Stakeholder groups and organisations with community-focused approaches and activities.

Importance of the Local, Regional and National Game Community

For a game incubator, the local, regional, national and even the international game community are its most important acquisition and marketing source. A lot depends on word of mouth recommendations in this community open to sharing knowledge and supporting each other.

Instruments of the Community

In particular the “instruments” of the community are of high value for an incubator. This is also the case with regards to establishing a support network with both private and public stakeholders:

• Industry representatives (game associations)
• Industry networking (network organisations)
• Game hubs or collectives (dedicated co-working spaces for game developers)
• Industry organisations (e.g. youth protection classification organisation USK)

Industry Knowledge

Another important role that the community plays for the incubators is that of industry knowledge. The community provides the latest trends, facts & figures, new technologies & tools, new legislations, new organisations and services. The community can also provide insights into discourses such as “women in games”, “educating parents for games”, etc.

As game incubators are notoriously understaffed, it is difficult for their business developers and programme managers to keep abreast with the rapid development in such an emerging and fast-growing industry. An active and solid community and its networking events are an invaluable source for an incubator.

Game Incubators as Community Drivers

In regions, where the community is not yet organised and established, game incubators often take on the role of initiator and driving force of community building activities (e.g. organising meetups), aware the importance of a strong community for them in the long run. The mutual benefit of the community-incubator relation is exemplarily demonstrated by the game incubator “Dutch Game Garden¹Dutch Game Garden: https://www.dutchgamegarden.nl/” who shares tutorials for free on YouTube, e.g. “INDIGO Classes”.

Fringe Areas

There are groups that are at the fringe of the community but are still part of the game industry ecosystem. These are companies and freelancers that collaborate with or render services for the game industry. This encompasses designers, musicians, narrators, but also legal consultants or location services.

Are other relevant industries, such as IT or animation, movie, VR / AR or SFX companies part of the ecosystem? Many game developers find business with these industries. There might be value in looking into these industries for additional insight for understanding uncovered potentials in the game industry.

Associations and Game Networks

• Dataspelsbranschen – Swedish Games Industry
• game – The German Games Industry Association
• EGDF – European Games Developer Federation
• IGDA – International Game Developers Association
• Latvian Game Developers Association
• Lithuanian Game Developers Association
• Neogames – Hub of the Finnish Game Industry
• Polish Games Association
• TIGA – The Independent Game Developers’ Association

Resources