As the end of the year approaches, we thought we would look back at what has been an amazing 20th Anniversary year for Game Republic, and we thank our Official Partners Barclays, Red Kite Games and Escape Technology for supporting us over the last 12 months. We also thank all of our company members, affiliates and educational partners for joining the network and joining us at our events through the year. Special thanks also to to our sponsors who have made all of our events extra special.
Enjoy a quick round up of our 2023 events to jog your memory…
2023 started with an announcement of our Official Partners and our first event of the year in January. The event focused on Games PR and included a presentation on games PR and marketing from Stefano Petrullo, Renaissance PR, an interview and Q&A with Andy Kelly, PR Manager at Devolver Digital and a talk from Stephen Arthur at Mastered on their training courses for professionals in the games industry. The event was held at the Showroom in Sheffield, and was followed by networking and drinks.
In February, Game Republic members, speakers and invited guests from the Yorkshire Games Festival including BAFTA attended the opening reception at the Game Republic YGF Reception and Dinner. Everyone enjoyed some drinks and arcade games in the Bradford National Science and Media Museum‘s Games Lounge, before heading to MyLahore restaurant for a fantastic curry.
In March, just before GDC, Game Republic hosted an event focused on Pitching Your Game with David Valjalo, Creative Director of Strategic Partnerships at Tencent presented about opportunities for developers and provides insights on pitching to investors. Rob Hewson, CEO & Creative Director at Huey Games also did a Q&A and showed example pitches for publishers. Jamie Sefton closed the event with tips for those attending GDC. Unfortunately due to snow, the event went online, but it meant that our members could view a recording of the event if they missed it!
April focused on Games Talent – advice and help on attracting and retaining talent at your games company. The event featured Chris Dring, GamesIndustry.biz, talking about the Best Places to Work Awards and some of the findings from the event, while Shahid Ahmad (ex-Sony) discussed changing negative to positive attitudes to your job. Our final speaker Rosie Taylor, content and community manager for Safe in Our World, talked about the important topic of ‘Navigating toxicity in games in community-facing roles’ with info on ensuring you look after your mental health in the workplace.
On the 10th May saw GameDevDay with both Game Republic and GaMaYo events in Leeds at Avenue HQ and Belgrave Music Hall respectively. The Game Republic event earlier in the day saw talks from the likes of Epic Games, ID@Xbox and Aardman Animation (with guest Shaun the Sheep!) and in the evening we had 250+ developers attend GaMaYo with 15 game demos, drinks and networking.
In May we also got featured in MCV/Develop Magazine celebrating 20 years of Game Republic.
Later on that month we worked with Gameopolis on a panel for the Leeds Climb 23 Investor Event at the Royal Armouries.
We managed to squeeze in a bonus online event in May, with a live webinar with Valve – a fantastic opportunity to find out the latest on bringing your game to Steam and the brilliant new Steam Deck portable console. After the success of that event, we are scheduling another webinar with Valve for 8th February 2024, again exclusive for Game Republic members. We also followed that b0nus webinar with another one in June featuring Dylan Cuthbert, CEO of Q-Games in Kyoto – a pre-recorded interview following from Game Republic’s visit to the Japan-based studio in May.
In-between times we redesigned our Game Republic website too which we hope you like and finally got round to setting up a Game Republic Linkedin page that you can find and follow here.
June we completed some research on graduates who had won the Student Showcase over the last 10 years and discovered that 81% of winners had gained employment in companies up North. The story was featured in the Yorkshire Post. June also saw the return of the Game Republic Student showcase, this year held at the University of Bradford, which, as well as having the competition for final-year students to win awards judged by our games companies, the event also invited winners over the last decade. One of these previous winners, Ben Hinchliffe, appeared on the industry panel – Ben started his career at Rockstar Leeds thanks to the Showcase, and is now at the VR games company Just Add Water. The Student Showcase, sponsored by PitStop Productions, featured over 100 students competing in categories such as the Sumo Digital Award for Game Design and the Revolution Software Award for Narrative Design. You can check out the full story here
Later on that month we did an opinion column about the importance of homegrown talent and the need for public interventions to support the industry in the Yorkshire Post.
In July, Game Republic held a special 20th Anniversary Northern Lights panel at the Develop: Brighton Conference featuring Bobby Thandi of XR Games, Simon Iwaniszak from Red Kite Games, Elaine Dowman from Barclays Games, Andrew Crawshaw from Thunkd and Jessica Kelham of Rum Punch Games. Check out the story here. In addition we held a roundtable with leading companies at Red Kite Games studio which resulted in some great insights shared in MCV/Develop magazine here
July was also the month for the Game Republic Summer Arcade Birthday Party, where we took over the whole of Leeds Arcade Club just for our members (3 floors of incredible retro and modern arcade games). As well as 200 people enjoying the games, we also hosted our birthday party at the venue, complete with celebration birthday cake featuring games characters for our network members such as Snake Pass (Sumo), Gang Beasts (Boneloaf) and Broken Sword (Revolution).
September was our Investment Lunch at Kollider in Sheffield, with insights on all things investment, games funding, acquisition and exit strategies featuring panellists from Hiro Capital, UK Games Fund, Lewis Silkin, Red Kite Games and Square Enix Collective with light lunch and networking. In September Jamie spoke to the Yorkshire Post about the games industry in the North in this article Game Republic also co-hosted PC Zone 30th Anniversary Party with Richie Shoemaker editor of MCV Develop with guests including Zone Alumni Charlie Brooker and Rhianna Pratchett.
Full story here
On Thursday 5th October was the XR, Virtual Production and Beyond event at the Guildhall in York, a joint event between XR Stories, Barclays and Game Republic. Confirmed guests and speakers included Elaine Wong (Pico VR) presenting about opportunities on this VR platform, Richard England (Reflex Arc) with a talk on virtual production pre-vis for Marvel’s Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania, Draw & Code presenting on using games tech for non-games and a panel featuring Just Add Water and Dreaming Methods. The event also featured an expo of XR companies showing their games and experiences, special roundtables and refreshments. Recordings of this event and some fantastic talks are here
October included MD of Game Republic, Jamie Sefton, working with industry news website GamesIndustry.biz to deliver the Investment Summit at EGX in London, with more than 300 guests, investment talks, panels, roundtables and more than 400 meetings through Meet To Match at the ExCeL venue in London.
Game Republic also represented at Scottish Games Week that month, with two panels on various aspects of the games industry in Edinburgh and Glasgow and a creative thinking workshop for game developers to create different ways of harnessing their creativity. We also discussed levelling up with Kimberley Turner, Double11, Tabitha Marshall (Astrodreamer Studio) and Marcia Deakin (NextGen Skills Academy) which you can read more about here.
We also attended FORMAT in Manchester which was great and we look forward to seeing that again in Manchester AND Liverpool!
November we featured in the Yorkshire Post talking about the challenges and opportunities in the games industry highlighting our events, work in the region by Mastered and are graduate work ready bootcamp. We attended the 10th Anniversary of Game Bridge on 7th November in Middlesbrough which was great! Later that month we hosted the biggest ever GameDevDay featuring both Game Republic and GaMaYo events, at Tileyard North in Wakefield sponsored by Lenovo and Tileyard North. The event kicked off with Game Republic and talks from Secret Mode, UK Games Fund, London Venture Partners and Kepler Interactive, followed by an immense GaMaYo with 400+ developers attending, 20 amazing game demos, an old-school arcade with games such as Donkey Kong and R-Type, and the first ever Game Republic Awards – you can check out all the winners here. It was a very special night – and we can’t wait to tell you the GameDevDay plans for 2024! The event was featured in the Yorkshire Post and on BBC Radio Leeds, Sheffield and York.
In addition, we managed to pack in training initiatives for games companies and graduates throughout 2023, with the Next Level training for mid-level to senior position technical artists, in partnership with Screen Yorkshire during Q1 2023 (which also featured an Unreal User Group event in Leeds) , and promotion for the Mastered bootcamps for developers in West Yorkshire. Finally, thanks to support from York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership, the Department for Education and Skills for Life, the Graduate Work-Ready Bootcamp is helping graduates looking to get into the games industry for employment or to start a games business.
In December we shared Ukie’s report on spillover impacts of the games industry with the Yorkshire Post showcasing great work by local companies in developing technology for other spheres. Our final event of 2024 in December was of course our Christmas Party featuring our LEGENDARY Christmas Quiz at Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds, sponsored by Boneloaf as well as amazing pizzas, drinks, a raffle to win prizes and raise money for SpecialEffect, and 100+ devs having a jolly old time in Christmas jumpers and hats. This year’s winners of the quiz was again, the Radical Revolutionaries (pictured left), made up of members of developers Revolution Software and Radical Forge – as well as other guests – and they won prizes including special Gang Beasts merch from Boneloaf and Escape Technology, Red Kite Games-developed titles including Hogwarts Legacy, plus a bottle of red wine!
That’s a wrap. To find out what we have planned for 2024, check out our event calendar and expect more news about them very soon as well as some surprises and an announcement about what companies will be our Official Partners in 2024.
See you on the other side and Happy New Year!
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