Hamburg Senator Brosda: "Problematic for Start-ups and Independent Studios"

Culture and Media Senator Carsten Brosda from Hamburg is concerned about the impact the federal games funding changes could have on smaller studios. He looks critically upon the minimum funding amount of 400,000 euros.

Dr Carsten Brosda, Senator for Culture and Media in the city state of Hamburg, has chipped in to the discussion around the proposed federal funding changes. He adds his voice to politicians from other states that gave statements in the last few days, namely from NRW, Bavaria and Berlin.

"The games industry is of great importance for Hamburg and has recently demonstrated its quality at the German Computer Game Awards: Everspace 2 by Rockfish Games was honoured as Best German Game, and other Hamburg companies received awards or nominations,” Brosda says.”

“The city has long been committed to the industry, particularly through the Gamecity Hamburg initiative, which is part of Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft. We would have very much liked the federal government to have coordinated the changes to its funding system with the federal states in advance in order to harmonise the various funding schemes in the best possible way. Unfortunately, this did not happen in this case either and is part of a whole chain of unnecessarily confrontational decisions by the federal government. We therefore still need to make a precise assessment of what this means in concrete terms for Hamburg and the games industry. At first glance, however, it seems at least debatable whether the adjustment of federal funding is suitable in all respects to ensure diversity and innovation in the German games ecosystem. In particular, the decision to raise the minimum amount of funding to 400,000 euros is problematic for start-ups and independent developer studios. Since the start of federal computer games funding, they have proven many times that innovations and successful projects on the market can also be created with less start-up funding. A prior dialogue with the state funding bodies could perhaps have ensured a little more proximity to the market."

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