Yorkshire has got an incredible number of games businesses within it. It’s got great talent, it’s got great opportunity, and so it’s fantastic to be able to pilot the programme there.”
SCREEN PLAY With Powell being a foremost experience in TV and film production, it’s tempting to look for parallels between non-interactive and interactive mediums, to perhaps look for differences of approach between the two entertainment sectors. But for Powell, there is far more that unites than divides TV and gaming, at least when it comes to supporting creative development. “What’s more important is the learning from running
accelerators for the last seven years, and what creates a great accelerator and how that accelerator creates significant growth; personally for the entrepreneurs and the people that are running the businesses, but also commercially within those businesses. “The most important thing is that the accelerators
that we deliver are fully populated by experts and thought leaders. That’s the way that we operate. The TV programmes that we run are populated by the leading thinkers in the TV sector, and so it is the case on the games side of things. So the programme that we’re running at the moment in West Yorkshire is populated by 50-plus incredible speakers and trainers and facilitators from the games industry. That, for me, is the best way to be able to bring real value to studios, not for it to be in the hands of one person or one point of view, but to be able to present many, many varied perspectives. So that we can help empower game studios to really define their version of success and their version of growth, through hearing from industry leaders so that they can weigh up what’s their best growth strategy and way forward.”
DIVERSE As well as fostering creativity and financial success within the businesses it hopes to support, Indielab Games is focused on inclusivity and diversity as the primary means to broaden perspectives within organisations, to make them more forward thinking. It’s not so much a criteria for those looking to join a programme that they embrace diversity, rather more that it’s a criteria for Indielab to pursue when establishing the programme itself. “We are making sure that everything that we do
enables founders from diverse communities to find our programmes, to get to know and understand what we have to offer to them.” Powell is keen to make sure that finding and joining Indielab’s programmes is simple and transparent, but also that Indie is seen to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to diversity and inclusion: “It’s about making sure that we work really hard to invite diverse communities
into every aspect of what we do, and have that inclusion alongside commerciality. Those two things work more hand in hand now than they ever have been, and rightly so.” While of course the criteria for each accelerator
programme will be different, Powell is hoping to see some measure of success among applicants, either evidence of a released game, or having worked on a successful title for another organisation. More importantly, however, is an abundance of ambition when it comes to growth and understanding. Thankfully, according to Indielab’s founder, these are qualities that tend to show themselves when looking through applications.
ENTHUSIASM ABOUNDS Clearly it hasn’t been an issue to find enthusiastic businesses to help, but what about the all-important mentors to experts to help guide those businesses? One would expect that being relatively new to the games industry, Indielab might have some difficulty, but that seems not to have been the case. Established organisations and individuals are only too happy to collaborate. “As with all of our programmes, we find that people,
when they’ve got to a certain stage in their career and have developed significant insight into the sector, are usually very keen to be able to share that with up and coming talent, which is great. Everybody really benefits from that. It’s a very virtuous circle that I think speakers that come on the programme also get a huge amount out of as well. They really enjoy and benefit from engaging with up-and-coming and enthusiastic talent, and diverse talent too. At the time of writing, Indielab Games had yet to
announce when and where its next accelerator will be focused, only that it the organisation will be targeting its efforts and support where needed, rather than ticking off locations on a map. “Over the last couple of years,
our primary job has been to go round and meet and understand the needs of the sector, across the UK, but also, the specific needs in particular regions and nations. That’s been a really, really important part of this process. There’s been about two years of build up work to really understand the particular needs of individual studios, and speaking to lots of studios. That picture can look quite different depending on where you are in the country. And so we’re taking that into account.”
June 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
