This year’s EGX games expo at ExCeL was held alongside MCM Comic Con and on the Friday 25th October also featured a Games Industry Summit of talks and panels, curated by EGX’s Jon Hicks and supported by Game Republic. The event was busy with developers from the Game Republic network, as well as other games companies, publishers, investors and journalists.
Chris Dring, Head of B2B at GamesIndustry.biz kicked off the event with a data-focused analysis entitled, “Five Things To Know About The Games Industry In 2024 (and some predictions)”, which will be updated and presented with new insights for 2025/2026 at the Game Republic event next year on 23rd January in York. Dring talked about the industry’s difficult year, and issues such as the fact that Legacy games (released in previous years) are taking a bigger share of the market, console sales are down 29% this year and that Live Service Games such as Fortnite are taking up a higher percentage of gaming time.
However, Dring also said that 2025 would be a better year with the release of blockbusters such as Grand Theft Auto 6 and (potentially) a new Nintendo Switch successor, more original games released in Roblox and Fortnite for a real viable alternative platform for indies, and closer ties between film, TV and games.
Next was a panel “Getting Funding For Game Development: The Backing Is Out There” featuring Gus Curley (London Venture Partners), Gina Jackson (Pitchify) and Nick Button-Brown (The Games Angels). In the panel Curley talked about the difficulty of getting funding past the seed stage at the moment, while Nick Button-Brown said funding was improving slowly, although some publishers/investors were seeing 300-500 games before funding one. Jackson discussed the opportunities for developers to find funding with brands, rather than traditional routes.
After funding, next up was a panel hosted by James Batchelor (GamesIndustry.biz), “Join The Golden Age Of Gaming Adaptations: How Games, TV and Hollywood Creators Can Build New Worlds Together” about the increasing success of games IP in films and TV (such as Fallout and Super Mario Bros) as well as other forms of entertainment such as publishing in books and graphic novels, such as those from the game Assassin’s Creed.
“you can’t just “slap an IP” into a game, it has to be built with the community in mind, and be authentic to the world.”
The guests, Amanda Kruse (Big Fan), Etienne Bouvier (Ubisoft) and Jon Gillard (The Gillard Consultancy), discussed how you can’t just “slap an IP” into a game, it has to be built with the community in mind, and be authentic to the world. Done successfully, bringing games to film/TV/publishing can create multiple touch points for brands and brings people back to a franchise that they can enjoy in a different format – such as Devolver’s Cult of the Lamb, which became a hugely successful graphic novel or the Assassin’s Creed podcast which looks at the facts and real history behind the series.
After a talk on legal issues in games, the final panel hosted by Jon Hicks (EGX) was “Is there life after wishlists? How to have a successful launch in 2024,” with Sophie Shanks (Playtonic), Callum Owen-Vallentin (Kepler Interactive) and Rob Feather (Fireshine Games) which included tips on increasing your Steam Wishlists (taking part in Next Fest on Steam, involving influencers, building a community) and leading up to a successful launch (avoiding other major game launches and busy times of the year, reaching out to influencers in advance of events such as Next Fest and including QR codes with links to a Steam Page on cards at events and online).
The EGX Games Industry Summit provided some essential advice and insights for game developers and other companies, and was an excellent focal point for the industry at the huge EGX/Comic Con consumer event in London. Roll on next year…
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