The gamescom week lies behind us and it was a blast! The gamescom 2024 celebrated its biggest success since 2019 with 335,000 visitors (including 32,000 trade visitors) and exhibitors from around 120 countries. Tickets were sold out on both Friday and Saturday. A great opportunity for developers to show their games not only to a large audience, but also to publishers, industry professionals and press. A recurring highlight for many visitors was once again the Indie Arena Booth in Hall 10.2. 

Gamecity Hamburg was part of it along with five wonderful developer teams from the Hanseatic city, who presented their games as part of our Road to program. In addition to the valuable live feedback from visitors, the developers were also able to make important business contacts with publishers and talk with journalists and media. Perfect for creating more buzz for their upcoming projects.

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The games at the Gamecity Hamburg booth at gamescom 2024

• Godcomplex Games - Stack 'Em Up
• Markus Koepke - Journey Beyond the Edge of the World
• Pipapo Games - Map Map - A Game About Maps
• Slime King Games - Under the Island
• Sven Ahlgrimm & Mathilde Hoffmann – ODDADA

For more details on the games of the Gamecity Hamburg booth at gamescom, take a look at our Road to gamescom 2024 article. 

For our Road to teams, gamescom 2024 began on Tuesday with the set-up of their gaming stations at the Indie Arena Booth in Hall 10.2. At the largest joint booth of gamescom over 160 international indie titles found a home, of which many were created in Germany. The trade press and politicians, who paid a visit to the area on Wednesday - the official trade visitor day - were also aware of this. Economics Minister Robert Habeck took a tour around the Indie Arena Booth.

On Thursday, the first big visitor day, Berlin's mayor and SPD state chairwoman Franziska Giffey visited the Gamecity Hamburg Booth to play ODDADA, which was jointly made by developers from Hamburg and Berlin - and celebrated its release on August 15. 

National and international showcases in hall 4.1

Hall 4.1 was the perfect place for anyone looking for an overview of all the different federal states' programs. This was where the stands of the federal states as well as international delegations from countries such as Korea, Spain and Serbia were located. With many different receptions, their booths attracted developers and business customers alike.

In addition to its own booth in hall 4.1, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Games Germany and the game Federal Association offered a joint "Made in Germany Booth", which provided useful information and comparative data on state-specific funding options. Together, they underlined the importance of games made in Germany and the gaming industry in general.

Streams and Stages

Pipapo Games, Mathilde Hoffmann, and Markus Koepke were invited to the Indie Arena Booth streaming studio and spoke live about their games. Annika Neuman from Pipapo Games talked about their cartography game Map Map - A Game About Maps on ARD's Twitch channel, as well. Meanwhile, Gamecity Hamburg project manager Helen Krüger spoke on the heise stage with podcaster and journalist Dom Schott and gave insights into her work within the gaming industry.

Cologne: All about gaming for an entire week

Beyond the fairgrounds, there were also plenty of opportunities in Cologne for interested parties and employees from the gaming industry to meet, network and, last but not least, celebrate. The traditional gamescom industry party, which took place on the banks of the Rhine at Thursday, was just one of many festivities where a wide variety of industry members met up to chat and celebrate. A particularly nice trend: in addition to the classic networking events, there were also several women in gaming events this year, which were specifically aimed at women within the gaming industry. For example, the Fem Devs offered a breakfast meetup on Thursday, while the WINGS community met twice, on Wednesday and Thursday, at Café Heimisch near the Cologne Trade Fair. 

Join the Polaris Convention October 11-13

While we’re slowly getting back into the groove here in Hamburg, we’re already thinking about the next convention, which is the Polaris from October 11-13. We will also have a joint booth there, so keep your eyes peeled for more info on that soon. On Friday, October 11, the next Gamecity Treff will take place to kick off Polaris - starting at 6 pm taking place at the Grüner Jäger in St. Pauli - this time even with its own matchmaking event. Get your tickets for the Gamecity Treff in October here. 

Want to stay up to date about our next "Road to" programs, bringing Hamburg-based developers to international games events? Check out the program here and subscribe to our monthly newsletter to never miss a call for participation!