Dutch Game Week 2025

A few weeks ago, by chance, through social media, I discovered that there was an upcoming gaming conference held in Breda, NL. The price of admission was very reasonable €40. And given that Breda is only a 90 minute train ride, it was an easy decision to purchase a ticket.

Dutch Game week is, as the name suggests, a week-long series of events happening throughout the city. The week is capped off by a two day conference held at the Chassé Theater. Apparently this conference has been going on for some time and was previously run by the Dutch Games Association. This year it appears that We are Playgrounds is "powering" the events, which is why I think it was getting a lot more social media awareness.

It was my second time visiting the lovely city of Breda. I attended the Everything Procedural Conference two years ago at the Breda University of Applied Sciences and loved my time there. It was great to be back in Breda for a couple of days.

Who is this Conference for?

The conference has two tracks — Art and Design, and business. The talks were split into two theaters based on those tracks, with art and design talks being in the larger "Royal Printers theater", and the business talks happening in the "Small Theater". With the exception of the very first talk in the small theater, I spent all my time soaking up the art talks in the drukkerij zaal.

Who is this Conference NOT for?

Though the conference has a more generic game development title, it's important to note that there was not really any content for other aspects of game development such as production and programming. So if you are looking for talks around shaders, procedural art, programming systems, or game engine specific stuff, that doesn't seem to really be a part of this conference.

Conference Day 1

The first day I attended all but the last talk and have a couple of highlights. Starting out with a talk about the open world art and design process of Twirlbound's "The Knightling". This is definitely a game I'm looking to pick up soon. The game looks beautiful and it was super interesting learning about how they planned out the open world and the progression path through it. Later in the afternoon there was a great interview with Robert Sammelin from Embark Studios where he shared a bit about the development of Arc Raiders.

Conference Day 2

Day 2 was packed with some absolutely phenomenal talks, starting with back to back talks from the founders at Moonhood Studio. I loved seeing their process of creating physically sculpted models that were then scanned and brought into the game for rigging and animation. I'm adding "The Midnight Walk" to my list of must play games now.

This was followed up with talks by two incredible character artists, Arno Schmitz from Guerilla Games and Jochem van Gool who is creating art for the Disney Locana card game. These guys are both insanely talented artists and it was very cool to have them walk us through their careers and share their advice about art and careers in gaming.

And finally Blender Studios gave a talk about their first open game project. Blender studios is known for producing an animated short once a year, but in 2025 they decided to also put out a small game called "Dog Walk". My favourite bit of the talk was the sharing about their workflow and pipeline for working between Blender and Godot. They utilised the glTF file format as a transport for art and data, which resonated with me as I'm doing something quite similar, though not ad advanced, with my Rollbound Project.

But Wait, there's More!

In addition to the two stages, the event also included some activities in the common areas of the theater. With advance sign-ups, you could participate in portfolio reviews and round table discussions.

There were also several tables set up where you could try out games from students, indie developers, and local studios. They had also brought in a few arcade cabinets for some vintage gaming fun!

Overall, it was a great little conference. I love events like this as I find the talks both informative and creatively inspiring. I'm really glad that organizations like the Dutch Games Association and even like this exist here and are accessible to small and indie game developers. Given the smaller game dev community in the Netherlands and the overall down turn in the game development industry, it's important to continue to have events like that.

Eventually these talks should be available on the We Are Playgrounds replay site - https://weareplaygrounds.filmchief.com/replay/browse

I really enjoyed my time there and am looking forward to attending again! I would love to see them bring in some deeper talks converting technical art and the like in the future.