Crowds flock to first Gamescom since 2019

The world's largest video games trade fair, Gamescom, opens this week in Cologne. 

Unlike in 2020 and 2021, when the event went fully online because of the coronavirus pandemic, visitors are again invited to the trade fair center in the city known as the Koelnmesse. 

The festivities kicked off late Tuesday, with the "Opening Night Live" show, which included details about forthcoming gaming titles including Dead Island 2, Hogwarts Legacy and Return to Monkey Island. 

Wednesday was the opening day for media and industry representatives to tour the massive exhibition. 

The event will be open to the general public from Thursday until Sunday. 

Going by the pre-pandemic attendance figures, Gamescom was the video games event with the largest floor space and largest number of visitors on the planet.

Organizers expect to shift fewer tickets this year than in their heyday, when as many as 370,000 people attended. 

This year's Gamescom will also boast fewer exhibitors, after major companies such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Nintendo and Activision Blizzard elected not to come. 

According to Gamescom, roughly 1,100 exhibitors from 53 countries will be showcasing their wares. 

Growing, aging market, now with more disposable income

The event has coincided with the almost-annual appeal from German representatives of the industry for government and politics to take games more seriously, and to invest more. 

Video games' significance and market share has been snowballing in recent years and decades. In 2021, the industry's revenues outstripped those of Hollywood and the music industry combined. Games are also increasingly setting cultural trends rather than following them.

Instead of games based on films, TV shows or books, often it's video games that end up popularized as other forms of entertainment — perhaps most famously in the case of the Polish novels that later became computer games and then finally became the hit Netflix series "The Witcher."

As recently as three decades ago, with the industry still trying to break into the mainstream, many video games players were children without their own incomes. An adult generation of gamers with financial independence has gradually emerged. The pandemic's long periods of isolation also helped adults who had previously not played computer games to start exploring the medium. 

Calls for more government engagement

Felix Falk, the chief executive of the German Games Industry Association — also known simply as Game — told the German news agency KNA this week that politics should play closer attention to gaming, saying there was both broad social acceptance and great financial potential. 

Germany has tended to be a more successful market for the games industry than a contributor.

The first steps in this direction came at Gamescom in 2020, when then Transport and Digital Infrastructure Minister Andreas Scheuer pledged a first package of spending to develop the games industry worth about €50 million. 

Falk said the first positive signs from this were visible. But he said there was still more to do, particularly when it came to recruiting and education. 

"The labor market situation is stressed. Considering the falling numbers of young people each year, the battle for talent will be even tougher in the coming years," Falk told KNA. "Therefore, alongside a good training culture, which certainly should be strengthened still further, a simpler hiring process for skilled workers from abroad will play an important role, and politicians should look more closely into that."

Falk also recommended more investment in so-called esports: competitive gaming events designed to attract a viewing audience. 

He said Germany's relationship with the sector got off to a slow start — with games first barely recognized, then with a political discussion polluted by years of debates over "killer games" and fears of their impact on younger players — but argued that these times were now passed. 

"Today games are seen as what they are: cultural assets, an economic impact and a driver of innovation with enormous potential," Falk said, potentially hinting that he's not sure that the Transport Ministry is the ideal part of government to look after it, as he cited three areas not under its remit.

msh/jcg (AFP, dpa, KNA)