H Gamescom 2024the world’s largest video game trade fair, ended yesterday, Sunday, in Cologne: 335,000 visitors from around 120 countries visited the exhibition grounds last week. Game developers and gamers from every corner of the globe came once again to showcase their productions, learn about new trends and of course… to play.

Among them, officially for the third consecutive year, was the Greek participation. Greek video game developers based either in Greece or abroad were at the exhibition grounds representing the Greece. As Vassilis Karavasilis, communications manager of the Greek Digital Game Developers Association (GDA Greece), emphasizes, along with the consolidation of the Greek mission, big steps are being taken in terms of organizing game developers in Greece: “This year’s mission has 51 people, 11 games and a game creation software’. A big increase, considering that the Greek delegation participated in last year’s Gamescom with only three video games.

Gamers wanted… in police, military and secret services

Despite the drop in sales after the years of the pandemic and lockdowns, it is considered very likely that video games will make more money this year than the film and music industries combined. In Germany alone, the video game industry had a revenue of approximately 4.3 billion euros in the first half of 2024, thus representing approximately 5% of the revenue of the global game industry.

The importance of video games seems to have been well understood – apart from politics – and institutions such as the army, the police, but also… the German secret services (BND), who with their own booths in the exhibition grounds want to they advertise their work with the aim of “recruiting” new workers. “We cannot be locked in our offices and then complain that young people are not interested in working for us. We have to be present in places where young people are circulating,” a secret service employee characteristically notes to DW.

The position of Greece on the world map of game development

The role of video games seems to have become clear in Greece in recent years. The development in game development is great – with a fundamental change in the effort to organize the programmers: “A new financial tool has been established, which is only aimed at game developers”, points out Evi Boulougouri from the National Center for Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME), while “support for the organization that represents game developers has been strengthened, as has the participation of Greeks in Gamescom.

“Just the fact that we created an association three years ago, which was also the first year we came to Gamescom, is a step forward”, adds Vassilis Karavasilis. “But what has happened and changed over the last two years is that we are in very close contact with the government agencies that are respectively responsible for the games. And not only in communication, but also in practice: we even helped with the writing of the law that was passed to make games financially independent from the cinema,” he emphasizes.

The “small but inventive” Greek participation in Gamescom, as Fotini Nakou, head of Creative Industries at the Hellenic Investment and Foreign Trade Company (Enterprise Greece), characterizes the Greek participation in Gamescom, received very positive feedback this year. As Ms. Naku points out, smaller indie productions are starting to attract the interest of investors: “Until last year, you couldn’t get an appointment with investors when you said that the budget of the companies did not exceed one million, as they preferred companies with a budget of more than 5 million”. But this seems to be changing, as Fotini Nakou observes: “We are seeing a shift in the big companies, which this year are also showing interest in small indie productions”.

In fact, it is not excluded that Greece will become “the next country that will show to the outside, after Poland, that gaming development is developing within it”, characteristically says Tzimis Gigas, president of the Association of Digital Game Creators of Greece.