Mounting the banks of the Rhine in Germany's western fringe is the city of Cologne (or Köln if you're a local), known by those in the area as being a hive of culture – museums and galleries high in number.

The city also claims to have more pubs per person than any other in Germany, which is probably what many members of the Pocket Gamer team - and, indeed, our readers - will know it for.

From a games perspective, however, recent years have seen Cologne become a hot destination for the industry's leading lights. The city now plays host to Gamescom – first held in Leipzig before it outgrew its original venue – which, last year, saw 275,000 attendees roll into town.

So, what benefit has Europe's premier gaming event had on development in the city, and what role does Cologne play in Germany's mobile games scene?

Early days

The headline finding from our sweep of the city is that, while Cologne is undoubtedly something of a rising star, right now it plays hot just just a handful of developers.

At the moment, TV and film production companies dominate the creative industries operating within Cologne, with a lack of games education to blame for the slow growth the city has scene to date according to Nurogames co-founder Jens Piesk

"There is not such a big game developer community like in Hamburg or Berlin, so there is less networking and collaboration," says Piesk, whose studio has released around 40 games on iOS to date.

"Furthermore, there is no University offering education in game development. The Cologne Game Lab of the University of Applied Sciences is a great institution, but only offers postgraduate masters.

"They started four years ago and have got a great schedule and a very good team, but they should get more financial and political backing."

It's also Piesk's belief that, unlike other European development hotspots, there's no one game Cologne can pin its development scene on. In short, there's been no one big hit for the local industry to form around.

"The great success of big players in several cities triggered the creation of other developers too, for example Bigpoint in Hamburg," adds Piesk.

Next steps

So, is it all bad news?

RockAByte is another of Cologne's more successful mobile developers and made its name working on educational programmes and game projects for national banks, amongst others.

It's now working on a flood of new IP in the big to reach out to a more global audience.

Stefan Zingel, RockAByte's CEO, admits that Cologne's games industry has not hit the ground running, but is optimistic that the city still offers developers unique opportunities thanks to the flourish nature of the other creative industries operating in the city.

"Cologne's games dev industry is neither the biggest in Germany nor the most well connected and organised one, but in interweaving with Cologne's broad film and TV community arise new exciting opportunities in the field of transmedia," Zingel tells us.

"Taking into account that there is a high density of successful TV & movie producers in Cologne, there is a lot of potential to be commercialised."

Indeed, some developers within Cologne are already taking advantage of this 'transmedia' approach. Having set up shop just a few months ago, new studio The Good Evil is already working on one such project with one of Cologne's movie studios.

"There is an evolving development scene with things like the Cologne Independent Game Developers Network, events like Interactive Cologne and places like the [co-working place] Dingfabrik where people meet and just do stuff," says co-founder Marcus Bösch .

"With a strong games programme at the relatively new Cologne Game Lab and more young new companies like ours, things will get better. That is a promise."

Money matters

But where will the growth come from? One of the key factors could be the V-Gründerzentrum - the local region's (North Rhine-Westphalia) funding and training programme designed to support media companies.

The funding is free and the training support lasts for a full year.

"The whole market is growing very quickly and different media regions are in competition to settle the companies," says the programme's MD, Joachim Ortmanns.

"The North Rhine-Westphalia has different media regions but Cologne is the most important one."

Indeed, events like Gamescom – if Cologne can hold onto it – could have a role to play in the year's ahead if the city's already strong creative standing is to spread across to the games scene.

We'll be catching up with the city's finest throughout the rest of this week in the run up to Gamescom to get to grips with where games development stands in Cologne today, and just what can be achieved in the years ahead.