The core difference between different game business development programmes lies in their design which is tightly linked to the chosen incubation or acceleration model. The variation amongst the programmes basically is defined by the combination of decisions regarding topics, means of knowledge transfer, scope of support, etc.

The game industry is relatively young, and constantly changing. Platforms, player and market trends, monetisation models and regulations change rapidly, and are quite different from general start-up trends. This is why a generic tech incubator can rarely offer much help to game start-ups. The complex fabric of strategic decisions between game design, monetisation, target audience, player motivations, live ops content, art, user acquisition and more, is unique to games. It cannot be just transposed from any other business incubation or IT incubation.

Designing the programme comes not last, but quite towards the end. You should be aware of the importance and strategic approaches related to the other topics of this roadmap, before embarking on the programme design: in particular the Ecosystem and Operation parts. Then start working on the programme and check out who you need in terms of affiliation and staff to execute and enhance it.

This roadmap collects the practical learnings of very different game incubation programmes, gathered during the incubation capacity building pilot of the Baltic Game Industry project¹EU-Interreg project Baltic Game Industry: http://baltic-games.eu/.