With a new year, come new possibilities and new releases!
Pictured: Picky Meowy by Dunedin indie game studio, Cheese Berries.
We started CODE operations back in the dark days of 2020 when none of us were sure when we would see the outside or rest of the world again.
It was exciting at the time because we were used to seeing bad news every day and living with an uncertain world. Whilst the world is still uncertain, what has become more firm is that we are going to see a complete swag of releases of CODE-supported games in 2023.
We’re not going to play with hints (although you could go back and look at our PAX AUS pavilion from 2022 for that!), we just did an internal tally and it could be up to 11 games released this year!
This would be an extraordinary result, but even if we don’t see quite all of those, it is still a huge acceleration on what was happening in New Zealand.
On the national rollout, it is still very early days for that. However what we are doing and will be continuing on with is listening to local developers, learning about which small teams are active in Aotearoa and where they are based.
Also, given CODE is about capability uplift as much as grant funding, learning about what their specific needs are- we are not assuming it is the same across all of the regions. This is factoring into our internal planning and we hope to get out and about to the centres very soon.
In any case, it is going to be an absolutely massive year for CODE and our community and we look forward to what the year will bring.