Tag Archives: Jaspal Sohal

Train2Game News Free Developer Workshops

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Creative England announces FREE marketing workshops for South West and West Midlands SME games businesses, run in partnership with Ukie.

Creative England has joined forces with Ukie, the trade body that aims to support, grow and promote the UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry, to deliver a series of free marketing training workshops.

The workshops are open to SME games businesses based in the South West and the West Midlands and are fully subsidised by the Creative England GamesLab programme.

The courses, running in Bristol and Leamington Spa, will cover:

·         Marketing for games: What it does and how to use it to improve profits

·         Strategic marketing planning: A decision-making process for generating a strategic change perspective. What it is and how it relates to business planning

·         Marketing auditing: Macro, micro and internal analysis, key issue analysis and market segmentation

·         Marketing Communications: A solid grounding in the tools, techniques and approaches used in professional marcomms

·         Metrics: How to measure marketing and business performance including return on investment measurement.

Jaspal Sohal, Head of Games and Digital at Creative England said: “Creative England’s GamesLab programme seeks to discover and nurture our flourishing regional games industry. Through this partnership with Ukie we are able to provide these innovative developers with the necessary tools they need to get their games noticed in a competitive industry.”

CEO of Ukie, Dr Jo Twist said: “In our sector making a game is only half the battle. The other half is marketing and getting noticed in crowded marketplaces. It’s fantastic that these courses can be offered for free thanks to Creative England’s support. They will help give SMEs a better understanding of the kind of strategies they need. As we know, compared to other creative industries, we have strong clusters of games businesses right across the UK. The more courses and help that the GamesLab programme can offer outside London, the better.”

The courses will run on 24th March in Leamington Spa and 10th April in Bristol. If you are interested in attending, please check qualifying criteria and registration information on our website here:
http://ukie.org.uk/event/2015/03/24/marketing-workshop
http://ukie.org.uk/event/2015/04/10/marketing-workshop
The courses are funded by the European Regional Development Fund, supported by the Regional Growth Fund and led by Creative England.

Train2Game News Queen of Code Funding

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Female game developers and creators from across England have launched individual Crowdfunder projects to gain funding to make their great ideas a reality as part of Creative England’s Queen of Code campaign.

Jaspal Sohal, Head of Games & Digital at Creative England, said: “England’s creative industries are some of the best in the world, and we work to nurture this exciting home grown talent. Our partnership with Crowdfunder reflects this with initiatives such as Queen of Code taking centre stage.

“A widely reported 49% of gamers in the UK are women but only 12% of people making games are female. With this partnership we aim to put the spotlight on the creative talent of the female counterpart of the industry.

“We are incredibly impressed with the breadth of expertise shown by the Queen of Code campaigns, and this is really exciting for the games industry as a whole.”

Phil Geraghty, MD of Crowdfunder said: “We are delighted with the response Queen Of Code has received and the wealth of talent that has emerged from female game developers in England.

“Creative England has shown real innovation by embracing crowdfunding to distribute funds and reach out to new audiences. Queen of Code is a great example of how Crowdfunder is revolutionising fund allocation across the UK.”

The five projects to gain the most pledges and backers via their Crowdfunder campaigns will each receive £3k match funding from Creative England, a not-for-profit organisation investing and nurturing the country’s richly diverse games, TV, film and digital media industries.

It’s excellent to see deserving games designers get the recognition they deserve.

Train2Game News GreenShoots Funding

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CE_Primary_RGB_OBCreative England and Microsoft have announced that our highly popular Greenshoots programme is set to run for a second year and it’s bigger and better than ever before.

Speaking at EGX Creative England’s Head of Games & Digital Jaspal Sohal announced that the next round of the programme is now open, which offers £250k (up to £25k each) to 10 indie studios across England.

In a change to the first iteration of Greenshoots, investors and publishers are now involved from day one which means the supported studios have the potential to receive additional investment from the start of their project. Applicants can now also apply to develop for Xbox One with the programme no longer limited to tablet and mobile development.

The games from Greenshoots Round 1 ranged from underwater shoot ‘em ups and robot-infested puzzle games, to futuristic galaxy battles and crazy golf. All of the games, now released2, were showcased back in July to a crowd of industry experts and investors.

Jaspal Sohal, Head of Games & Digital at Creative England, said:

“Round 1 of Greenshoots proved to be a phenomenal success, helping 9 new indie studios to launch some amazing titles.

“This year the programme is an even better opportunity for burgeoning games studios; we have potential investors involved from the very start and Microsoft have extended the programme to include PC and Xbox One titles. Greenshoots Round 2 is a fantastic opportunity for any indie studio looking to develop their first IP.”

Andrew Webber, UK Microsoft Marketing Lead, said:

“At Microsoft we believe that a game developer’s success is our success. With the brilliant results from last year’s Greenshoots and the impact it has made on the participating studios, we are delighted to partner, once again, with Creative England. What’s particularly exciting this year is that Greenshoots has evolved to put the participants in front of more investors and publishers than ever before from day one.”

Paul Norris, of Greenshoots Round 1 support studio Mad Fellows, said:

“Applying to Greenshoots has been the single most important and productive decision we’ve made since founding Mad Fellows. Creative England and Microsoft have raised our profile as developers, given us access to funding and follow-on funding, introduced us to invaluable contacts, provided master classes and offered numerous opportunities to speak and present our game at high profile events.

“The Greenshoots programme has been pivotal in ensuring we made it through our first year as a company and has set us on a path for continued success in the future.”

The Greenshoots programme helps developers to kick-start development of new intellectual property (IP) and reach a global audience, plus they’ll receive support, mentorship and expertise from Microsoft and industry partners. While developing their title, Greenshoots encourages developers to push their game out across all platforms. The programme is designed to inject the business with funds for development and marketing and studios only pay back the investment when they’re making money from the game.

Applications close 9am on October 20th, 2014. To download a full set of guidelines click here and to apply Click Here.

Train2Game News Creative England offering investment

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Creative EnglandCreative England and SCEE have announced a new £250,000 fund to accelerate and incubate five UK games companies.

The organisation’s will invest £50,000 into each of the selected five developers to support the development of new titles for PS3, PS4 and PlayStation Vita. The studios will also receive business support, dev kits for the three PlayStation platforms and other technical and fringe benefits.

The partnership is part of a new incubator and accelerator programme called GamesLab Campus. Information on how to apply will be made available soon at www.creativeengland.co.uk/games.

The partnership was announced by SCEE’s senior account manager for publisher and developer relations Agostino Simonetta during the Develop Conference in Brighton today.

“We are delighted to work with Creative England on this program,” he said. “We believe this to be a great partnership and an opportunity to illustrate our continuous support and commitment to the independent development community.”

Jaspal Sohal, head of games and digital media at Creative England, added: “At Creative England, we are always looking to support new game development talent and opening doors to help ndie studios grow and achieve commercial success. It’s fantastic to have PlayStation on board and together we’ve designed GamesLab Campus to be a complete investment and support package.

“Whether you’re a start-up or an experienced developer, we’re looking for exciting and innovative projects to invest in.”