It’s July and that means its Develop – when a large section of the UK and international games industry heads to the South Coast for meetings, informal catch-ups, dinners, breakfasts, lunches and talks, panels and more – this time with record temperatures baking attendees outside. The event attracted a large number of Game Republic network members to the conference, the expo and to be part of the Indie Showcase as well as fringe events.
This year Game Republic had an expo stand on the Wednesday and Thursday of the conference. The Game Republic stand was also the place to find out more about the ecosystem in The North, the Game Republic network opportunities and events, and the upcoming GR new Horizons conference in Middlesbrough 14-16 November. Monitors supplied by Wired2Fire who also tantalised attendees with some fantastic PCs and accessories. The Game Republic was also the spot to secure an exclusive sticker to confirm your status as “Honorary Northerner” or “Proud Northerner”! If you missed these, stickers, rest assured more merch will be available at our future events supported by Official Partners Red Kite Games, Xsolla, Double Eleven and Strategic Partner Steel City Interactive.
Winners
Crucially the Game Republic stand gave attendees an opportunity to win prizes including free games from members including Iteration Games, Hidden Dogs, Badgerhammer, Fresh Seed and Game Studio Training, as well as event special offers by playing North Breeze Entertainment’s fantastic rally game Project Leo to secure the fastest lap times. Winners in the top 3 positions were AJ Prosser, Finn Drew and Malcolm Coleman. For those curious to know the top 100 performers on the leaderboard – follow the link https://northbreezeent.com/
Other winners included the Develop Star Awards where Best Original IP was won by Landfall Games and Aggro Crab for Peak as well as Best Small Studio – Rebecca Lautner from Landfall Games will be a keynote at Game Republic New Horizons. Congrats to Game Dev Hero winners too. Game Republic member Brickmouse won Best Game in Develop’s Indie Showcase for Zombie Dog
Meet the Game Publishers
On the Wednesday morning, Game Republic ran its annual Publisher Breakfast at the HarBar, just down the road from Develop, with 50+ attendees from the GR network, six fantastic game publishers/funders (Sony XDEV, Curve Games, Yogcast Games, Silver Lining, Green Man Gaming, Xsolla) and two public funders (BFI UK Global Screen Fund and Innovate UK) all served alongside tasty pastries, egg, bacon and sausage and vegan butties with much needed coffee.
LEGO Batman and new game Reforj
Develop: Brighton itself was excellent – very busy and buzzy, the usual networking and meetings in the bar area of the hotel and the Meet@Develop meeting tables, as well as a full conference programme. Particular highlights were the 4J Studios presentation about their excellent new sandbox survival game Reforj built on new “Rixel” technology (and 4J’s Chris van der Kuyl and Joe “Stampy” Garrett will be at the speaking at Game Republic New Horizons) plus TT Games wonderful LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight session, featuring the brilliant Jonathan Smith leading a discussion and panel with the dev team behind the fantastic game, showing how they incorporated as much of the Batman films and comics as they could and made a fun, authentic game that “wouldn’t make children cry.”
Insights from AI, Social Media Bans to New Talent
There was also a session from PWC with stats and info on the games industry, looking at everything from levels of investment to AI adoption (and negative audience perception). Interestingly, the proposed government policy of banning social media for under-16s was seen by PWC as a potential positive for the games industry, with young teens possibly playing games more as a result – but with the policy still very much in its early stages, we’ll wait and see if this will be the case.
The edutrack provided insights on apprenticeships with a brilliant keynote from Dr Jake Habgood who highlighted the skills that cannot be taught outside a studio or from the written word such as the art of persuasion and the knowledge that can only be gained in context “you don’t know about scope until you have to remove features from a game!”
The track went on to covering the talent requirements and the value of the role of juniors to them and to studios with Developing Tomorrow’s Talent with panelists: Louise Andrew from d3t, Grant Clark Double Eleven, Caroline Marchal Interior/Night and James Shepherd Cypherdelic chaired by Laurence Oldham – key takeaways was that training in-house could be complex, Louise pointed to clients increasingly looking for technical competence – tech UI, tech art and Grant Clark talked about reverse mentoring looking at what grads with new knowledge can bring to studios too.
Networks and Networking
Game Republic also had an opportunity to attend many gatherings and parties, including the yearly UK hub meet-up to chat to regional pub and community networks to share info and potentially collaborate. At the hub meeting Jamie Sefton MD of Game Republic highlighted a summary of the last couple of months work which included delivering its 250th Game Republic event, 380 game devs, 47 new games at GaMaYo which raised over £1000 for Safe in Our World, the Game Republic steam festival with over 1.44 million impressions, game signings of GR members including PQube with Detectorist Guild, and the Indie Game Summit at MCM Comic Con which included talks with Xsolla, Secret Mode, Finstock Capital, Panda Cat Games, the Game Republic Student Showcase with 16 Universities and colleges and 60+ projects and Careers Conference, with publishers, industry guests, the work on building the Great North Creative including a visit from the Mayor Tracy Brabin who heads up that pan-Northern initiative, the Summer Arcade Party sponsored by Kudos Games which raised funds for GamesAid with over 180 developers, the SXSW London panel with Abbey Road Studios, the Barclays 40th Anniversary event, the work on Game Republic New Horizons and of course mentioned winning the GamesAid bowling tournament.
The team also attended the fabulous beach side Xsolla Connect event which brought together all parts of the UK, the Scottish Game Developer Association party, the Games Insights Database launch, Finstock Capital drinks, Tanglewood/PitStop XDEV drinks, the Develop VIP Reception, IMIRT drinks and the GamesIndustry.biz Party (with England v Argentina match) – and many, many more.
At the end of the event, Jamie summed it up “Develop 2026 was excellent – the real Glastonbury of the games industry as we named it last year. Voices have been lost by the whole team thanks to the many conversations (as well as the small matter of a football match). There is no doubt that it’s still tough for many game developers and companies, and it’s still a very unstable, changing industry, but there were plenty of positives – games being signed, co-dev contracts secured, business being done, and Game Republic will continue to be there to help our 2000+ members across the North and beyond supporting success and growth.”
To find out about events on the Great Northern Games Discord, GaMaYo and Game Republic events and webinars visit the events page.
If you are interested in becoming a Game Republic member or finding out more about our work, events and activities you can get in touch or apply to join Game Republic here.
If you are developing or supporting games in The North, you can join the Great Northern Games Discord here.
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