The festival will be a chance to connect the community of Sunderland with the amazing work happening locally in the games industry.

Students will showcase their work, visitors will be able to see and play on exclusive footage of games currently in development, and local developers will be able to connect with the local community and upcoming stars in games development.

With the announcement that Sunderland will be home to a multi-million pound esports centre, it is time to connect the local community and our students with a booming industry.

The University of Sunderland's Esports network will be hosting a tournament throughout the day. There will also be a raffle with prizes including games, and merchandise.

Developers and games artists from across the North East will take part in our festival, giving students and the public a chance to network and learn about our growing games industry. There will be chance to speak to developers, see exclusive content and ask questions of the leading games industry experts. Taking part are:

Tanglewood Games - an established games development studio based in the north-east of England. As a friendly team of Unreal Engine experts with long careers based at the forefront of this technology, we have a proven track record working with well-known AAA publishers on some of the biggest Unreal Engine titles to date, such as Fortnite, Sea of Thieves, and Paragon.

Atom Hawk - Since 2009 Atom Hawk been working with movie studios, game developers and product designers to help realise their visions and bring ideas to life through world class visual development and design.

Cardboard Sword - a growing independent games company that has worked on games such as Forza Horizon 3.

Radical Forge - have pushed, grown and succeeded since their formation to become an established name within the game development industry as a place of creativity, innovation and adventure. Handling many projects across multiple platforms including PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Oculus Quest, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch. They have several years of experience on a vast range of indie and externally published titles as well as tirelessly working away on our first original IP “Bright Paw”.

Nosebleed Interactive - a multi-award-winning independent studio based in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the heart of the North East of England. Nosebleed have worked with some of the world’s biggest companies, brands and content providers such as Channel 4 and Sony Interactive Entertainment. At our core, we're all gamers, passionate about playing and making great games and entertainment software. Named as one of the Top 50 creative companies in the country by Creative England. Nosebleed Interactive also won the PlayStation Mobile Pioneers competition, as well as best small to medium business in the Newcastle Business Awards. Alongside this the company was one of the first handful of companies to receive support from the prestigious UK Games Fund.

The festival will provide an opportunity to speak to some of the biggest names in the game industry, and to see the wonderful media work being created in our region.