First time in Argentina and I’m blown away. The people are lovely, the food is excellent, the city is vibrant, and the games community is as strong and supportive as anywhere I’ve visited.

I savored every minute talking games production, learning about exciting projects in development, and discussing company ambitions with studio founders.

Wanted to share a few takeaways from my time in an up-and-coming games community:

1. Lack of local funding options means the default path for studios is to support their original IP ambitions is via service work. Props to Buenos Aires based Purple Tree Studio for founding a local publishing label this year to help the next generation of Argentinian games reach new heights.

2. I was surprised to learn that many successful original IP studios such as Epic LLama Games highly leverage local service talent, even when there is no cost-of-living delta. Since the community is so tight, “trust” isn’t an issue, and the ability to keep their in-house team lean, flexibly bring on capabilities, and tap into specialty expertise makes the heavy use of ExDev a no-brainer.

3. While the university system offers video game courses, there’s still a gap between what’s taught in school and the skills required to work in industry. I was very impressed to see studios such as Pizia who have taken it upon themselves to create and offer their own bootcamps to develop the next generation of games talent.

4. While admittedly not as mature as some parts of the world, there are studios in Cordoba that are approaching the two-decade mark of working industry such as Ravegan (celebrating 17 yrs!) with all signs pointing to more growth.

5. Did I mention the people were lovely?

It’s been a tough year for the industry, but there’s a lot of hope and excitement about games in Argentina. It was invigorating to experience.

And yes, I played tourist and am traveling home with Messi national team jerseys for the whole family. 😂

‍