As we've discovered this week, one of Cologne's big selling points for devs based in the area is AV-Gründerzentrum.
Funded by the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) regional government, AV-Gründerzentrum provides one year training programmes and free investment to up and coming media businesses in the city.
As more new games studios spring up in Cologne, the organisation has adapted to make sure local businesses have a fighting chance to compete with others from across Germany.
We spoke to Joachim Ortmanns, the managing director of AV-Gründerzentrum, to find out why his organisation is playing a vital role in lifting Cologne's .
Local pride
"The whole market is growing very quickly and different media regions are in competition to settle the companies," says Ortmanns.
In order to attract as many entrepreneurs as possible to this part of Germany, Ortmanns and his team have deemed Cologne the most important city in the region, enabling them to concentrate on raising Cologne's profile.
Joachim Ortmanns
"The North Rhine-Westphalia has different media regions, but Cologne is the most important one," Ortmanns tells us.
"NRW has a variety of media schools and supports in different cities, for example, Cologne Game Lab, Game Development Initiative GDI in Mülheim, Media-Design Hochschule in Düsseldorf and Spieleentwicklertreff also in Düsseldorf."
Despite all of the education and support available in Cologne and the surrounding cities, games companies are still not as well funded as they need to be - perhaps due to competition for investment from the city's well established TV and film industry.
Indeed, Ortmanns admits that the strength of firms working within the media is the biggest of the three main challenges facing the games industry in NRW.
"They need to get investment money, to find the right publisher, and to get support for the business skills, which are mostly not part of the professional education," he claims.
Competition
AV-Gründerzentrum aims to solve these problems for each of the studios it works with, but its approach is surprisingly not tailored or adapted to the needs of each individual company.
Ortmanns argues that all games companies in Cologne require the same training and also admits that there is a debate going on to decide whether to offer game studios the same support strategy that film studios receive.
"The possibility of public funding is quite new and is part of a big discussion whether games need similar support as the more cultural accepted 'old' film industry," says Ortmanns.
For the games companies, sharing the same business training as movie and TV firms might help them to learn to work together more easily creating the kind of transmedia projects that some studios, such as Nurogames, believe serve as the biggest opportunity for developers operating in the area.
"Our support includes different company profiles such as film, TV, new media, and games," Ortmanns tells us.
"Besides individual support, part of our goal is 'to live convergence', which means to look across the borders, find new models of co-operation and inspire new business fields between and for our companies."
Government awareness
Ortmanns is clearly gunning to make sure Cologne and its surrounding area is competitive within the rest of Germany and competition is rife.
But if the country's regional governments and institutions are fighting amongst themselves, what's the national government doing? Does Germany as a whole have any interest in lifting the games industry?
"Yes, but the awareness is mostly behind the actual development," claims Ortmanns.
"Support is very often separated between national activities and these of the federal states like NRW."
So with the German government aware of (but not necessarily taking interest) in the games industry, some might speculate that Germany and, more specifically, Cologne is an odd place to host one of the worlds largest games conventions, Gamescom.
AV-Gründerzentrum, however, is happy to be involved.
"We are part of a common stand in the business area [at Gamescom]," says Ortmanns.
"There we give all kinds of information about our program, speak with potential applicants and offer our game companies and our alumni companies space for meetings and business activities."
If you're lucky enough to be attending Gamescom next week, feel free to drop by AV-Gründerzentrum's stand. Maybe you'll even find yourself opening up a studio in Cologne as a result.
