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The Dutch Game Garden
Although America and Japan are the biggest players in the games industry, the Netherlands has huge potential. Over the past five years, the Dutch games industry has grown by 10% (source: PWC), and there seems no end in sight to the current phase of expansion. The combination of Dutch liberal culture, out-of-the-box media design, good training and top-notch scientific research is resulting in innovative entertainment and excellent casual and serious games. Add to this the fact that the Dutch government pursues an active policy for encouraging the creative sector, and you have the recipe for the much talked about Dutch gaming industry.
So Triumph studios has developed a best-seller for the Xbox 360 and PC, Overlord. And W!Games has produced a winner for the Wii. Casual games developer Spill Group attracts over 60 million players to its web sites every month.
Dutch Game Garden is one government-supported initiative to accelerate the growth of the Dutch game industry both nationally and internationally. It provides wide-ranging support for starting and established games developers. Ronimo Games, for instance, is a promising start-up of former Utrecht School of the Arts and University of Utrecht students, whose game "The Blob" has been bought by THQ, one of the largest publishers worldwide. The company is currently designing a second game with the support of Dutch Game Garden.
The Dutch Game Garden also provides top-class facilities for existing and growing games companies in order to create true gaming hotspots (Ronimo Games is located in a business centre with Why Robbie Rocks, also in this brochure, among others). According to the Dutch Game Garden, the unique feature of the Dutch games sector is that the companies in the games industry cooperate constructively and don’t consider each other as enemies. Their passion for games means that they prioritise making better games for players above their own importance. There are also good relations with science departments and institutions. This gives the Netherlands an advantage in the field of serious games, where integrated cooperation is essential to create games with impact.
To promote the Dutch games industry in Japan, the Dutch Game Garden organises a GameJam in association with NLGD Festival or Games. The best Dutch developers are chosen for a weekend collaborative pressure-cooker session to create a mobile game for the Japanese market. The winning game is launched in Japan during the Tokyo Game Show. Although the Japanese market is famously difficult to break into, the presence of the Dutch games industry at last year’s show has already led to some valuable contacts.
www.dutchgamegarden.nl
www.triumphstudios.com
www.wgames.biz
www.spillgroup.com
www.ronimogames.com
www.nlgd.nl
www.gamejam.nl