game development.
I am a Board Member of Imirt. In this volunteer role, I am working towards ambitious goals that aim to improve the state of the game industry supports for game development studios and service providers in Ireland.
You can follow me on twitter here: @darrencearnaigh
Summary
- Works as a full stack web app developer and game developer in Ireland.
- Involved in the game development industry in Ireland since 2015 from a grassroots, community focussed background.
- Elected to the board of Imirt in January 2023.
- Site-Organiser for Global Game Jam in Galway since 2018.
- Organiser for Galway Game Jam since 2015.
- Co-founder of 1GAM Galway Meetup, running monthly since 2017.
- Enjoys prototyping and experimenting with technology and collaborating with cross-discipline innovation teams.
Other stuff
- Has a background in Art & Design, specializing in Sculpture.
- Worked on the set of Vikings as a professional extra during season 4 and season 5, likely due to his beard.
- Recorded and released original music in aid of Barnardos childrens charity in 2020 and Womens aid in 2021 as part of the All Ireland Metal Project.
- Ocassionally volunteers with a local dog rescue charity at fund raising events.
Technical Skills
#### Preferred Web Stack
- Programming Languages: Python 3.10+, TypeScript
- Frontend framework: React + TypeScript + TailwindCSS
- Backend Framework and stack: Django + gunicorn + celery + redis + PostgreSQL, Python 3.9+
- Infrastucture: No strong preference.
- Error monitoring: Sentry
- Database gui: Metabase
Additional Technical Skills
- Scripting Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Lua, Bash/sh, PHP
- System Languages: C#, C++
- Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL
- Source control: Git
- Cloud Infrastructure: Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Gandi, Linode
- Backend service hosting: Render, Heroku
- Frontend service hosting: Netlify
- CD/CI: Gitlab CI/CD, Github Actions
- Blog Engine: Hugo, WordPress
- Game Engines: Unity, PICO-8, Godot, Unreal 5
- OSes: Various Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, Arch Linux), Windows, macOS
- Technical writing and documentation: Notion, Miro, Confluence, markdown
What I love to do
- Create things; especially gamejams & prototyping.
- Collaborate: I enjoy making things with other people.
- Connect people: Bringing teams together and supporting them to work on projects rewards me with a sense of personal fulfillment.
- Maintain community: I derive joy from sharing my passion and positive experience of game jams with others, and hope that they too can experience the positive impact of game jams.
- Maintaining things; refactoring software projects, fixing tricky bugs, or mending my shoes. I like to extend the life of well worn things.
- Play games; especially roleplaying games, strategy games, simulation games and roguelikes.
- Play music; I love making music, especially live music with other people.
- Draw and paint: I went to art school for a few years. Though these days I only occasionally pick up the pen and tablet to paint characters from my weekly RPG gaming group.
- Meeting friends for the chats!
Game Jams
Galway Game Development Community
I organise game jams and participate in game jams. Sometimes I also live-stream game development at game jams.
Way back in 2015-2016 I ran a series of game jams in Galway and quickly joined forces with Alanna Kelly as Galway Game Jam. We operated entirely on a volunteer basis with support from Global GameCraft, who I later joined as a board member. During 2017 I took a short break from organising and instead participated in a few, returing to organise Galway Game Jams again from 2018 onwards.
Global Game Jam
I am a Site Organiser for Global Game Jam, and have been since late 2018. I’ve organised the Galway jam-site for the following Global Game Jam events:
- GGJ ‘23
- GGJ ‘22
- GGJ Online (2021)
- GGJ ‘20
- GGJ ‘19
In 2022, I won the Global Game Jam GDC (Game Developer Conference) Scholarship, which facilitated me to attend GDC 2022 where I discussed my experience and opinion as a Site Organiser at their annual Global Game Jam Roundtable at GDC.
GameCraft
I was a board member of GameCraft CltG. from 2017 - 2020. GameCraft runs friendly 1-day game jams around Ireland and abroad with a strong focus on collaboration and openness to board games and craft. GameCraft events were studied by academic researchers studying diversity at informal education in the games industry. You can check out their findings - and their guide to more diverse events - here: https://gamedevelopers.ie/diversity
Past gamejams I’ve organised can be seen on my itch.io page here: darrenkearney.itch.io
You can check out my Eventbrite profile here for older events: https://darrenkearney.eventbrite.ie
Art and Design
Unlike the majority of developers, I have a background studied art and design!
While my interests lead me into the realm of computers, I have strong background in drawing, painting and sculpture. I even worked as an Installation Technician in a local arts Centre for a while. Installation Technicians have a cool job, they get to make interesting structures but have to figure out how to make them safe for the public, and on a budget. Lots of interesting problems to solve! The coolest things I’ve worked on with their Installation Technician team was a geodeasic sphere inside a large, high-ceilinged room on the first floor of a Georgian building.
On rare occasion I make 2D art and, rarer still, put it on my art blog, or my Art Station porfolio. Once upon a time I also used to post on Instagram under @darrencearnaigh.
Want to get in touch? Email me at info@darrenk.net or send me a message on social media.