Hessian government wants tax credits, design specialists and events

The coalition agreement of the CDU-SPD coalition in Hesse demonstrates little understanding of games as a creative good, but has concrete plans for economic promotion. Hesse wants to push through tax credits in the Bundesrat, and existing small-scale funding programmes are to be merged into a new umbrella label. However, there is confusion when it comes to e-sports.

The CDU and SPD in Hesse (German: Hessen) did not actually want to see the wording of their coalition agreement, which was finalised on Wednesday, in public. However, following a leak during the night, the draft is already public. It also covers games, but is causing some confusion.

"The creative industries - explicitly including the games industry as well as the film industry - are among the fastest-growing economic sectors in Hesse," the draft states. The aim is to promote this in the future legislative period and "pay particular attention to the promotion of young talent and university film programmes." This means that games have already been omitted in the postscript and only university film is mentioned - although the games study infrastructure in Hesse could certainly benefit from funding.

Established programmes get a fresh label

The agreement remains vague on the funding of games. "We will expand and further develop the "Games made in Hessen" funding programme," is essentially the only half-sentence on the subject. Amusingly, the programme in question is not yet active under this name; instead, Hesse is collecting the Hessen Serious Game programme, which has distributed 452,000 euros to development companies since 2022, individual, little-publicised projects such as the Serious Games science and technology transfer programme at TU Darmstadt and numerous other funding measures for the cultural and creative industries from various funds such as Digital Hessen or the European Regional Development Fund. According to the Hessian Ministry of Economics in a statement requested by GamesMarkt, 1.2 million euros were channelled into the Hessian games industry between 2017 and 2019.

Strong in networking

The state's networking activities in the form of trade fair stands and events are also mentioned separately. "We are continuing the financial support for networking activities, especially for networking the design and games industry. Together with the industry, we want to intensify advertising for Hessen as a business location in the context of trade fair appearances. We also want to continue to support the visibility of the industry in Hessen internationally." Hesse is already more well positioned than most people know in this regard thanks to its existing funding arrangements: Hesse invested 17,850 euros in the gamescom 2023 stand, and the state's own Frankfurt Book Fair was also supported with a gaming stand. The state of Hesse co-financed the German Dev Days, also in Frankfurt, with 30,000 euros this year, and both the GameDays at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and the interdisciplinary IT meeting Node+Code Meetups received 21,000 and 24,000 euros respectively from the state. Although Hesse's games funding is not taking any major steps, the state certainly wants to position itself as an important state for design and IT professions. The coalition agreement appears to maintain this direction.

E-sports: no understanding, but still hopeful

Things get strange when it comes to e-sports, as the coalition agreement lumps it together with the games industry. "The games industry has a lot of economic, innovative and cultural potential for our country and, in its competitive variant, has just as much integrative and inclusive power as established sport. Video games are developed to the highest technical standards and require highly qualified specialists from a wide range of professions, whose skills are also needed in other important areas such as aerospace, cyber security and the information sector." It is unclear whether the CDU and SPD have failed to realise that development studios and games infrastructure do not automatically make up or produce professional e-sports players. Nevertheless, specific measures relating to e-sports can also be found in the agreement. "Together with the Hessen State Sports Association and relevant stakeholders, we are creating a funding programme for e-sports that includes media education and health promotion as integral components." Hesse also wants to take a positive stance on non-profit status, stating that it supports "organised e-sports in its efforts to achieve non-profit status (within existing club structures)."

Federal Council initiative for tax credits

Last but not least, Hesse wants to lobby for an initiative in the Bundesrat (Federal Council of the Federal Republic of Germany) that "brings the promotion of the games industry in Germany in the direction of a comparable tax regulation with other European countries". The coalition is thus taking the same line as numerous industry representatives, the games association and, most recently, the evaluation of games funding. The game association, which only officially integrated the state association last week, had already praised this yesterday. "A strong signal: Hesse wants to campaign for games funding in the Bundesrat. With their coalition agreement, the CDU and SPD also want to finally promote games more strongly in Hesse, whether by expanding funding or training more skilled workers. The industry, represented by game Hessen, has been waiting a long time for this positive signal. We are looking forward to its implementation!" commented Felix Falk, Managing Director of game.