Question for you folks: what's the best UK (or European) show for finding small to medium sized, independent games/play developers of all shapes and sizes?
I'm guessing it's Develop; possibly Leipzig, but I've never been and I'm assuming it's a bit more about the glam and marketing and the big guys rather than the up-and-comings. Might be wrong? I suppose not EIEF because they don't really have a trade floor as such, although they do usually have a few locals and studes (and Nintendo) showing something fun. Casuality?
Suggestions?
Lepzig apparently is very good. It certainly seems the most popular European show anyway.
Posted by: Tom | July 21, 2007 at 11:04
Develop was mostly big-boys last year, and appears to be the same again this year. Prices are high, conference is short, and the UK companies need somewhere to recruit / get press now that ECTS and GDC-E have died. There's a reasonable amount of cash splashed.
OTOH, it did have a *whole day* dedicated to education/games last time which is an excellent thing (sadly, not included in the main conference ticket. Gah. And this year again a whole day, but running in competition with the exclusive mobile day too - although I'm guessing that's because they reckon there are few mobile games company interested in academia and vice versa, that is the opposite of my experience). I'm hoping there will be many more small players, but it's looking like being a 40/60 mix of big players and middleware providers, probably because other people are priced out.
Casuality has been very hit and miss the times I've been. Some people get a huge amount out of it - in terms of meeting all the casual games publishers in one place I found it was excellent, and there were many large and small indie casual developers - but *exclusively* casual developers and I met other people who were disappointed at the lack of / lack of quality of smaller devs.
I would add, though, that Casuality is generally deliberately more inclusive towards the small companies, whereas Develop is more about bringing together the big ones. Casuality has open-to-all sponsored parties and trips around the red-light district, whereas Develop has extremely pricy and limited attendance sit-down awards dinners.
Posted by: Adam Martin | July 22, 2007 at 15:19
PS: ...but big players attract at least *representatives* from the smaller companies. I would expect within a year or two that it will be easy to have meetings with all the people you want to whilst at Develop, although this year I still know at least as many people I would have liked to meet up with again who aren't going as I know who are - many of them just aren't yet convinced it's worth the time + cost.
But it's literally on the sea front, it's more relaxed and informal than the London ones ever were, and Brighton's a much nicer and easier place to find bars/cafes/restaurants to hang out in and socialize in, all within 5 mins walk. And this is only the second year its existed, so all my comments above are YMMV - who knows what it'll be like this year?
But if anyone's there this year and is considering a job in virtual worlds, there's lot's of recruitment parties going on, e.g. [shameless plug] http://eu.plaync.com/eu/recruitmentparty/
Posted by: Adam Martin | July 22, 2007 at 15:26
Game Connection in Lyon maybe?
Leipzig is pretty 'big boys', and consumer-oriented.
I think there's a gap, since, almost by definition, there is no market for indie games that is well covered by the games industry. Apart from Manifesto Games...
Posted by: Jurie Horneman | July 27, 2007 at 08:58