Gaming in Serbia: unity is strength

The gaming industry in Serbia is growing exponentially. More and more companies in the sector are growing thanks to mutual collaboration. We interviewed Kristina Janković Obućina, director of the Serbian Game Association

How was the Serbian Games Association (SGA)  born and what does your organisation do?

The association was created in March 2018 by eight Serbian companies that deal with video games, all different in size and type of games produced. And the main purpose of the association was just that: to listen to the varied voices and different perspectives within the gaming industry. The SGA was born as a non-governmental, non-profit organisation - a status it has maintained to this day. However, growth has been exponential and four years after our foundation we now have over 110 members.

In the sector there was a clear feeling that an association of this type was necessary and that the whole ecosystem would benefit from it. With these premises, the SGA was born on the model of trade associations already present in other countries: from this point of view we have not invented anything new.

Are you referring to a specific country or reality?

We are talking about already established video game manufacturers associations: for example, in the United Kingdom one has existed for more than three decades, therefore from the very origins of the video game industry. We also heard very good things about the realities of the region, such as the Romanian association, and we knew that there was something going on in Croatia, which is a little more similar to Serbia in terms of size. But we look with interest at what Finland, France, Italy, and Germany are doing.

The SGA was founded in 2018, but the video game industry in Serbia had already taken its first steps in previous years...

At the date of the creation of our association in Serbia, there had been companies active in this sector for a decade. In this pioneering phase there were a couple of larger companies and some medium and small studios, especially in Belgrade and Novi Sad, but each acted in isolation and there were no structured forms of communication between the players in the sector. Of course they knew about each other, but there were no exchanges and the ecosystem was fragmented.

Now the situation is very different, and I like to think that this is also thanks to our association. And Nis, in the south of the country, has also gradually become a very important cluster. The expansion and involvement of new centres was somewhat accentuated by the pandemic: people were forced to stay home and a large part of the business moved online. At the same time, larger companies have started looking for staff throughout Serbia.

Has the pandemic therefore paradoxically been an opportunity for the Serbian gaming industry?

I would say yes, and in several respects. First of all, as mentioned, human resources were sought throughout the national territory. At the same time, the lockdown saw a sharp increase in demand for new video games globally: all our associates saw an increase in the number of downloads and the number of copies of video games purchased.

The opportunities to follow online events have also increased: for example, the opportunities to participate in European conferences where young developers and startups meet publishers and investors have increased. There have been many more opportunities to network, and even the largest companies have realised that going to the office every day may not be all that necessary. The work organisation model has profoundly changed.

In numerical terms, the number of active companies in Serbia has increased rapidly...

After all, we Serbs are a nation of gamers: in many cases, video game studios were created by passionate gamers who wanted to work on something they loved. At the roots of their professional commitment there is not a commercial motivation, but passion. Plus, while we do not currently have gaming-specific curricula, each university here offers a wide range of skills and knowledge. In Serbia we are also very used to using digital tools and services and everyone here speaks excellent English. Finally, the gaming industry has begun to flourish in an already established startup ecosystem in the creation of applications, software, or hardware. We have had many success stories in the IT industry in general. I think this also helped us grow a lot.

What is the business model of video game companies in Serbia? Do they work for large international companies or are they independent operators?

At the beginning we were all convinced that Serbian companies should mainly take advantage of the outsourcing opportunities of large international companies. Fortunately, it turned out that the picture is more complex, and today 60% of our members and our companies are developing original products, which is fantastic. Some studios finalise the entire production of games for foreign companies, but do so as independent studios. In the meantime, there have also been several very important acquisitions of Serbian companies by international companies.

What kind of opportunities and services do you offer to companies that decide to join your association?

Our first goal is to put everyone online: we have always been convinced that the ecosystem benefits from the exchange of experiences and errors: this is why we have given priority to organising occasions for meeting.

We also offer training opportunities, a mentorship programme, workshops, and marketing sessions attended by the main veterans of the sector, local but also European and world-wide.

Growing up, we have strengthened connections with other ecosystem players, for example with training institutes, then with other companies that offer tax or legal services, and today we make their services available to our members. We then developed our website, which is now a portal for everything related to the gaming industry in Serbia. There we have created a platform where you can view every single open position in the video game industry, an opportunity that was absent in Serbia until a couple of years ago.

Perhaps one of the most important projects is our annual report, which we have been implementing since the birth of the SGA itself. From the beginning we realised that there is no way to communicate the needs of the sector to the various stakeholders except through reliable data measured year after year. So in 2018 we created a very detailed questionnaire, sending it to all companies in the gaming industry. They trusted us and understood the opportunity to share all the requested data in a very transparent way.

How have the needs of the companies that are part of the organisation changed over the years?

The type of professional competence required has changed: four years ago companies were mainly looking for artists and developers, now the most difficult positions to fill are those of producers, game designers, and monetisation specialists. Today there are many more nuances in the type of professionalism that is required by the market: very specific skills are sought, which shows that the product and the companies are maturing.

Is it possible to make a profile of the people who work in the gaming sector in Serbia?

I can share the data that we already measure: today we have about 2300 people employed in the sector, of these, 30% are women, which makes us record holders in Europe: according to the report by the European Game Developers Federation  the world average is 18%. We have never officially measured age, but I can say that in most cases it is predominantly under 40. I would say that 80% of the industry has a university-level education, but not related to the gaming industry. So there has been a lot of informal training: they are therefore often self-taught artists and developers.

In many economic sectors, the emigration of skilled personnel (brain drain) is a serious problem in the countries of the Western Balkans. Is it also true for your sector?

In general, in the digital technology industry and gaming in particular, the so-called "brain drain" is not a particularly serious problem in Serbia. In recent years we have noticed that people engaged in this sector are very happy to have the opportunity to work while remaining in Serbia. So up until now, gaming companies have been able to offer their specialists enough incentives to stay here: the industry is relatively young, and there is a sense of helping to build something from the ground up, which is interesting for those who are involved. What is missing, however, are seniors and team leaders. One solution is to attract talent from other countries, but up until now there has not been much success, perhaps because such people are used to working with larger teams or with larger projects than we are today able to insure in Serbia.

For non-experts, the gaming industry appears to be innovative by definition. But specifically, what are the most innovative elements in the sector in Serbia?

The first projects of Serbian companies were a kind of imitation of models already developed in more advanced countries, but they were very successful. The following are completely different, we see a growing creativity emerge. I think this comes mainly from the fact that work teams are usually given the opportunity to think freely. And perhaps in our context, being aware of how difficult it is to make it, the goals achieved are appreciated more: therefore creativity is perhaps stimulated more than in contexts where many things are taken for granted.

What are your relationships with universities?

In Serbian universities there are extraordinary professionals who realise the need to progress and move faster. In order to negotiate the necessary changes with the government and institutions, however, they need an overall vision from the industry. We have created a connection between what happens in the gaming industry and what should be done in the education system: the industry moves so fast that the tools change every six months. We are recording some hits: for example, the drama faculty is opening a four-year programme for the arts of play, visual effects (VFX), and animation, which is fantastic. It will start this fall, we are looking forward to it.

Have there been no specific measures by the government so far to support the gaming industry as such?

None, not even for the startup ecosystem I mentioned in the IT sector. Also, our teams in general are very young, they have little practice with bureaucracy. Therefore, even when they see the possible opportunities provided by the institutions, they are afraid to take the necessary steps to interact with the administration.

Is the general infrastructure in Serbia, both physical and digital, sufficient for the needs of the sector?

Internet is very good and cheap in Serbia: this is certainly a very positive factor. Other elements help: there is now a new fast train between Belgrade and Novi Sad, the two pivotal cities for our sector. It used to take two and a half hours to travel, now it takes 30 minutes. This helps a lot: for example, when we organised an event in Novi Sad, a lot of people came from Belgrade. I think these elements are important, because they really help make people's participation possible. We would like to see the same connection between Nis and Belgrade.

Your organisation promotes collaboration between companies in the same sector. Isn't there a problem of internal competition, however?

The only thing competition exists for is human resources. If there are five studios playing the same game, five different games will actually come out of it. And everyone has the global market at their disposal. So, in terms of the product, the competition is zero. In the board of directors we have always discussed this aspect openly. Our board of directors is made up of CEOs from seven different companies and we do not want the topic to be an elephant in the room: the final decision is to let the market handle it on its own. For example, let employees choose where to work. So, anyone entering the video game industry has all these different companies to choose from. But I believe that our companies are different enough to create a kind of logical line of a possible career: if you are, for example, an artist and you are just starting out, you have no experience, you know which company is perfect for you. So go there, work for two years, get some experience and then move on to another company that maybe has a bigger product, more teams. Or you can choose to go to a startup and contribute to something that is certainly smaller but more like an independent project.

The question of competition to hire the best talent remains open: our associates have stated that they will need 450 new employees in the near future. This is a 25% increase in the industry workforce: to be honest, there is no way to find these 450 people in a year, it's almost impossible...

So, Serbian gaming companies grow if the industry is collaborative?

Certainly. There is a great example of this phenomenon: three companies that produce mobile phone games regularly organise meetups together. It seems completely counterintuitive. They are competing for the same human resources, but they have come together and organised these meetings where they provide information, introduce themselves, and then let the individuals decide where to work.

Is there any Serbian game that has become a worldwide hit in recent years?

Nordics' Top 11  is officially the world's number one mobile sports game for the past decade. It's a football manager game. It's crazy, it had almost 400 million downloads, crazy. Another is UnderRail , an RPG, famous for being very difficult: and those who love the "old school", RPG fans, really love it.

I would also like to mention the success of the 3Lateral  studio, which was acquired by Epic Games, certainly one of the top five if not the first video game company in the world. They developed a tool for creating hyper realistic human characters. It's called "metahuman" and it's completely free: you can go to your computer and create these hyper-realistic characters, then use them for your game. I believe it is a complete revolution in the way video games are made.

 

 

This material is published in the context of the project "The mobility of human capital of and from the Balkans: when innovation manages to stop the brain drain" co-financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI). MAECI is in no way responsible for the information or points of view expressed in the framework of the project. The responsibility for the contents lies solely with OBC Transeuropa. Visit the project page