September 12th. A day I had been looking forward to since I received an email from our Dutch Royal House, somewhere mid July. After an absolutely lovely phonecall with the secretary, things quickly became very concrete. Her Majesty the Queen wanted to visit the Dutch game industry on September 12th!
There’s only one chance to make a first impression, so we didn’t need to think very long before we decided to pick up the phone and ask Guerrilla if they were interested in hosting this royal visit. Of course they were! But to give the queen a good impression of all facets of the Dutch game industry, we decided to also invite applied game studio Hackshield.
The secretary of state Gunay Uslu (Culture & Media) was also invited to join the visit.
After a short studio tour where queen Máxima was also offered an opportunity to try out Horizon Forbidden West herself, the visit continued with presentations in the boardroom. The queen and secretary of state were both very informed and asked pointed questions, adding to a lively roundtable discussion. The DGA’s main objective during the visit was to give insight in the current state of the Dutch game industry, but also to show the potential. We closed the visit with a presentation of our chairman Derk de Geus and a group picture with all speakers.
Next steps? The visit of Her Majesty has definitely helped us to reach the wider Dutch public and get some positive attention for our industry. A momentum we have no intention to waste.
We’re happy to announce that we’ll see Gunay Uslu again very soon, since she will be present at the 2023 Dutch Game Awards to hand out an award.
Onwards to great things 🙂
Martine Spaans
General Manager Dutch Games Association
