Game Industry Conference breaks attendance record

3,200 B2B visitors - more than ever before in the previous 15 years. The Game Industry Conference in Poznan is one of the most important game events in the Polish and Eastern European industry. It also attracted German games industry delegations to the four-day conference for exactly that reason.

On Sunday, the 16th iteration of the Game Industry Conference (GIC) in Poznan, Poland, held at the Poznan International Fair from 5 to 8 October 2023, closed with a record: the largest GIC to date welcomed a full 3,200 visitors from the gaming industry to Poland's fifth largest city.

More than 150 speakers were part of the B2B event, which was divided into a business conference and a legal summit (we reported). Among them were many from German-speaking countries: Simone Watzinger, Team Lead of Games/Bavaria, was part of a panel on Unity's new regulations and their impact on devs at the Legal Summit, Paul Lawitzki of Chasing Carrots from Stuttgart presented the concept and the path to the surprise success of their roguelike "Halls of Torment", and indie dev and pixel artist Thomas Feichtmeir from Vienna spoke on the big stage about historical authenticity in setting and visuals and other challenges behind his history game "Vienna 1480 - Renaissance Room".

The GIC also included a Women in Games Breakfast on Saturday morning, a pitch event on Friday, the GameDev Investment Forum and the VR Summit. In the exhibition area, publishers and major Polish development studios such as BoomBit, Techland, People can Fly and Creepy Jar actively recruited staff, accepted game pitches and networked in social gatherings. Wooga from Berlin was also on site with a stand. The GIC Business Lounge was sponsored by Marchsreiter Communications from Munich. The audience between the stands included the who's who of the Polish industry: several dozen employees from CD Projekt Red were there, as well as delegations from Flying Wild Hog and 11 bit Studios. A Bavarian delegation consisting of members of Pixel Maniacs, celrage, Skyward Assembly and Mimimi Games was at the fair with the support of Games/Bavaria, as were representatives of the Indie Hub and Cubidoo Entertainment from Cologne.

The event was equipped for about 4,000 people, so despite the record number of visitors, the halls were by no means overcrowded and it was pleasant to stay in the recruiting area.

Combined presence with the Poznan Game Arena

The GIC is the second largest B2B event in the Polish games industry, only the Digital Dragons Conference in Krakow attracts more exhibitors. However, as a conference attached to the Poznan Game Arena (PGA), Poland's largest B2C games event, the GIC has a special status, as many of the companies giving talks or recruiting devs at the GIC are exhibiting their games next door at the PGA at the same time. Part of the PGA included Aerosoft with their Aerosoft Move brand. Nintendo, Xbox and 11 bit Studios also had a large presence at the show.

Epic Game Music for the Business Visitors

Part of the combined presence of GIC and PGA at the fairgrounds was also the Epic Game Music concert by Visual Productions, where the CoOperate Orchestra & Choir conducted by Adamo Domurat played pieces from Polish hits such as Baldur's Gate 3, The Witcher 3 and Shadow Warrior, but also international blockbusters such as Civilization IV and VI and Hogwarts Legacy, accompanied by pyrotechnics, light show and game scenes. This year, however, the concert dared a rather dubious experiment visually. With game soundtracks, for which the event had no image licences, large-scale AI-generated image transitions were shown instead of game scenes, presenting many a distorted face and some misshapen hands - an artistic decision with which the orchestra itself was probably not happy, as a smug comment by the orchestra speaker between the pieces let slip. Nevertheless, the concert, which was performed twice in a row on the same evening to satisfy the crowds, received standing ovations both times.

Awards for the industry in Central and Eastern Europe

Finally, the centrepiece of the Polish event was the Central & Eastern European Games Awards (CEEGA) on Saturday, which we reported on earlier. The CEEGA cover 16 European countries, including Ukraine, the Baltic States and of course Poland. The winners of the evening were Ice Code Games, who won two trophies with Hard West 2. With Daedalic, Plaion and THQ Nordic, three German-language publishers were among the nominees as partners of Eastern European game studios, but they did not take home any of the prizes.

All winners of the CEEGA 2023: