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  • Gameopolis was founded in 2014 by the Greater Manchester video games development community to promote and link our local development scene.
  • Our geographical area stretches from Macclesfield in the south to Blackpool in the north – the areas that identify with Manchester as the central point.
  • Manchester and the surrounding area has a rich history of video games creation from Ocean Software in the 1980’s to TT Games and much more today.

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  • Community
  • We arrange bi-monthly Gameopolis events which regularly attract around 150 people. Keynote speakers have included Michael Pattison of Sony, Richard Badger of the BBC, and Matt Ward of UK Games Fund.
  • Every month we have an Indie Drinks meet-up and twice-monthly North West Playtesters where we meet up and feedback on each other’s games.
  • We have organised free workshops with the BFI, HMRC, Creative England, Creative Europe and more.
  • In May we host Jamchester, the UK’s biggest professional game jam, in conjunction with HackManchester.
  • We’ve co-hosted many more events including a games room at Manchester Town Hall for Manchester Day, and Northern Lights with Creative England at The Lowry theatre.

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  • Facilties
  • Aided by Manchester/Salford’s status as the centre of TV production in the UK, we have many excellent facilities.
  • Cubic Motion, the premier facial motion capture & animation company (Batman: Arkham Knight, Until Dawn, etc) is situated on Manchester Science Park.
  • One of Europe’s top video game recruitment agencies, Amiqus, is based just outside Manchester.
  • We have renowned CG, visual effects, and VR/AR agencies such as Flipbook, Realtime UK, Studio Liddell, and Carbon Digital.
  • Tech North, the agency tasked with promoting tech businesses across the north of England is headquartered in Manchester.

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  • Infrastructure & Culture
  • Manchester is often regarded as the UK’s ‘second city’ after London and as such has a large amount of quality office space, transport facilities, and culture.
  • MediaCityUK in Salford has the BBC’s entire digital & games teams, BBC sport, BBC Breakfast and much more with over 3000 employees.
  • We are the only British airport hub outside London to have a scheduled non-stop flights to Beijing. We have multiple flights to the USA with direct flights to San Francisco coming in mid 2017 which will be handy for GDC!
  • London is only 2.08hrs away by train and we have the UK’s largest and best public tram system.
  • Culturally Manchester is world-renowned with a superb live music scene, world-class galleries, and many stage shows premiering here before the West End.
  • We host the English National Football Museum and of course we cannot forget our two Premier League football clubs Manchester United and Manchester City who are supported across the globe.

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  • Education
  • At over 100,000, Greater Manchester has one of the largest student populations in Europe .
  • We have multiple video game development degrees at MMU, Salford, Bolton, UCLAN, SSR and Futureworks.
  • Manchester University is the largest in the UK with 37,000 students, is ranked 41st in the world, eighth in Europe & fifth in the UK (2015 Shanghai Jiao Tong World Ranking), and has a globally renowned Computer Science courses.
  • Multiple local student teams have won competitions such as Dare To Be Digital and been nominated for BAFTAs.
  • We have specialised secondary schools with games development courses including UTC Media City, Manchester Creative Studio School and Playground Squad and Coder Dojo allows children as young as 6 to learn programming.

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