Last Friday, our CEO Michael Schade and the representatives of 19 other Hamburg-based gaming companies attended a special industry brunch in the town hall, where they discussed future proceedings and opportunities for the gaming stronghold Hamburg with the city’s Mayor Olaf Scholz. The constant demand of skilled employees, the tough housing situation (which is especially hard for people who are coming to Hamburg from the outside) and new sponsoring and financing models for upcoming games productions were the main topics of the lively discussion.[full] Needless to say, the city of Hamburg will continue to support its local developers as good as possible in the future and make sure that it will keep its position as Germany’s prior and most vivid gaming location.

Mayor Olaf Scholz and the representatives of Hamburg's Games Industry

In Hamburg, the potential of video games as an industry had been recognized early on and ever since 2003 the city has bolstered its local gaming studios with the aid of the widely spread industry network gamecity:Hamburg. Today, there are about 150 different gaming companies with more than 3000 employees located in Hamburg and it looks as if these numbers will increase rather than decrease in the future. In recent days, the fantastic performances of Hamburg-based studios such as Fishlabs, Bigpoint or Daedelic at the German Game Developer Awards 2011 have given further proof to the fact that Hamburg is indeed Germany’s Game City #1. Video games have become as much a part of our beautiful hanseatic city as the fish market, the Michel and the Alster and we are positive that this development has far from reached its peak yet!

For more information of the city of Hamburg and its local game developers, please visit www.gamecity-hamburg.de.