Kicking off gamesweekberlin in the House of Representatives

Ahead of gamesweekberlin, which starts next Monday, the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives invited the industry to a breakfast with a panel discussion. Moderated by Notker Schweikhardt, member of parliament and spokesperson for culture and the creative industries, Felix Falk (game – the German games industry association), Çiğdem Uzunoğl (Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur), Johanna Janiszewski (game developer) and Dr Anna-Sarah Vielhaber (Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg) discussed the development of the German game development industry, Berlin as a location, and digital education, given that it also brings about cultural change.

Felix Falk stressed that Berlin is an important location in the heart of Europe for the German game development scene, one that also offers potential employees a high quality of life. Falk also addressed Dr Anna-Sarah Vielhaber, who was there representing Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and argued that the continued, consistent expansion of funding is an important factor for growth. He also suggested that games funding should become more independent and distinguish itself more clearly from film funding.

Dr Anna-Sarah Vielhaber stressed that there are hardly any "bad" funding applications and that the quality of the projects submitted is generally very high.

Nevertheless, German game developers so far account for only 5% of worldwide revenue. Felix Falk pointed out that the international share of revenue for German-developed games is around 50%, while for film it is only 4%. The fact that proportionally more revenue is generated on international markets strongly suggests that greater funding also makes economic sense.

Çiğdem Uzunoğl of the Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur emphasised that digitalisation is also bringing about a cultural upheaval. She sees games as an opportunity to introduce people to digitalisation and thus take them along with this change.

Another controversial point was digital education and the responsibility of schools. The main criticism here was that teachers have so far been inadequately trained in this area. This is mainly because academic engagement with digital content such as games has, in part, not been taken very seriously at German universities so far.