After three months of hard work, the F2P Campus has put the finishing touch on its first edition with a Demo Day and closing ceremony full of surprises and activities. The celebration, which included representatives from the institutions involved, partners, mentors and investors, took place in the Artium Museum, where people could try out the six games of the participating teams as well as enjoying a very interesting round table on the creation of videogames, and a concert by the band Los Vinagres.
“We’re very pleased with the development of F2P Campus Vitoria-Gasteiz. All the professionals from the sector who have been here have congratulated us on this pioneering, global-level initiative. Moreover, all the participating teams have done a magnificent job, taking full advantage of the different sessions they’ve had with all the mentors”, say Jon Beltrán de Heredia and Raúl Herrero, codirectors of the campus.
Good evidence of this comes in the form of the impressive advances that the six participating teams have achieved in their respective games: GiantFox with Rise Of Titans, Etorki Games with Evil Nun, Garage51 with Demon Blade, Cogoo with Oh My Princess, Hypeful with BigBox and Vectormonk with Dungeon Card Hero.
The impact of the campus and the advice of the 18 international experts such as Kim Krogh (King, Candy Crush), Stephane Assadourian (Assasin’s Creed), Eugene Yailenko (Zeptolab, Cut the Rope 2) and Amir Rajan (A Dark Room), who have participated as mentors, has been substantial in all of them, affecting areas as diverse as monetization, game mechanics design, production planning, art, marketing, communication and accessibility.
A screenshot of Oh My Princess, from Cogoo, with the ‘Monument to the Battle of Vitoria’ on it.
Even the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz itself, and the Basque Country, have served as inspiration to teams like Cogoo who have decided to include the ‘Monument to the Battle of Vitoria’, the ‘Tree of Guernica’ and San Sebastian cathedral in their game. In fact, the characteristics and possibilities that the city offers have prompted two of the teams to consider staying there to continue with the development of their projects.
In addition to the game demonstration points, Demo Day attendees were able to enjoy an extremely interesting round table on the videogame industry and its economic and employment potential. In it, Marisol López, Director of the Area of Digital Culture in the Government of Catalonia’s Institute of Cultural Businesses; Sabin Gotia, Advisor for Cultural and Recreational Industries in the Basque Government’s Department of Culture; two of the F2P Campus mentors, Nacho Pintos and Jon Aristi; and a representative of the six participating teams, José Luis Jurado; shared their different points of view.
Finally, Canarian group Los Vinagres rounded off the closing ceremony with a rock concert.