Gamescom 2022: Can Germany level up its gaming industry?

I press X and we’re off. The train picks up speed as we pull away from the platform on Hamburg’s elevated U-3 rail line. From the driver’s compartment, I see the track come at me, curving to the right, then the left. Before long we’re pulling into the next platform, the end of the line. We stop and the game prompts me to disembark. I press another key; the compartment door slides open. Time to make my way down the platform, to the driver’s compartment at the other end, and get this train back to where we started.  

SubwaySim Hamburg is just one of several simulation games from German game publisher Aerosoft GmbH on display this week at Gamescom 2022. The annual gaming trade fair, hosted in Cologne, in western Germany, is the world’s largest event for video and computer games. More than 500 international companies signed up to take part. During the five-day event, thousands of gaming fans and professionals gather for previews of such highly anticipated games as Sonic Frontiers from Sega and Warner Bros.’ “Hogwarts Legacy.”

Over 500 international companies signed up to attend the 2022 Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany

A flare for realistic games

Not much of a gamer myself, I’m drawn to the smaller Aerosoft stand, where I can play at being a heavy cargo truck driver, a cop monitoring Germany’s notoriously fast autobahn or even a commuter driving through realistic traffic conditions in any major German city. For every kind of bus — city, long-distance, tourist — Aerosoft has a simulation. There’s even a football team bus extension, with challenges that include keeping the bus bathroom clean.

I’m intrigued, but also perplexed. Are these hyperrealistic simulations meant for training purposes? Or are they actually supposed to be fun?

Both, an Aerosoft employee tells me. The games help new drivers learn routes and traffic laws, and they also help acquaint people with driving larger vehicles.

But many people just like them. A lot of bus drivers like to play the bus driver game when their shift is over, she says.

“It’s very German,” she says, laughing.

Only about 5% of all gaming sales generated in Germany are from German companies

Germany among top gaming countries

Germans do like to game. Germany is the most important European sales market for digital games and the fifth-strongest worldwide, according to a report from the Digital and Transport Ministry.

But, despite Germany’s love for the pastime, the developing and publishing industry at home has remained niche. Though there are nearly 600 game developer studios in Germany, only 7% have more than 25 employees. Overall, only about 5% of all sales generated in Germany are by German companies, according to the ministry’s figures.

German gaming companies and associations at this year’s Gamescom are hoping that will change. They’re here promoting their work and arguing that Germany could be home to the next digital gold rush.

Employees at Zeitland, a game developer based in Ludwigsburg in Baden-Württemberg, walk me through Black Castle, a game they’re developing about a journalist (I’m intrigued) on a time-hopping adventure through a spooky castle.

“Fun fact: Germany has the most castles in the whole world,” CEO Beren Baumgartner says. “So this is naturally something that we wanted to pick up on in the creative process.”

Asked whether German gaming has an identity of its own, Baumgartner’s thoughts go first to a sister industry: board games.

“‘German board game,’ that’s a quality seal right there,” he says. “But we don’t have that so much for digital because we don’t get digital right.”

• Video games set in Germany

  Trüberbrook (2019)

  The game Trüberbrook, produced by the small btf studio in Cologne, is set in rural Germany in the 1960s. Tannhauser, a student from the US, lands in a village called Trüberbrook, where he experiences a series of mysterious events. The game doesn’t skimp on references to German cultural history, including Goethe’s Gretchen.

• Video games set in Germany

  Through the Darkest of Times (2019)

  Berlin, 1933. Resistance fighters are plotting against the Nazis. Despite its simple visual style, the strategy game Through the Darkest of Times is an engaging one, as a player’s decisions truly influence the story. The group of partisans is fictitious, but everything else in the game is inspired by actual events during the Third Reich.

• Video games set in Germany

  All Walls Must Fall (2018)

  The secret agent thriller All Walls Must Fall takes place in an alternate future version of Berlin. The year is 2089, but the Cold War never ended. The player is a spy trying to prevent a nuclear attack while flirting his way through the booming techno beats of Berlin’s club scene. Despite the compelling setting, the game wasn’t a hit. Consequently, the small studio inbetweengames had to close.

• Video games set in Germany

  Call of Duty: WWII (2017)

  War games are a genre of their own; World War I and II are particularly popular among game developers. In Call of Duty: WWII, a player can for instance wander through the city of Aachen and fight the Nazis. The Holocaust is usually not part of the narrative of shooter games like this. The point is rather to offer quick action, with clear identification of friend and foe.

• Video games set in Germany

  Emergency 2017 (2016)

  The Emergency series has existed since 1998. In these rescue simulation games, the player sends firefighters, paramedics and police in reaction to the something happening on the scene, whether in Cologne, Munich, Berlin or Hamburg. For instance, here someone is lying unconscious near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate while fireworks mark the New Year.

• Video games set in Germany

  No One Lives Forever (2000)

  James Bond could have been the godfather of the first-person shooter game No One Lives Forever, set in the 60s. The player takes on the role of secret agent Cate Archer, whose assignment is to infiltrate a terrorist organization. To do that, she travels through Germany, including East Berlin, Hamburg, the North Sea and the Alps.

• Video games set in Germany

  Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (1995)

  With werewolves on the loose and enigmatic murders taking place, a small town in Bavaria is in turmoil. The mystery writer Gabriel Knight is called in for help and investigates in localities including Munich, Neuschwanstein Castle, Altötting and the Bavarian forest. The adventure game was released by the now defunct US game developer Sierra On-Line.

  Author: Kristina Reymann-Schneider (eg)

Gaming fills a much-needed gap

Poor internet connectivity and a slow uptake of digital tools are common complaints in Germany, where people are particularly concerned about data security.

The issue is also important to Jan-Eric Wörheide, co-managing director of lodomo, a Wuppertal-based app developer that caterd to retirement homes.

On the screen of a tablet, the company’s customizable app depicts a multiroom home filled with household objects. Each object can be linked to a digital system or type of content: Clicking on the TV could load the daily news program. Clicking on the desk might open your calendar. The idea is to make it easier for older people to use digital tools all on their own.

Germany’s population is aging rapidly; according to government data, the number of people aged 67 or over will rise by 22%from 2020 to 2035. Using digitalization to help fill gaps left by a lack of care workers is an oft-discussed topic in the country.

“Our product is essentially a bridge between seniors and the digital world,” Wörheide tells me. “And, logically, the digital world is going to include games.”

Germans aren’t ‘just engineers’

Apps like lodomo highlight how gaming is no longer just for gamers; it’s becoming an ever greater part of everyday life. Throughout the day, talks with industry insiders come back to the same pain points digital companies in Germany have complained about for years: difficulties attracting senior talent, who are often found abroad; the red tape involved in securing funding, which is often project based, making it difficult to invest in technology; and, in general, the idea that Germany can’t compete in this field.

“We have to get rid of the German engineer,” Zeitland’s Baumgartner jokes. “We’re good engineers, but we’re not just engineers. We can be creative as well.”

Gamers in Germany are big fans of simulation games, according to the Digital and Transport Ministry

To end the day, I circle back to another simulation. Stepping around yellow crime-scene tape and an orange cone, I’m ushered by a man dressed as a police officer to a row of computers. Soon I’m standing inside a police station, where I try out a few commands.

I immediately lose points for performing an unnecessary body search. The game sends me out to issue parking tickets, but I ignore the prompt and instead climb in a police car, throwing on the siren and flashing lights. I quit the game after I crash trying to leave the parking lot. I’ve always preferred the train anyway.

Edited by: Hardy Graupner

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/gamescom-2022-can-germany-level-up-its-gaming-industry/a-62936851?maca=en-rss-en-bus-2091-xml-atom