Berlin, 20 November, 2018 – Exciting prospects: gamesweekberlin is being restructured. This will see the Berlin-based event specialist Booster Space extending its portfolio and acquiring QUO VADIS – create.game.business. Steeped in tradition, the most important German conference for game developers has previously been owned by Aruba Events GmbH, a subsidiary of Computec Media GmbH. Aruba Events has ceded the brand of QUO VADIS and all the associated rights to Booster Space with immediate effect.
Booster Space founder and managing director Michael Liebe: ¨The acquisition is an important step to consolidating and further expanding the relevance of gamesweekberlin as Europe’s leading platform for the combination of the games industry, technology and culture. The acquisition of QUO VADIS is another strategic milestone for Booster Space and gamesweekberlin. 2018 had already seen the expansion merging of various gamesweekberlin events in a central location become a major success. We are pleased to now continue QUO VADIS as the centrepiece of gamesweekberlin and as a central communication platform for developers and professional delegates as well as being able to develop new ideas, perspectives and plans for future operations.”
gamesweekberlin along with its partner events will increasingly be able to benefit from the synergies in this new structure. As a consequence, in future, the week’s central events – these are the inspiring Womenize! and the family-friendly Gamefest in addition to the business event – will be organised by the same team at one location. This will also lead to greater efficiency in the collaboration with the A MAZE. / Berlin Festival and the Matchmaking Dinner. Existing partnerships such as those with game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche e.V. or games:net berlinbrandenburg, wIll be continued.
QUO VADIS will be gradually modified as part of the consolidation process: forward-looking trends in the sector will basically remain the most important components of this event. In order to make the participants’ experience in Berlin even more profitable, the topics will be offered in compact modules to specific target groups.
The thematic focuses in 2019 will centre on mobile games development, monetisation and publishing, community management and live operations as well as on production financing and distribution. Further topics are to be identifed in tandem with the developer community. Well established formats of QUO VADIS such as the business networking system of MeetToMatch and the exhibition will carry on the tradition.
QUO VADIS was founded in Oberhausen in 2003 by Aruba Events (known at the time as Aruba Studios) and is thus the longest-standing European conference for games developers. In 2007, the event moved to Berlin. This subsequently resulted in the launching of the German Games Days (Deutsche Gamestage) at the initiative of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. In the intervening years, attendance at QUO VADIS grew from 500 participants to around 3,000 in 2013. In the following year, Booster Space – which had been established in 2013 – founded the umbrella brand of the ¨International Games Week Berlin¨ under whose auspices QUO VADIS became significantly more international and featured as the main event of the new week of events along with A MAZE. / Berlin, the Gamefest at the Computer Games Museum, and the Matchmaking Dinner.
Booster Space has since rebranded the International Games Week Berlin as gamesweekberlin and created the platform for new talents, Womenize! Games and Tech, and the Game Cinema programme of events. In collaboration with Virtual Reality e.V. Berlin Brandenburg, Booster Space established the VR professional event of VR NOW Con & Awards, organised the gamescom congress for game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche and the Koelnmesse, and ran the Intel Buzz programme of workshops in Germany and Poland. Booster Space is the developer and publisher of the DUEL VR computer game.
The QUO VADIS – create.game.business conference underpins the goal of Booster Space to connect technology, business and culture together with events and consultancy services.
“Organising and expanding this year’s QUO VADIS with a new team was an exciting challenge which we were happy to master,¨ say the two project managers Dirk Gooding and Simon Fistrich from Computec Media. “We are convinced that, by passing the brand on to Michael Liebe and his fantastic team, we are putting QUO VADIS into experienced hands to see the conference being developed even further. We wish Booster Space lots of success with this!“
Felix Falk, managing director of game – the German Games Industry Association: ¨The gamesweekberlin is one of the leading events of the games industry in Germany and is noticed beyond the capital. The concentration of many individual events in one place and the future development of QUO VADIS are precisely the right step. This means that gamesweekberlin will continue to serve as the perfect stage every two years for the presentation of the German Computer Game Awards. Both events jointly increase the interest in games and their development in Germany and are therefore one of the most important events for media to report about computer and video games far outside the usual confines of the trade press. We wish the team of Booster Space lots of success.¨
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg is funding gamesweekberlin as well as many other events such as A MAZE./Berlin, Deutscher Computerspielpreis and Quo Vadis.
Helge Jürgens, managing director Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg: Medienboard has been supporting gamesweekberlin from the very beginning and we are proud that it has become one of the most important national and international events for the games industry. We welcome QUO VADIS remaining an integral part of gamesweekberlin thanks to the acquisition by Booster Space and are looking forward to a successful future of the conference!“
