The Chinese company NetEase Games has been the latest to announce the opening of a video game development studio in Barcelona. It will be called Anchor Point Studios and will be dedicated to the development of immersive action and adventure games for console and PC. It will be the third studio the company has launched in Europe, after those in Paris and Manchester. This investment, announced at the end of April, joins those made by other companies in the sector such as Funplus, Rovio, IO Interactive, Scopely, Paradox, Games for a Living (G4AL) or the American multinational Activision Blizzard, which bought the Barcelona-based Digital Legends.
This continuous trickle of information demonstrates that the Catalan capital has become a prominent player in the gaming sector and that it is a city on which all the major studios have their eyes set, given the increasing concentration of companies and its ability to attract talent. According to a recent study carried out by Acció, the competitiveness agency of the Generalitat, Catalonia is the leading region in the European Union in attracting foreign investment in the video game sector, having attracted more than 20 new projects in the last five years, with an investment of more than 120 million euros and the creation of almost 900 jobs. According to the DeviCAT association, the Catalan ecosystem brings together some 200 video game companies employing 4,000 professionals.
To analyze the causes and factors that have led Barcelona to become one of the international capitals of gaming, on Monday, June 12, we will have as guests on The New Barcelona – Moments Estel·lars two great connoisseurs of the sector: Montse Puig, CEO of Barcelona & Partners, the investment attraction agency of Barcelona Global, and Pasqual Batalla, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Socialpoint, the veteran Barcelona-based company in the sector and the architect of the video game industry becoming a key player in our entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Under the motto Barcelona capital del gaming, the next session of the cycle organized by The New Barcelona Post will feature the collaboration of CASA SEAT, Must Media Group and Barcelona Global. The conversation between Montse Puig and Pasqual Batalla will be moderated by journalist and UPF-BSM professor Toni Aira and will take place on Monday, June 12 at 6:30 p.m. in the CASA SEAT auditorium. To attend as an audience member and also ask questions to the speakers, it is necessary to reserve a spot in advance. To get a ticket, click here.
Subsequently, the session can be retrieved in podcast format on Spotify or by viewing it on our Youtube channel, where the eleven previous chapters of the cycle The New Barcelona – Moments Estel·lars, which we premiered a year ago and which will have new editions in July, September, October, and November, are already available.
Thanks to the experience of both speakers, in the session we will be able to obtain a snapshot of the video game industry worldwide and also of the situation in Spain as a whole and in Catalonia. The idea is to explain why Barcelona has managed to position itself as a hub in gaming and what advantages and also disadvantages large international companies see when deciding to set up in the city. Talent management, how to attract it and, especially, how to retain it will be a prominent element of the conversation between Batalla and Puig, whom we will also ask about the opportunities and future challenges facing the sector.
In addition to NetEase, this year the Finnish group Rovio, owner of the mobile game Angry Birds, has announced the opening of a studio in Barcelona, the first in Southern Europe, which will create about thirty jobs. The Swiss video game company FunPlus, which landed in the Catalan capital in 2019, has also announced the hiring of 120 new professionals. For its part, the Danish company IO Interactive, owner of the Hitman and Kane & Lynch sagas, announced its intention to reinforce its Barcelona center with 150 more jobs, with projects such as the development of a James Bond video game. These studios join more veteran companies in Barcelona such as Digital Legends, Novarama, Social Point, Digital Chocolate, Ubisoft, Akamon and subsidiaries of groups such as Gameloft, Zeptolab and King (Candy Crush), among others.
Precisely, Montse Puig Ponsico has developed a good part of her professional career in one of these companies, Akamon, founded by Carlos Blanco and Vicenç Martí in 2011 and heir to Mundijuegos. After achieving great success, Akamon was acquired at the end of 2015 by the Canadian group Imperus, which also integrated the Israeli firm Diwip and was renamed Tangelo Games. Between 2011 and 2018, Puig, who had previously worked at Accenture and Almirall, held various positions in the online gaming company, focusing in the last stage on the roles of financial director and corporate director of the Tangelo Games group, with responsibilities over businesses in Spain, Israel, and Canada.
In October 2022, Puig joined as CEO of Barcelona & Partners, an agency created by the partners of Barcelona Global whose mission is to attract investments from innovative companies to the Catalan capital and foster public-private collaboration. Last year, Barcelona & Partners contributed to about nine companies choosing the city to establish or expand their digital hubs.
For his part, Pasqual Batalla is one of the relevant players in Barcelona's gaming sector, as he is a member and advisor of multiple entities and associations, in addition to being a professor of the Degree in Video Game Design and Development, taught by CITM (UPC). Linked to Socialpoint for seven years, he is an expert in mobile games, e-commerce, and emerging digital companies, thanks to also having worked at Letsbonus. Batalla is a member of the board of the Spanish Association of Video Game Production and Development Companies and Entertainment Software (DEV), as well as a member of DeviCAT, the Association of Video Game Developers and Publishers in Catalonia, a horizontal association that brings together companies born here, but also international companies with a presence in Catalonia.
Passionate about technology and highly committed to the social, cultural, and economic life of Barcelona, as a reference professional in the local video game industry ecosystem, Pasqual Batalla collaborates with GameBCN, IndieDevDay, and Gamelab, and also with Friquifund, Barcelona Digital Talent, and Barcelona Global. A PDG from IESE, MBA from Esade, and Master in Engineering from UPC, he had the privilege of participating in 2019 in the Executive Program of Singularity University (Silicon Valley), and is also an investor and business angel in several Barcelona startups.
Creator of the mobile games Dragon City and Monster Legends, Socialpoint is one of the great successes of Barcelona's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Founded in 2008 by Horacio Martos and Andrés Bou, the company has accumulated over 600 million downloads and in 2017 was acquired by the American multinational Take Two Interactive, publisher of the game Grand Theft Auto and also owner of Zynga, in a notable operation valued at 250 million dollars.