Game developers from across the North were treated to VIP networking, roundtables and new game demos for GaMaYo at the fabulous Tileyard North yesterday. The event is officially the biggest GaMaYo event to date with 400 developers attending, more than 150 studios and a record 26 new games being shown off. Alongside the usual game playing and networking, the event featured business roundtables for the first time alongside the demos. The event was sponsored by Tileyard North and LucidLink with support from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
GaMaYo formed part of the 2024 events programme supported by Game Republic’s Official Partners Red Kite Games, Barclays and Escape Technology. At the event Yasmina Fadel recorded a podcast with interviews of developers showing off their games as well as developers and other service providers attending. GaMaYo included a debut for Alibi Games, a new funder and publisher for the games industry – and Game Republic member – alongside other industry guests including PQube, Tencent Games, ID@Xbox, Department for Business and Trade and many more special guests. The podcast video will be released soon. See gallery at the end with our photos, and Neil Parmar’s too and the rest of the article after these top tweets. Special mention must be made to the incredible team at TileYard North including Kerry, Dan, Katie, George and the team at DSM Productions and the caterers Create Cafe, Wakefield, a social enterprise making a real difference to lives in the area.
New games to play
The event hosted 26 new game demos, some of which were world premieres, included virtual reality digger sim Dig VR from Just Add Water and Race Day from PlayStack Leeds, plus Southfield, The Waking Knot, Kopi, Memora Wanderer, Witchmarsh: Tea Party of the Damned, The Governor of the West, Terms and Conditions, EmiTime, The Ghost of Nichishima, Haus of Klaus, Close to Flight, HamStarz Battle Arena, Terms and Conditions as well as innovative LED-strip game GlowGolf by Alex Johansson.and Dunk Dunk – all featured on the. GaMaYo website
Jamie Sefton MD of Game Republic had been amazed at the number of demos for the event but thinks the next GaMaYo will see more “It was such a delight to play many of the brilliant games on-show at GaMaYo, and I expect to see even more at the next event on November 21st, as some studios that wanted to share their games were not quite ready for this one. It’s always so exciting to have so many talented game developers, designers, artists, programmers and studio heads under one roof.”
Game support
At the event, all attendees were able to join up to three roundtables between 5pm and 6pm on key topics to support their games, careers and studios thanks to Eaton Smith Solicitors, Game Studio Training , Other Things , Alibi Games , PQube , Red Kite Games team , ID@Xbox, Lewis Silkin, Escape Technology with LucidLink
Dr Jackie Mulligan from Game Republic explains “It’s been a tough year for the games industry, but the indie games scene is growing and we are very fortunate to have so much expertise in the Game Republic that we can share with GaMaYo and Game Republic members – providing insights and tips like this that can only make the regional games industry stronger. It was great to see so many people at the roundtables and so generous of the presenters to share.”
We were inspired by Gina Jackson and Emma Brassington to have an allyship programme for GaMaYo 22, so people could invite for free friends and colleagues from underrepresented groups, resulting in our most diverse event yet – still much work to do in this area, but it was a very positive result.
To find out more about Game Republic or GaMaYo, get in touch and to join the conversation for free, if you do game development in the North, join the Great Northern Games Discord.
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