Seen in Geeko/Le Soir: "The Belgian video game industry is booming".

Geeko / Le Soir report on Belgians at the gamescomThis article looks back at the figures for the Belgian industry in 2022 unveiled at the Belgian Games Café on Wednesday.

To remember:

Belgium is the country of VR games dixit Guillaume Bouckaert from games.brussels, with whom we wholeheartedly agree. Presented for the first time at Gamescom, Christophe VigoCreative's Thor game, as well as a VR game based on the Smurfs universe, was part of the delegation. Walloon region. Myron Games was also present, and after the huge success of Deisim, it was able to hire a dozen or so people to work on its next project for Meta. Several other Walloon studios are currently developing new concepts for VR location-based games and gamified immersive experiences, so stay tuned!

Read the reviews of Jean-Michel Vilan from Abrakam and Boby Tam from Wild bishoptwo medium-sized Liège-based studios with promising projects also present at Gamescom on the Belgian Games stand.

The talent drain remains a problem, but also demonstrates the quality of our training, which is the envy of other regions and countries. The situation is changing with the extension of the Tax Shelter to video games, enabling established studios to benefit from production support and thus create more local jobs. The problem of experienced profiles is global, and we need to invest in the acquisition of experience by multiplying small, short projects, and in training, including the new Master's degree from the Hautes Ecoles Albert Jacquard, HEH and Condorcet.

And let's not forget the role played by the industry associations grouped under Belgian Games (FLEGA vzwgames.brussel and WALGA) has enabled studios to benefit from the Tax Shelter since January 1, but also to structure the ecosystem with, for example, the opening of specialized coworking spaces accessible to start-ups in Brussels and soon in Wallonia. In Flanders, the strategy is different, with the creation of Flanders Game Hub, which acts as an incubator, but with the same aim: to create more solid independent studios.

A studio employing several hundred people in Belgium won't be created overnight, Appeal Studios in Charleroi, with two major releases expected in the coming months, and with investments by the publisher THQNordic is the ideal candidate. But it's better to aim for the creation of a dozen studios of 20 to 30 people in Wallonia, with all the skills needed to produce indie hits, than to aim for a single large studio.

In a balanced ecosystem, diversity is needed to create resilience, and Wallonia and Belgium are well on the way to achieving this.

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