eGames Lab Research Midterm Report 2023-2024

The eGames Lab Research Midterm Report 2023-2024 presents the progress of a national research and development cluster spanning Madeira, Lisbon, Évora, and the Azores, with a total investment of roughly €30 million, of which about €20.2 million is directed to R&D. The cluster brings together 22 public and private entities and a multinational team of researchers from nine nationalities. Its stated aim is to advance six product areas, including blockchain, VR/AR, health and green games, AI storytelling, pre-market ecosystems, and process innovation, from technology readiness levels 3-4 to 5-7, with the broader goals of diversifying Portugal's tourism-dependent economy and retaining young talent.

Ongoing work is organized across five pillars: interactive storytelling, process innovation, VR for health, transformational games, and AI/LLM-based development. Projects address food waste reduction, climate-related energy games, and financial literacy, the last of which has produced promising early findings in a pilot of seven participants. The lab reports a substantial publication output, with many MSc-level researchers contributing papers at A and A conferences and Q1 journals across AI, psychology, and fine arts. Internal capacity-building is supported through monthly LevelUp! Tuesdays across several sites and two Mega LevelUp! events held in Funchal in February and April 2024.

Those Mega events drew international and Portuguese academics and industry speakers to sessions on personas, serious games, immersion, and AI-driven design. The report also documents extensive media coverage from 2021 to 2024, including the promotion of Portuguese indie games at major industry conferences and plans for an international investment fund. It attributes 250 jobs to the initiative, citing a 2022 press report, a claim that rests on that external source. Educational outreach extends to gamified learning games deployed in schools for children aged 6 to 12 and at the Funchal Ecological Park, with these games made publicly available for research.