Global Success Crowns Two-Day Guildford Games Festival 2020

Published on: 24 Nov, 2020
Updated on: 26 Nov, 2020

Guildford Games Festival 2020, adapted this year into a fully digital event, was an outstanding success, drawing two million unique views across all streams with more than 180 games developers attending.

The Festival, on November 13 and 14, included more than 100 hours of video broadcast to Steam and Twitch and involved 300-plus games developed by 36 local studios featured on Guildford.Games.com – the industry hub for town-developed video games.

Sponsored by Electronic Arts (EA), Criterion, Liquid Crimson, Charles Russell Speechlys, Stellar Entertainment Software, Enterprise M3 and Guildford Borough Council, the event celebrated the town’s significant achievements in games development, with an aim of attracting new talent to the area and encouraging young people to consider careers in the industry.

The packed programme featured a range of videos, talks and panel discussions with developers, comedians, musicians, astronauts and famous gamers. Highlights have now been uploaded to the playlists on the Guildford Games YouTube channel, enabling anyone who missed this year’s Festival to access the content on demand.

Lauran Carter, head of communications at Liquid Crimson and a Festival organiser, said: “Guildford is a hub of creativity which is continuing to expand. During the Festival, we sought to get the word out to as many present and potential developers as possible that Guildford studios have open arms for talented folk and the town is a fertile ground for developers, with space for large and small studios to thrive.

“The Festival went a huge way to break the wall down between gamer and devs, and hopefully will have inspired some younger fans to pursue a career in games, whether in art, design, programming, PR, community management or support roles.

“To help encourage budding developers, the Digital Schoolhouse workshops that aired on the Saturday promoted digital literacy for young people to prepare them for ‘the jobs of the future’.”

Nick Hurley, partner at Charles Russell Speechlys in Guildford, an inaugural sponsor of G3 Futures and the Festival, added: “It is so important we continue to promote Guildford as ‘the Hollywood of the games industry’, ensuring the phenomenally successful games cluster continues to thrive.

“The organisers created a fantastic programme this year which attracted worldwide attention, so much so that during the Festival, 17 Guildford games appeared in the list of global top 500 sellers, with two games, Need for Speed Heat and No Man’s Sky reaching 6^th and 10^th places respectively.”