Thirty two years on since the release of Guildford’s first original videogame, Fusion, Enterprise M3 LEP launch a brand-new website today for what has become an internationally renowned games cluster.
The launch at the Guildford Games Festival will help the website reach a record online audience through its broadcast on a dedicated Steam page for Guildford – this is a UK first organised by Enterprise M3 in partnership with Fireblade Software.
Learn more about the Guildford Steam page in our recent blog.
The new Guildford.Games website and Steam page represent the start of a new chapter for Guildford’s games industry as they present together, for the first time, a selection of the town’s constituent games and game developers, past and present. Steam is the worlds largest digital distribution platform for PC games with up to 21 million concurrent users online and engaging with the store front at any moment.
After organising Guildford’s new collective presence on the platform, Enterprise M3 Games Sector Specialist Sam Read said;
"It feels very appropriate that Guildford should be the first UK games cluster with a dedicated presence on Steam, as the first third-party game ever distributed on the platform was made in Guildford and published there in 2005. We will be sharing that story in more detail, along with many others, through Guildford Games Festival on November 13th and 14th. With the Festival being broadcast on the new Steam page, it’s fun to see things come full circle."
While the Games Festival is just a two day event, the high-quality video content produced for its schedule will stay on the new Guildford.Games website as a useful tool for marketing the cluster to the world in future.
Sam Read said of the website;
"I grew up in this area and back then, I had no idea that the games I loved most were made in Guildford. For that reason and many others, I have always believed that through coming together and better representing itself as a whole, Guildford’s games industry would become even more successful than it might otherwise. I’m excited to prove that theory through my work on the website, steam page and games festival."
Besides fostering greater collaboration within the cluster, Enterprise M3 are helping to land foreign direct investment opportunities for the region in collaboration with the Department for International Trade. In 2020 Enterprise M3 presented the region as an area of High Potential Opportunity to trade and investment staff at UK embassies around the world. Sam believes that the cluster website and games festival are set to compliment this work further.
"DIT have provided us with a great platform for the promotion of our local sector strengths through their High Potential Opportunity programme, which is promoting Guildford and its strength in creative technologies to potential international investors. After presenting our region to British Embassies earlier this year, EM3 are now promoting the games festival to the same audience as a great way for their investment partners to experience the best of the UK’s games industry.
In the past when I have had the opportunity to promote our sector, there has been a lack of material to share with the audience afterwards. The Guildford.Games website will make it far easier for any interested parties to understand why they should invest in the UK."
For more information about Enterprise M3 LEP, visit their profile in the ecosystem area.