Gamecity Hamburg: Our Year 2021

Gamecity Hamburg, the Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft's games industry initiative, reviews its 2021 activities, showing how it adapted its support for the local games sector to pandemic restrictions while launching new digital formats and expanding talent and funding programs. The December 2021 retrospective covers Hamburg-focused work across networking, funding, education, and events.

The centerpiece of the digital pivot was the Gamecity Online Hub, launched in May 2021 with event agency Super Crowd Entertainment. This free browser-based world recreates the port, St. Pauli, Stadtpark, and Speicherstadt, hosting more than 40 Hamburg games companies, schools, and studios, and has staged HAW Games Master presentations and the PLAY21 Creative Gaming Awards nominee meet-and-greet. The new "Indie Dev Insights" YouTube series released three episodes with executives from Daedalic Entertainment, THREAKS, and Osmotic Studios, covering publisher pitching, contract negotiation, and small-team organization.

On funding, two Prototype Funding rounds were held for the first time, supporting nine projects with 411,000 euros across serious games, fitness apps, mobile, VR, and action titles. The next application phase opens March 4, 2022. Five teams completed the Games Lift Incubator, pitching live at a December graduation event at Factory Hammerbrooklyn.

Talent initiatives included a digital internship for 12 school students, the Gamecity@School program launched in June, and four new Game Starter events on audio, QA, project management, and level design, bringing the series to eight events with growing and increasingly international attendance. Event activity included five Hamburg studios at the gamescom Indie Arena Booth Online, ten studios plus 38 student tickets at Nordic Game, and two new series: Gamecity Impulse, with three digital diversity and inclusion sessions, and Gamecity Forecast, on future-of-work topics. Plans for 2022 include four more Game Starter events, continued funding and Road to programs, and the Hamburg Games Conference on March 2 and 3, in hybrid format.