On Friday 22nd May, Game Republic hosted the Indie Games Summit at MCM Comic Con at ExCeL in London, attended by more than 100 industry guests who enjoyed an afternoon of talks, networking, industry chats and insights, with guests including Xsolla, Super Rare Games, Finstock Capital, the BFI, Panda Cat Games, Marvelous and Pitchify. The Indie Games Summit is another event that took place as a result of Game Republic’s partnership with the international events company ReedPOP, that also has GR members accessing a special GR Zone at MCM Comic Con in Birmingham to demo their games for free.
The first session at the Summit featured The Game Business’ Chris Dring interviewing co-founder of publisher Secret Mode, James Schall, who recently announced their latest game, the superb-looking Star Wars: Galactic Racer, made by UK developer Fuse Games in partnership with LucasFilm Games. The wide-ranging chat, which will be on The Game Business’ video podcast soon, asked questions about the current state of the industry, how Secret Mode nabbed the publishing for Star Wars: Galactic Racer and what they look for when signing games.
Finstock Capital’s Oliver Jenkinson then delivered a presentation on the various options for games funding, including enture capital, crowdfunding options and debt alternatives, followed by an inspiring talk by George Perkins, CEO of Super Rare Games, discussing his journey in the industry and why physical games are still an important route for developers – especially on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
Then it was the turn of Jon Hicks from GamesIndustry.biz to host the return of the Investment Panel, with guests Nick Button-Brown (The Games Angels), HaZ Dullul (Beyond the Pixels), Gina Jackson (Pitchify) and Sarah Burns (Marvelous), tackling all kinds of funding questions, with the main takeaway being that UK devs need to “hustle” more, and look for multiple different streams of investment to fund their games. A feature from the panel will go up on GamesIndustry.biz very soon.
Next up was Chris Filip and Stuart Burnside from the BFI, discussing tax relief for UK video games (VGTR and VGEC), as well as two current funding opportunities – the International Business Fund (Closes 11th June): Â and VGR (Video Game Release) fund for marketing, selling your game (closes 14 August). The Indie Games Summit then had a session from Jane Startseva at Xsolla about their fantastic Xsolla Partner Network, that matches you up to influencers and sells your game on their shopfront (a great extra revenue stream) and the event finished with a very informative and fun session from Molly Holmes, Panda Cat Games, on how to launch your social media strategy on TikTok from scratch, including what works and what doesn’t (key takeaway – make it short, 7 seconds, fun and impactful). Game Republic will be again teaming up with ReedPOP for the Investment Summit at another MCM Comic Con later in the year – watch this space!
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