Silesia reinventing itself as game developer heartland

Even today, coal mines and steelworks are very important parts of the local economy. But on the other hand, a new branch of industry is growing there very rapidly – advanced IT technologies including computer-game development.

As our Silesian correspondent Jarosław Juszkiewicz reports, in the beginning local game developers cooperated with larger western firms, although now the industry has taken on a local spin.

“Basically, the evolution of the game industry is very similar to the movie industry. At the beginning of the [movie] history there were small teams who were [involved] with the creation, it’s the same in the game industry,” says Kamil Bilczyński from Farm 51, a game developer based in Gliwice.