GameCity rescue team revealed… and new jobs promised

The consortium behind the takeover of The National Videogame Arcade (NVA) and GameCity festival has been revealed.

GameCity fell was bought out of administration by the group last week after running out of money in August and calling in administrators.

Now, the investors have formed the National Videogame Foundation to take the company forward.

Backers include Ian Livingstone, founder of Domark and Games Workshop, Sumo Digital and PlayGround Games. Several independent game makers who have found success after first exhibiting their games at the NVA’s annual GameCity festival, have also invested, including Rami Ismail of Dutch studio Vlambeer, a regular attendee of the festival, and William Pugh, award-winning co-creator of the Stanley Parable.

Iain Simons

Iain Simons, director of GameCity, told TheBusinessDesk.com: “The new structure makes a lot more sense. The Foundation sits as a layer on top of all our activities and provides a great focus for talking about them. So now it’s much easier to have a conversation with games industry partners about the NVA, or education work or the GameCity festival – because it’s all anchored to a central mission. In the past, we’ve done so many things that it could get fragmented without that anchorage.

“For the public, there’s a job we have to do with being better at communication and marketing, and we’ve already got new resources in helping us with that. We know that our core offerings are great and that people love them, which is a useful starting position to be in, but never sit still in making them better. We need to apply that same development momentum to our marketing too.”

Simons said new jobs could also be on the way. He added: “We’re already working actively on more projects, with more partners, which will definitely be creating more opportunities.”