On Tuesday, September 17, 2013 the Romanian Game Developers Association, RGDA, was launched at TechHub Bucharest. They invited a special guest to be present and that was Richard Wilson, CEO of The Independent Game Developers’ Association, a true voice of game developers in the UK.

Andrei Istrate (Lead Level Designer at Ubisoft Bucharest), Cristian Tanase (External Communication Manager at Ubisoft) and Ionut Mihaescu (Information System Manager at SC Pamimai Distribution) are the co-founders of this association which aims to bring together the game developers from Romania.

Romanian Game Developers Association is a non profit organization whose purpose is to support and promote the Romanian video game developers market. RGDA is a useful work group open not only for video game industry professionals, but also for those who wish to start a carrier in this area.

There are several gaming startups profiled here on Romanian Startups (Green Horse Games, Gameleon, The Small Island, Tavern Games, Barrel Cat, eRepublik Labs) and we hope that more gaming startups will come on-board.

Bobby Voicu, the CEO of MavenHut (a Romanian game startup – not yet profiled on Romanian Startups) said:

RGDA says it’s the right tool to help freelance gaming developers, small and medium gaming developers in Romania. If they live up to their promises, they will help the industry a lot. And there is a lot of interest in this.I’ve seen more than 100 people participating on a meetup about gaming, as well as about 40 people present at the launch of RGDA, last Tuesday. To show just how much people around the industry need this, Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, met 3 people that were building a Snake version, without knowing about each other.

In the RGDA’s words:

RGDA wants to become a channel of communication between video games developers, a community where anyone interested in this topic can easily obtain all necessary information. We want school programs that prepare young people who wish to work in this industry, we want the Romanian state to recognize and support an industry that started to bring more and more money into country’s economy.

The power is in the numbers. The more united people are the more powerful they are as a whole. The gaming community needs to be united, just like the Romanian startup community needs too. That’s why Romanian Startups was built and that’s why RGDA is founded now too.

Photo: Bobby Voicu