Four years in: How eGames Lab has helped Portugal’s games industry grow

Four years in, how has eGames Lab helped Portugal’s games industry grow?

In Funchal, the capital city of Madeira, a brand new home for the island’s small but growing games industry stands as a physical manifestation of all the hours, weeks and years of work put in by the eGames Lab team, in partnership with ACIF-CCIM, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Madeira.

The new games-focused hub is one of four being established under the guidance of eGames Lab, providing local start-ups and early-stage companies a space to work, collaborate, and learn. They are part of the ongoing transformation of Portugal’s video games sector from a fragmented collection of passionate indie developers into one of Europe’s most dynamic emerging game development hubs.

The PocketGamer.biz team sat down with Cláudio Telo Pestana, eGames Lab’s project manager, to reflect on the journey he and the entire eGames Lab consortium have been on since its launch in 2022, the successes they have had and where he sees the future of the sector he works so closely with.

PocketGamer.biz: Paint a picture of what the Portuguese gaming scene looked like before eGames Lab stepped in, compared to how you see it today.

Cláudio Telo Pestana: Although it was only a few years ago, the Portuguese games ecosystem was fragmented and underdeveloped, with a few notable exceptions.

We had a few international publishers, such as Miniclip and Saber Interactive, that had opened offices in Porto, but there was very little structured support for local talent or young studios. Plus, there was the obvious bias towards the bigger cities of Porto and Lisbon.

The issue was not a lack of talent, but rather a lack of the right support framework to help the local games industry grow, bring together all of Portugal’s regions, and serve as a point of entry for international companies looking to establish a presence here.

Before 2022, the games industry in Portugal generated roughly €20 million. At the end of last year, that figure had passed €100 million. We now have homegrown companies like Redcatpig, based in the Azores, that can compete on the global stage.

There has also been a significant increase in engagement between local studios and the wider industry through events: attendance at DevGAMM Lisbon grew from around 400 in 2022 to over 1,200 at last November’s event, and we’ve now partnered with DevGAMM for a standalone event in Madeira.

It’s also important to consider what the industry's growth means more broadly for the Portuguese economy. At a government level, policymakers care about sustainable job creation and export potential. So when we have a success story like Lisbon-based Infinity Games, which repaid its grant allocation within a single year of operation, it really shows the positive impact of government investment in video games.

There are so many other successes I could talk about! But it’s clear that a lot has changed in a very short time and it’s important to say that this has been an effort from many people, not just eGames Lab. For example, we’ve worked alongside partners such as the Association of Portuguese Video Game Developers (APVP), with the government’s commitment underpinning everything.

How have the global market shifts we’ve seen in the games industry over the past few years influenced Portugal's position on the international stage?

I think Portugal has benefited for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is the financial pressure on many established studios, especially those based in the US, which made the economics of working with Portuguese companies more attractive. Plus, the drive by international companies to downsize internal teams and seek cost-effective co-development partnerships in Europe has created many opportunities for smaller and more nimble Portuguese studios. 

Another reason is the alignment between R&D and our start-up ecosystem. You can’t build a games industry just with developers, as fun as that sounds. Our mission has always been to think bigger and bring in a wide range of expertise.

It’s a big part of why eGames Lab also includes many people from our university sector, because R&D and creativity must go hand in hand. That combination is far more compelling than simply being a source of cheaper talent and competing purely on price, which doesn’t lead to long-term strategic relationships.

Let’s look to the future. What is next for eGames Lab, and what are the growth plans for the Portuguese games industry in general?

Our focus at the moment is really on consolidating what we’ve achieved so far, and slightly shifting away from supporting really early-stage companies to become better at helping with the whole scale-up process. 

In Lisbon, for example, we are working in partnership with the APVP and Unicorn Factory, which is an innovation incubator that already has a work hub in the city. We are also creating similar spaces on Terceira Island, part of the Azores, and we have plans for a hub in Évora, in southern Portugal and a hub in Funchal on the island of Madeira, which will be the largest of the four.

But really, the next stage for eGames Lab is to continue what we’ve been doing all along: growing the games industry in Portugal as an entire ecosystem. We want to bring everyone passionate about games and the games industry together, to harness the talent and opportunity, and to make the sum greater than the individual players.

Whether we keep working under the eGames Lab brand, or it becomes something different - that’s not important. The opportunity is to keep building foundations and to keep creating ways for people and companies to collaborate, learn, and grow. That’s the focus for the future.

If you ask me what success looks like, I’d love for one of the companies we help to go on and create Portugal’s equivalent of The Witcher, a game that achieves global success but is rooted in the culture and history of the Portuguese talent that creates it.

With the ideas and ambition of so many of the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet through my work, I don’t think this is such a crazy thing to imagine!