Special esports showcase event to kick off London Games Festival 2024 in partnership with Coutts

For transparency: Esports News UK editor Dom Sacco is currently doing some freelance work with Games London around this esports event

London Games Festival 2024 is around the corner, and it will get underway with a special invite-only Rocket League esports showcase event.

Coutts – one of the UK’s largest commercial and private bankers of interactive entertainment clients – is working in partnership with Games London to sponsor the festival for the third year in a row.

The London Games Festival (LGF) runs from April 9th to 25th 2024 and is the UK’s biggest celebration of video games and interactive entertainment. The festival brings investors to London to find new games, showcases upcoming talent from around the world, and creates a platform for the best qualities of games.

Last year, around 58,000 people visited the festival, and the organisers are expecting even more this year.

London Games Festival is supported by the Mayor of London. It is delivered by Games London, an initiative from Film London, the capital’s screen industries agency, and UK video games industry trade body Ukie.

The UK is the fifth biggest market in the video gaming industry (according to Global Data), and valued at over £7.16bn in 2022 (Ukie).

Coutts has been supporting the games sector for over ten years, with dedicated relationship managers who have specialist knowledge on how to help busy entrepreneurs manage their finances and be a busy entrepreneur in this ever-growing sector. Coutts private bank also supports individual entrepreneurs, esports stars, gamers and streamers with their personal wealth management.

Paul Franks, Head of Interactive Entertainment at Coutts, said: “For more than 330 years, Coutts has provided banking services to dynamic businesses in high-growth sectors. We’re really excited to be continuing our sponsorship of the London Games Festival as one of the key partners. Interactive Entertainment is one of the fastest growing industries in the UK.

“Through this partnership, our aim is to highlight our continued support for this sector through our dedicated team of specialists that understand clients’ needs.”

Michael French, Head of Games London and Festival Director, commented: “We are ecstatic to embark on another exciting journey celebrating a real variety of games creativity over the course of the London Games Festival with Coutts.

“This year we are showcasing an even greater breadth of experiences that can be found in the video games world. We wouldn’t be able to put on this opening night celebration to kick start the festival without the support from Coutts as one of our key partners.”

What’s happening on the opening night of London Games Festival 2024? Esports info revealed

Coutts will host the London Games Festival 2024 invite-only sold-out opening night event at its head offices at 440 Strand, which will be attended by clients, other festival partners, gamers and key stakeholders within the gaming industry.

The April 9th event will showcase different gaming installation for visitors to experience the latest in gaming and interactive entertainment for themselves.

It will include an esports Rocket League challenge, with Overclockers UK providing equipment including PCs, monitors and accessories, as well as showcasing its 8Pack PCs, and noblechairs providing gaming chairs.

Members of the audience will be able to go up against two esports professionals from UK esports organisation GridServe Resolve: Welsh talent Euan ‘Tadpole’ Ingram (current coach for the Rocket League team, previous RLCS Worlds semi-finalist and Commonwealth Gold Medalist) and David ‘Rezears’ Wunsch (current Resolve player and the highest-ranked German player of all time). Resolve COO Jeff Simpkins will also be in attendance.

Casters Daisy ‘Damp’ Powers and Mads Pedersen will lead proceedings, with former Method event director Darren Price, and observer Jack Baxter (from the College of Esports) also running the esports activity.

Esports News UK’s Dom Sacco will also be there on the night covering the event.

The full list of activities on the night include:

• Bespoke arcade machines with Antstream Arcade, the largest retro platform with the biggest catalogue of classic games
• Ghost Valley RC, which brings the digital experience of Super Mario Kart into a physical reality
• DYN x Dynamic Racing Experience, powered by Cooler Master, a simulated racing game
• Kat Walk Omnidirectional Treadmill to explore new dimensions in virtual reality gaming
• A variety of games made by over 40 independent developers from around the world, as curated by London Games Festival
• Esports Rocket League challenge 

London Games Festival 2024 will be biggest yet – here’s the full line-up

This year’s London Games Festival will be the biggest event in its history yet. The international showcase of video games has more than 45 events locked into the schedule.

The festival runs from Tuesday April 9th to Thursday April 25th.

Side events will run alongside core events already announced, such as:

• Ensemble, which champions underrepresented ethnicities working in video games. The new cohort for which will be unveiled at the start of LGF on April 9th ahead of a Trafalgar Square showcase on Saturday April 13th
• Games Finance Market, which connects investors and publishers with games creators and this year includes added delegations from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Romania and Canada
• Tentpole partner events Now Play This, W.A.S.D, and the BAFTA Games Awards

Over 4,000 industry professionals are expected to participate in various B2B events – with the overall festival attendance in-person set to exceed last year’s 58,000.

A range of businesses from across the sector have pledged support for the Festival. These include festival partners Coutts, Taylor Wessing, Alliotts, Corpay, Revolgy and Wizards of the Coast.

LGF’s inaugural Screen Play conference examines growing links between games and other screen media

Leading names across games, film and television will share the stage at London Games Festival next week to discuss the increasingly legitimate connections between their screen industries.

Screen Play, LGF’s inaugural event dedicated to crossover between the screen industries, takes place on the afternoon of Wednesday April 10th hosted at event partner Vue’s Leicester Square flagship cinema.

Highlights include a case study on Amazon Prime’s new streaming TV show based on Bethesda’s Fallout and a look at the way Ubisoft has successfully adapted its IP for the screen.

The full agenda for the afternoon event includes:

• A fireside chat with Emmy-nominated Ubisoft Film & TV Paris managing director Helene Juguet on establishing an entertainment label within a games publisher
• Insights from Academy Award-nominated Jonathan Nolan (Westworld, Interstellar) and game director Todd Howard (Bethesda) on how the Fallout game series has been adapted for Amazon Prime’s imminent new streaming TV series
• Discussions on worldbuilding IP universes that work across different media with input from experts including Kristian Segerstrale (Super Evil Mega Corp) and Eugene Evans (Wizards of the Coast)
• Baldur’s Gate 3’s Jennifer English (actor ‘Shadowheart’) and Aliona Baranova (performance director) on why performing for video games is ‘the Olympics of acting’
• A case study on working across animation and games by French studio Bobbypills which adapted Blood Dragon into an acclaimed animation series for Netflix & Ubisoft and is now working on Motion Twin’s indie mega-hit Dead Cells franchise – both animated spin-offs and games

Official Selection games announced

Festival organisers Games London has also unveiled the line-up for the fourth annual Official Selection, which champions new and innovative indie games made in London, across the UK – and around the world.

There are 40 games across five categories: Made in London, Best of British, International Innovators, Comedy and New Voices.

Highlights from the line-up include the next game from Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn creator Lucas Pope, Mars After Midnight, the sequel to BAFTA-nominated Citizen Sleeper, and the latest from London-based Snipperclips creators SFB Games, Crow Country.

The New Voices and International Innovators strands give focus to global games from new studios hailing from India, Brazil, the Philippines, France, Italy, Canada and Iceland.

This international selection of titles will be showcased online throughout LGF through activities like a dedicated Steam festival demo event – but will also be playable in person on Steam Deck and Playdate handhelds at a variety of events over the two weeks.

Organisers say the line-up of global games developers ‘reflects both the breadth of content and international flavour at London Games Festival this year’.

The Official Selection line-up is:

MADE IN LONDON

• Exilium (lonch.me)
• GladiEATers (MilkBubblesGames)
• Morgan: Metal Detective (Studio Morgan)
• Squarelets (Chaos Cookie)
• Crow Country (SFB Games)
• Thank Goodness You’re Here! (Coal Supper)
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Jump Over the Age)

BEST OF BRITISH

• Dead Meat (Meaning Machine) London, Bristol
• Mimic (Ryan Laley Games) Colchester, England
• Phoenix Springs (Calligram Studio) Hebden Bridge, UK
• Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (Polygon Treehouse) Dundee (Scotland) & Cambridge(England)
• Luna Abyss (Bonsai Collective) Remote, across United Kingdom
• Botany Manor (Balloon Studios) Totnes, United Kingdom
• Leximan (Knights of Borria) Falmouth & Cranbrook, UK

COMEDY

• Lost in Space – The Adventure Game (Scary Robot) Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Lucky Tower Ultimate (Studio Seufz) Stuttgart, Germany
• Esophaguys (Esophaguys LLC) Remote, USA, Canada, South Africa, India
• Times & Galaxy (Copychaser Games) Edmonton, Canada
• Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip (snekflat) Ede, Netherlands

INTERNATIONAL INNOVATORS

• The Posthumous Investigation (Mother Gaia Studio) Bauru, Brazil
• The Deadly Path (Owlskip Enterprises) Remote – Brighton, Amsterdam, New York
• Echo of the Waves (Oneira Games) Geneva, Switzerland
• Stars in the Trash (Valhalla Cats) Murcia, Spain. Poland and Philippines
• SacriFire (Pixelated Milk) Warsaw, Poland
• Steel Seed (Storm in a Teacup) Rome, Italy
• Aloft (Astrolabe Interactive) Montréal, Canada
• 30 Birds (RAM RAM Games / Business Goose) Brussels, Belgium
• Bionic Bay (Psychoflow Studio, Mureena Oy) Taiwan, Finland
• Nirvana Noir (Feral Cat Den) New York City
• Toads of the Bayou: Prologue (La Grange) France
• Mars After Midnight (Playdate) (Lucas Pope / 3909) Portland, Oregon, USA
• Rusty’s Retirement (Mister Morris Games) Tallinn, Estonia

NEW VOICES

• RAM: Random Access Mayhem (Xylem Studios) Victoria, Canada
• Gurei (Lobo Sagaz Studio) Florianópolis, Brazil
• Fall Up (Unicellular Games) Philippines
• Fishbowl (imissmyfriends.studio) Goa, India
• Music Power Up (microStudio) Strasbourg, France
• The Perfect Pencil (Studio Cima) Italy: Milan, Rome, Crema, Lecco, Caravaggio, Fiumicino. United Kingdom: London
• Island of Winds (Parity Games) Reykjavik, Iceland
• Dino Path Trail (Void Pointer) Rome, Italy

Tickets for the event are available at tickets.games.london. For regularly updated event listings head to games.london/#whatson

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.