The Medieval Dutch city of Utrecht will host the World Festival of Games from June 14-22. By Rachel Levy.

Hundreds of computer game designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and game lovers will converge on the Dutch city of Utrecht on Saturday for the world computer games conference followed by a computer music festival.

With some 80 sessions and around 50 speakers, the June 14-22 event is the largest festival in Europe dedicated exclusively to the design and development of computer games.

Among the speakers are Ralph Baer, creator of the video game PONG, Chaim Gingold, known for his work on the video game Spore, and co- founder and director of the EA Game Innovation Lab, Chris Swain.

The festival consists of a main conference, workshops, a professional Expo and Career Fair. The so-called Serious Connection brings together companies and developers for game applications in the business world, while a special brands and games event focuses on the integration of games in the marketing industry.

There are also public events such as a large urban game and a game music event. With 260,000 inhabitants, the medieval city of Utrecht has become a European hub for the global computer game industry.

The majority of the 250 Dutch gaming companies are located in or around Utrecht, generating more than 1 billion euros (1.5 billion dollars) in turnover annually in the Netherlands alone.

In recent years, the industry has grown by more than 10 percent annually.

Utrecht's central location and the fact that it is easily accessed from other European countries with direct train connections, has contributed to that.

But it is the Royal University of Utrecht and in particular the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), a local college, that provided the most important impetus to Utrecht's rise to the place to be for upcoming members of the computer gaming industry.

The Utrecht School of Arts, located in the old city centre, has around 3,500 students and is one of the largest arts and culture-oriented universities of applied sciences in Europe, offering courses in fine art, design, music, theatre, media, games and interaction, arts education and arts management.

The school is internationally oriented and has many English-language courses. One fifth of its students are foreigners.

The Royal University, with 30,000 students, is the biggest in the Netherlands. It boasts a renowned department of information and computing science (ICS), and is also internationally oriented.

Like all other science schools, the ICS department is located on the new university campus De Uithof, north-east of the city.

Next to it is a new industrial park for businesses specialising in biochemics, computers and medical sciences.

There is an unusually high concentration of students and researchers in the fields of computers, design and music in the city.

The fact that education and business have come to merge naturally has turned Utrecht into a hothouse for computer game companies.

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11 June 2008

[Copyright dpa 2008 ]