We are very lucky to have some amazing members whose businesses and startups are thriving and who play a terrific part in the community.
ARC Studios are one of these startups and Will has kindly written an overview of what they have been doing over the past twelve months:
"Time has flown since we founded ARC more than a year ago now, but it seems like only yesterday that we walked into the Wykeland offices to meet Jon and John.
As a group of fresh-faced graduates of the Computer Science MEng program, our plan was fairly simple: Make some damn fine videogames. Problem is, making videogames is very, VERY time consuming, and somehow we had to keep the lights on at home whilst we did it.That’s where C4DI comes in.
Our preliminary strategy was to go off and find separate full-time jobs, and dev in our free time at home. But it was at C4DI we were presented with the opportunity to work for ourselves instead. And work for ourselves we did.
The tech industry has a need for highly skilled developers to write enterprise software, and after studying the intricate nature of high end physics engines for 5 years, we felt we could apply the same performance driven solutions to business software. And we were right.
A year later and we’re fulfilling more software contracts every month from the clients that C4DI has introduced us too, and a then a few more. Our team has grown in size, and we’re now taking on internships from other university students, providing the real experience of working with larger teams than we ourselves had the opportunity to whilst we were studying. Because at the end of the day, it’s about giving back to the community that has supported us, and hopefully, paving the way for more talented graduates to follow in our footsteps.
arc_C4DI
So what happened to the video games?
Well, we haven’t lost sight of them. Our enterprise software has provided us with the funding (and subsequently, the time) to dedicate as many working days as possible to game development, by sharing responsibilities and workload across both our software endeavours,and our games.
Our first project, codename “StarGazer”, is already underway and has garnered positive feedback from everyone who’s seen it so far, but it is still top secret. We hope to unveil new features as they happen, and with regular dev-diaries, explain the various ins and outs of designing a game entirely from scratch.
After Stargazer, we want to move away from existing engines and hopefully unveil our own in-house proprietary engine; The ARC Reactor.
We’ve been invited back to university to give talks to the undergrads about software development and working with real clients, and it’s been a real pleasure to strengthen the ties between C4DI and the University. We be coming back to the university again in September to talk to the games degree students, who are now studying at the stage we were at a few years ago, about the lost fundamentals of good game design.
Being a part of the C4DI family has been instrumental in our success. Working alongside experts in different fields has not only enabled us to seek advice about the engineering and business worlds (to which we are new, and very much still learning), but has also introduced us to new friends and hobbies. It’s been a fascinating to watch the new construction grow, both first-hand, and by the fantastic time-lapse photography.
So here’s to the future, and to the glorious golden building next door that will become our new base of operations, because at this rate, we’ll need the space."