Entrepreneurship, opportunities, meetings, education, inspiration, projects, awards ... On December 6th and 7th, the BBVA Games Industry Forum (GIF), the most professional networking area of the Fun & Serious Festival, gathered an educational agenda at the BEC in Bilbao was taken up by publishers, investors, specialist journalists and European indie developers on a peer-to-peer list of speakers.

Hempuli Oy (Head of Baba is You), The Game Kitchen (Blasphemous) and Nómada Estudios (which delved into the hit Gray last year) participated in roundtables and talks in the larger business of Fun & Serious. GIFs were also the most popular development engines, such as Unreal Engine (Mario Palmero - European Technical Evangelist) or Unity (Ciro Continisio - Lead Evangelist for EMEA in the UN), which will decorate the innovations with tips and tricks for developers.

They also discussed the future challenges and challenges of the ever-changing indie scene with Jupiter Hadley, an expert journalist in independent video games; Rosie Ball, brand manager of Chucklefish indie publisher (Stardew Valley); and Valeria Castro, CEO Developer at Platonic Games. Out of the Blue Games (with its co-founder Tatiana Delgado), Raiser Games (Pablo de la Nuez) and Team Gotham (Juan de la Torre) were other firms in the BBVA Games Industry Forum conference program. Take a trip to Bilbao with Tomavisión to immerse yourself in the media with a talk that brings animation to video games. Basics in the industry, such as mental health (with psychologist Lourdes Conde Álvarez) or crowdfunding (with Michael Liebe on Kickstarter) also had their place on the educational agenda of the Games Industry Forum.

All this was reinforced by workshops and workshops from Friday to Sunday mornings, with very important issues, such as community management or social media screening, basic legal issues, or an introduction to developing a solid business plan. Indie participating in Fun & Serious, presenting their game to the public in the Indie Zone, had exclusive access to a mentoring event with such prestigious people on the European level as Ed Valiente (Thunderful Games), Martin Lindell (Raw Fury ), Mark Aldrup (Headup Games) or Piotr Bajraszewski (11Bit Games), among many others. In this event, they were able to showcase their projects in areas such as funding, publishing, law and production. Thus, the practical dimension of GIFs became more and more evident.

Also this year, FS Play finalists had the opportunity to present to the public in the elevator pitch format during the Games Industry Forum, a great time to showcase ideas and optimize profitability.

Thus, GIF strengthened its mission as a trampoline for beginners and indie, in a context, the Fun & Serious festival, which has become a must-see event for the industry internationally, with 40,000 attendees last year. The echo of this event is so great that the big names in the industry received awards in this 2019 edition: Yoko Shimomura, Bruce Straley, Tim Willits and Greg Street.

More information:

www.funandseriousgamefestival.com