Bayreuth games accelerator takes participants further

In Zapf Building 4, in the rooms of Media Studies, many young people are on the move - even though there are no lectures. Again and again, individuals scurry out of one of the rooms, and others rush in. There is a lot going on, but nevertheless the atmosphere is calm, everyone seems concentrated.

This Tuesday is play-testing day at the Bayreuth Games Accelerator. 13 testers are there to test six of the games that the jury has admitted to the Bayreuth Games Accelerator. Robin Hädicke is responsible for coordinating the testers on this day. He is a research assistant at the Chair of Applied Media Studies Digital Media and a coach of the Game Innovation Lab. "The teams and also we have a lot to do today. Everyone is testing their games at the same time all over the building. But it's worth it. It is crucial for game development to see again and again how people feel and think in the process," he says.

And Anika Eichhorn, alumna of the university of Bayreuth, can only agree with this statement. She has been self-employed as a software developer since 2017. She founded the company codepixie while she was still studying for her master's degree in Computer Game Science. "Game development is so varied," Anika enthuses. Although she still works as an employed programmer on the side, she has never wanted to give up game development. "Being able to realise your own ideas was, after all, what drove her to do the degree."

She came to the Bayreuth Games Accelerator quite by chance. "I was really lucky to have seen the call for applications at all," she says. And she is not wrong. "We organised and marketed this pilot project in a very short period of time," says David Eder, project manager of the Bayreuth Games Accelerator. "We were aware from the beginning that we would learn a lot in a very short time in order to be able to design future programmes even more precisely. The participants are already giving us very good feedback." The funding commitment was made at the beginning of December, the application phase ran until mid-January and 15 people from seven selected teams met at the end of February. The list of games start-ups that have been accepted into the programme can be found on the project homepage: https://www.iei.uni-bayreuth.de/de/Bayreuth-Games-Accelerator/index.html.

Anika Eichhorn was selected for Accelerator with her game "Trails". "It's a chess-like game," she explains. "Trails is about paths and not tracks." It is a "one-woman business". Unlike other games that have made it to Bayreuth Games Accelerator, here there is only one person behind both sides, storytelling and programming. She has now spent half a year intensively working on Trails. "Until I had acceptance for Games Accelerator, I had no publishing goal. Games Accelerator has now given me the impetus to continue working in a very focused way." Now Anika Eichhorn's goal is set:Tthe first part of her game is to be launched next year. "It's only since I've been here that I've also given serious thought on how to publish it."

And that is also part of what makes the Bayreuth Games Accelerator work. "The programme is designed to take the game projects a big step further," says David Eder. That's why various inputs from experts, mostly from the games industry, were explicitly sought. A total of eight workshops were offered to the participants. One of them was on marketing and internationalisation from the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bayreuth. But the topic of networking is also enormously important. Because the further development of the games is only one part of the Accelerator.

"Bayreuth Games Accelerator has given me a lot of personal impetus helping me progress as a developer," says Anika Eichhorn. "I was able to take a lot with me in terms of game technology. Interhange with experts and like-minded people is otherwise not always so easy for me." She came here with the aim of completing her 2D prototype. Whether that will work out, is not clear to her yet. "If I had known how much programming and communication I would be facing here, I might have set the bar a bit lower," she adds with a laugh. "But I am completely positively surprised."