Global Gaming

A flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town takes a good two hours. A train ride? At least 27 hours, without air conditioning. This is part of the concept of the "Train Jam" supported by the Goethe-Institut, which connects game design students and game designers.

The continent of creativity: Enter Africa, a network project by the Goethe-Institut in 15 African countries, presented the mega-game Busara for the first time in the Indie Arena Booth at gamescom 2019.

Very few computer games explicitly deal with current politics, but this in no way means the gaming world is apolitical. 

Hamburg’s gamer scene is simmering, and with her Studio Osmotic Mel Taylor provides an important ingredient. The game "Orwell" has garnered awards in Germany and is also gaining fans internationally.

Riad Djemili left one of Germany’s top studios to co-develop a digital board game together with a friend. "The Curious Expedition" was a surprise hit. Now there is a sequel.

We shape experiences and adventures – both digital and analog. Through our games, users can learn English, they can piece together German history, they can understand how it feels like to be a stranger or how one can stay fit through the help of a pizza box ...

More and more people are playing them, more and more are buying them: computer games, it is said, have become the new guiding medium. But do we even know exactly what we are talking about when we talk about digital games?

Games are a fundamental factor in the development of (human) culture, says cultural historian Johan Huizinga in his 1938 book Homo Ludens. He shows how centuries ago, cultural systems have developed from playful modes of behavior

The market for computer games outstripped over the last year even the good old moving pictures. But the commercial success of new media is usually followed by artistic reflection, artistic derision and artistic refinement.

In Germany Game Jams are becoming more and more popular – within the space of a few hours the participants develop computer games that really work – and learn a lot about team work.

Free-lance gaming journalist and game developer Nina Kiel has been dealing with the gender issue in games for years. In her book "Gender in Games" she has investigated gender-specific role models in contemporary titles.

Without a budget of millions and the backing of a major publisher, no video game can be a success. Those days are over. Today independent developers are stirring up the market with small, fine games.

Games enable people to immerse themselves in a culture and to experience history hands-on, says Thorsten Unger, CEO of the Bundesverband der deutschen Games-Branche.

Since few things are as motivating as games, game mechanisms are being increasingly integrated into systems with which they otherwise have nothing to do. Earning points is part of everyday life.

Games promote intelligence and numerous skills. There now exist many relevant studies that confirm the positive effect of digital games.