“Madrid is taking the appropriate steps to become an international benchmark in the video game sector,” highlighted the vice mayor of Madrid, Inma Sanz, during the inauguration of ‘Madrid in Game: Building the video game capital’, a sectoral meeting in who has stressed that “Madrid has been the engine of video games in Spain for four decades” and that it is “now when it is experiencing its best moment, generating 800 million euros of direct turnover and with an ecosystem that does not stop growing.”
At the event, organized by the newspaper Expansión in collaboration with Madrid in Game, Sanz highlighted the strategy deployed by the Madrid City Council with the aim of promoting ‘gaming’ and its industry beyond entertainment and as a tool for economic and transformation. sociocultural. The vice mayor has been accompanied by the delegate of Economy, Innovation and Finance, Engracia Hidalgo, and by the delegate councilor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ángel Niño.
Sanz has highlighted the work carried out by Madrid In Game, an initiative that combines, on the one hand, a cluster that unites the ecosystem of 70 companies and training centers in the sector and, on the other hand, the Video Game Campus, a center of innovation of more than 3,000 m2 located in Casa de Campo that has a project accelerator, a high-performance center for esports and an experience pavilion.
At the meeting, which was attended by professionals of the caliber of Ian Livingstone (VC general partner, founder of Hiro Capital and co-founder of Games Workshop) and investors, associations and fans of the field of innovation, the vice mayor linked the prosperity that Madrid experiences to the freedom that it breathes, “because it is the necessary condition for cities, countries and societies to prosper. Today, Madrid is a city capable of attracting young talent from all over the world, talented young people who can launch their innovative projects, their companies, and create employment, opportunities and prosperity.” “A very revealing fact,” Sanz added, is that “the majority of degrees and postgraduate degrees offered in our country in the field of video games are found in our city.”
Commit to training and international visibility
Through Madrid in Game, the city of Madrid is represented in the main events of the sector, both national and international. The Madrid brand has been present at fairs and conferences held in Germany, the United Kingdom, Miami, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, San Francisco, Croatia and Norway, where the capital has been shown as an optimal place to invest.
This is in addition to other actions promoted in the last year such as the first Municipal Electronic Sports League and the first specific facility for training and competitions on the Campus. This open space for citizens, in addition to serving as a base for raising awareness about video games, is also a meeting place for international companies in the sector. In this sense, Madrid in Game has started an entrepreneurship program that already has its second edition underway and that, three years from now, plans to have incubated and accelerated more than 200 projects.
The Community of Madrid also leads direct training in the field of video games in Spain, with 56% of current university and postgraduate degrees, that is, 43 of the 76 existing throughout the country. It is, therefore, a reference for the search for talent and highly qualified professionals.
An international market with a value of more than 24,000 million euros
The video game market in Europe has an estimated value of more than 24 billion euros. This is revealed by the latest report from the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE).
Spain is configured as one of the four most important markets in Europe. Thus, according to data from the Spanish Video Game Association (AEVI), in 2022 the distribution and consumption sector in our country had a turnover of more than 2,000 million euros and 7.1 million video games, 842,000 video game consoles and 3.11 million accessories.
Within this European context, Madrid has been the driving force of the sector in Spain for four decades, cradle of the greatest successes in video games since the 80s and responsible for one of the most successful franchises of all time, Commandos. /
The post first appeared on www.madrid.es