Poland Increases its Visibility in Gaming
March 2014 – The international presence at GDC is getting larger and more prominent each year. There were ten national pavilions this year (in alphabetical order) : Belgian Trade Commission, Chile (ProChile), Canada (Nova Scotia Pavilion), German Pavilion, Korean Games Association, Nordic Pavilion, Peru (PromPeru), Poland (Polska Gaming), Scottish Development International and the UK Trade and Investment Section. In addition to their presence on the expo floor, where the countries showcased their gaming products and services, they also organized developer and press networking events. The purpose was to deliver presentations on the state of the gaming industry in that country and their new activity in the Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
On March 20th, the Polish delegation hosted the networking event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Pawel Pietrasienski, Head of the Trade and Investment Section of the Polish Embassy located in Washington D.C. had several exciting announcements. This summer, the Polish Embassy will open a second satellite office funded by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development for Trade and Investment. The Silicon Valley welcomes a new and expanded Polish footprint in the area. This office will mainly support the new program called “Polish Silicon Bridge”, which will be run by this agency of the government.
The first Polish satellite office, SVAC (Silicon Valley Acceleration Center) started its activity last year and quickly launched several programs for Polish start-ups. The first program was dedicated to the Polish gaming industry, but the other ones also included companies in a broad area of IT/ICT.
Minister Pawel Pietrasienski moderates the Poland Delegation event at GDC
Minister Pietrasienski reminded the audience that “twenty five years ago there were no Polish companies in Silicon Valley, but now there are eleven companies located here and the number is growing rapidly”. This past quarter of a century has meant a lot for Poland, when it became an independent country in 1989, and separated from the communist bloc. Since then, there has been rapid growth to catch up to the global players in the international arena. Just as many Polish companies have the ambition to establish their presence in the US; many American companies have showed strong interest in partnering and expanding to Poland. Examples include the recent decision by Amazon to localize in Poland with the biggest operation center. Amazon has also recognize Polish talent in small and mid size companies and acquired a Polish company IVONA, that provides text-to-speech service.
There were more examples of fruitful cooperation and interest from small to medium size businesses. Brandon Sheffield, the Director at Necrosoft Games and a long time editor at Gamasutra, as well as the Editor-in-chief at Game Developer magazine was present at the Polish networking event. His first trip to Poland was as a journalist, which allowed him to observe the behind the scenes from Polish developers that he wouldn’t be able to see as a regular visitor. In Poland, he realized that there were many high degree technical skilled developers. “In the US, many of us know the games, but we do not know that they are Polish” – said Sheffield.
Pawel Pietrasienski, Brandon Sheffield and Tomasz Kolodziejak
Ryan Allen, a UX Designer & Entrepreneur, has been cooperating with Poland, as well. He said that programmers in Poland are very intelligent, smart, fast and very passionate about their projects. “You guys (Poles) are amazing to work with”, he stated. In May of this year, he is going to Poland to continue to further the American-Polish cooperation.
Another indie developer from Poland, Sos Sosowski, flew from Poland to San Francisco to the GDC Conference. He explained that “being an indie developer means that you work alone, so the conference gives him a chance to meet with other developers, as well as learn from legends of the gaming industry. “GDC is the best place to be for everyone involved in the gaming industry”. Meanwhile on the expo floor, Jakub Kowalski, from Warsaw-based 11bit Studio expressed his satisfaction of being at GDC which provided his company with many great business meetings and contacts. 11bit Studios presented the new gaming project “This War of Mine”, as well as “Games Republic”, its distribution platform. That was not the company’s first visit at this conference, but it was for the first time they were on the expo floor.
With the enthusiasm of all the Polish companies on the expo floor at GDC, the future of gaming looks bright and promising for Poland, as all the developers confirmed that they plan to return to next year’s conference in San Francisco.
The brochure about polish games industry can be downloaded here: [download id=”38″]
