11 Oct Dutch games industry strengthens ties with Australian games industry

UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS – October 11, 2019 – Dutch Games Association (DGA) visits Melbourne International Games Week strengthening ties between the Dutch and Australian games industries.

The Australian market has great potential for Dutch games companies, especially in the serious games space. Therefore, Creative Victoria, the Game Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA) and the Minister of Games and Health worked together to bring Dutch expertise and business opportunities across the world for this edition of Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW).

Melbourne International Games Week is Asia Pacific’s largest digital games celebration – featuring conferences, events and activities for the games industry, games enthusiasts, the general public and educators. During Game Connect Asia Pacific, MIGW’s largest developer conference, one noteworthy keynote speaker was Sjoerd Wennekes, consultant for Dutch game companies and co-founder of several award-winning serious games development studios. Dutch technology also made an impact at the event via the matchmaking tool MeetToMatch, used at Game Connect Asia Pacific to power meetings between attendees.

Panji Oudsen from Dutch Games Association had the honor to oversee the Dutch delegation in their mission to strengthen ties between Australia and the Netherlands. One of the many special guests this week at the Melbourne International Games Week was Prime Minister Rutte, who discussed how serious gaming can be used in fields like healthcare. Here the Dutch Games Association and Sjoerd Wennekes spoke about the potential of the Australian serious games market. Wennekes highlighted the success of his project Tovertafel, an interactive system that can help people in care homes to stay active, now also available in Australia.

29 Aug Call for research proposals

The DGA Gaming Fieldlab of Dutch Games Association issues its second call for research proposals to support the Dutch game industry sector and amplify research-industry collaborations. This second call has a wider scope than the first call and its financial conditions are more favourable.

Topics

Project proposals should investigate novel approaches to the design, creation, configuration or evaluation of games or gamification. Target outcomes may include:

• Technical artefacts (e.g. plug-ins, adapters/connectors, tools, components, services)
• Methodologies (e.g. workflow protocols, procedures, design aids, evaluation materials/instruments)
• Thematic reports (e.g. industry or market needs analyses, state of the art reviews, meta-studies, try-outs).

Proposal evaluation criteria

• A clear research question
• Clear target outcomes
• Scientific relevance
• Added value as compared with existing approaches/solutions
• Follow-up plans of usage by the industry partners
• Practical significance for the wider game industry sector
• Enabling access and reuse by third parties
• Arrangement of intellectual property rights

Funding

In this call, there is room for 4 separate subsidies of €20,000. The funding is reserved for public-private partnerships (research-industry collaborations). The part of the subsidy that goes to the industry partners should be matched equally by the industry partners in kind or cash; subsidies reserved for the research partners may do without match funding, if so desired. Given the source of funding it is recommended to reflect true public-private collaboration in the budget.

Example budget distribution

Additional formal and administrative requirements

• The consortium is composed of at least one Dutch public partner (knowledge institute) and one Dutch private partner (game studio, possibly more than one); the knowledge institute (higher education institutes, research institutes) acts as the principal applicant.
• The proposal should use the (new) proposal template and should be within 5 pages.
• The proposal should be written in English to allow for international review.
• The project should start within 2 months after approval and end before March 2021.
• The project team publicly presents its progress and achievements at both a mid-term and final meeting organised by the DGA Gaming Fieldlab, and to prepare and deliver one or more workshops for potential users of the software artefacts.
• The project contributes to general publicity, e.g. for the Fieldlab website and CLICKNL.
• All declared costs should comply with the regulations of the PPS-TKI funding described at http://www.rvo.nl/tki, in particular the PPS- scheme 2016 (or in detail at Kaderbesluit nationale EZ-subsidies); most of these are summarised below:
• Proposals should include a realistic planning budget specification possibly including co-funding, which may be in kind or cash.
• A fixed hourly rate of €60 including direct and indirect labour costs and VAT.
• Costs of goods, consumables and services may be included only if they are directly related to the research (hence no generic overheads allowed)
• The partners will administer and explain the working hours spent to the project, as well as other costs
• VAT is reimbursed only when parties are not liable to VAT (e.g. public parties)
• The partners in the consortium provide a written signed collaboration agreement including the partners commitments.
• The project contributes to the Dutch national knowledge infrastructure, in particular it contributes to one or more themes from the Knowledge- and Innovation Agenda 2018-2021 of the Creative Industries
• In accordance with Article 1.a of the PPS funding scheme, Intellectual property rights should either come to the public party/parties or should be (partly) transferred to the private party/parties against payment in accordance with market conditions, while taking into account private contributions to the project.

Important dates

• 11 September 2019
  An information meeting about this call is arranged in Utrecht . More details on this information session can be found here.
• 1 October 2019
  The call deadline for submission of proposals. Submissions should use the proposal template and should include a signed collaboration agreement, which should be sent to fieldlab@dutchgamesassociation.nl
• 1 November 2019
  Decisions about the grants
• Winter 2019/2020
  Public presentations of granted project proposals on a joint Fieldlab meeting
• Spring 2020
  Mid-term Fieldlab meetup
• Winter 2020/2021
  Final projects’ presentations and workshops

Contact/inquiries

For further inquiries please contact fieldlab@dutchgamesassociation.nl or visit fieldlab.dutchgamesassociation.nl!

How to apply

Research proposals must be submitted before the call deadline on October 1st, 2019, please refer to the Fieldlab call for proposals for more details. Proposals may be sent to fieldlab@dutchgamesassociation.nl.

24 Apr DGA partners with the RAGE Project

Dutch Games Association partners with RAGE (Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system), the European flagship research project that develops advanced software components for (applied and entertainment) games with the goal to strengthen the Dutch (applied) game industry and making it the most advanced and leading game industry of Europe.

Game studios are now invited to check out over 30 alpha-version components at rageproject.eu. Components are available for social gamification, real-time emotion recognition via webcam, virtual characters (affective AI, procedural animation of gaze and gesture, emotion expression), automated adaptation, secure xAPI learning analytics, natural language processing, performance statistics and more. By reusing components rather than “re-inventing the wheel” (or trying to do so) game development becomes easier and more efficient. Since most components carry the Apache-2 open software license, the software can be forked and changed at will, and may be assigned a different license for commercial closed or open source usage.

Dutch Games Association has negotiated special support from RAGE for the studios that try-out components. They will be favoured with a hotline connection with the principal RAGE developers to discuss questions or ideas.The link with RAGE fits into the ambition of the newly appointed board of Dutch Games Association, to make the Dutch game industry the most creative, advanced and leading game industry of Europe. Since early 2017 the DGA board is composed of Hans Luijckx (IJsfontein), Maarten de Rooij (Fontys Academy for Creative Industries), Simon Usiskin (IQU), Maarten Stevens (8D Games), Rob Hulsen (Hulan), Wim Westera (Open Universiteit, involved in RAGE) and Horst Streck (Gamifier), and thereby covers key expertise in entertainment games, applied games, game research and game education.

ABOUT RAGE
The RAGE project (Realising an Applied Gaming Eco-system) is a European research initiative, funded by the Horizon2020 Programme of the European Commission, focusing on developing, transforming and enriching advanced technologies for making the development of games easier, faster and more cost-effective. www.rageproject.eu

ABOUT DUTCH GAMES ASSOCIATION
Dutch Games Association was founded in 2008 to help create a healthy climate for the Dutch games industry. With over 100 members its mission is to help the industry reach its full potential by connecting, serving and inspiring the industry and beyond on a national and international level. www.dutchgamesassociation.nl