How to actually network at game industry events
(and not be a jerk about it)
Game industry events like Nordic Game, GIC, DevGamm, Digital Dragons, or Gamescom Business are not conferences in the traditional sense. Yes, there are panels and talks. But the real reason most professionals attend isn’t the programming - it’s the density. Hundreds of people who are hard to reach by email are suddenly in the same building for three days. That’s the product. The question is how to use it well.
The answer is different depending on who you are and what you need. I’m going to go through the main participant types in detail, but first - the formats. Because understanding what’s available is the foundation of everything else.
The formats, explained properly
Meet2Match / B2B matchmaking
This is the backbone of most European industry events. Nordic Game, Digital Dragons, GIC, Gamescom Business, A Maze, DevGamm - all of them run some version of it. The basic mechanic: you create a profile, browse other attendees, send meeting requests, get matched, and show up to a table at an appointed time for a 20-30 minute conversation.
Sounds simple. In practice, there’s a lot of variation in how well it works - and most of that variation comes down to the quality of the profiles and the specificity of the requests.
A bad Meet2Match profile says something like “indie studio looking for publisher.” A good one tells you the game’s genre, platform, current development stage, estimated budget needed, comparable titles, and what kind of publishing deal they’re looking for. A bad meeting request is a mass-send to every publisher in the system. A good one is specific about why you’re reaching out to this particular company and what you want to discuss. Do a little research, write something personal to make an actual connection.
The platform itself varies by event. Digital Dragons, Nordic Game or Gamescom they all used many platforms in the past. Whatever the tool, use it thoroughly - most people don’t fill out their profiles properly, which means even a reasonably complete profile stands out. I use a data scraper to put all of those people into Google Sheets. I can see where the blanks are in the company descriptions and check manually if there is any fit. I found it to be better than clicking through M2M or any other platform, and I can filter out a ton of data to separate the leads I need.
A few tactical notes on Meet2Match that most people learn the hard way
Start requesting meetings early. The best slots fill up fast, and popular publishers or investors can have their entire schedule booked before the event starts.
Check your incoming requests as carefully as your outgoing ones. Some of the best meetings I’ve had were with people who reached out to me, not the other way around.
Build buffer time into your schedule. Back-to-back Meet2Match for eight hours sounds productive. By hour five you’re reciting your pitch like a robot and absorbing nothing. Leave gaps. Use them to decompress, take notes from previous meetings, or have spontaneous conversations.
Have a system for what happens after each meeting. Whether it’s a notes app, a notebook, or just consistent voice memos - you need to capture context immediately. By the end of day two, meetings blur together. “The guy with the racing game” could be three different people. I personally still struggle with this one, and try new things to make it easier and less time-consuming. The method that works the best for me is using tags - studio name, person name, genre, needs, next steps.
Pitching sessions
Pitching sessions are more structured than Meet2Match - usually a dedicated track where developers present to a panel of publishers or investors, with a formal time limit and moderated Q&A. Some events run these as competitive sessions where the best pitch wins something. Others are purely informational.
The value varies significantly depending on the curation. A well-run pitching session with pre-screened participants and relevant publishers in the room is one of the most valuable things at an event. A poorly run one is a series of awkward presentations to publishers who don’t work in that genre, followed by generic feedback.
Before you apply to a pitching session, find out who the judges or publishers in the room will be. If that information isn’t publicly available, ask the organizers. “I want to make sure my project is relevant to the attendees” is a completely reasonable question and any decent event organizer will answer it.
If you’re pitching: the time limit is real, so practice. Not practicing your pitch at an event is like showing up to a job interview without preparing answers. You know what questions are coming - there are maybe eight standard publisher questions and you’ve seen them all before. Prepare for them.
If you’re on the receiving end: the game you see might not be the right fit, but the developer in front of you is a real person who has worked hard on this for months or years. How you conduct yourself in that room matters.
I’ll get back to this with a specific story in the indie developer section.
Indie showcases
Most mid-to-large events have a showcase floor where developers can set up a station and let people play their game. This is structurally different from Meet2Match or pitching - it’s inbound rather than outbound. You set up, you play host, and you see who comes to you.
The obvious value is press coverage and community building. But for business development purposes, the showcase floor is underrated because of who wanders past. Publishers scouting for games. Investors doing a round of the floor. Platform holders looking for exclusives or partnerships. Journalists who might write about you, or not, but who might introduce you to someone who matters.
The mistake most developers make at showcases is treating them purely as a demo opportunity and not as a networking opportunity. Someone stops, plays for five minutes, looks genuinely interested - that’s a conversation starter. Have something to hand them. Know what your ask is.
One tactical note: if you’re at a showcase and a publisher rep stops by, they may not have a meeting slot for you in their formal schedule. But they just played your game. That’s a warm introduction. Ask for a card and follow up specifically - “you played the game at the showcase, here’s what I’d want to discuss in a proper conversation.”
Mixers and networking drinks
Every event has at least one official networking mixer - usually an evening event, drinks included, standing around in a venue with a hundred other people trying to remember names. They’re chaotic and often loud and not ideal for complex conversations.
But they’re where a lot of the real event happens.
Mixers strip away the formality of scheduled meetings. You’re not a developer and a publisher in a B2B context. You’re two people at a bar. Conversations start differently, go to different places, and often end with something more useful than a formal meeting would have produced. I’ve met a Head of Studio at Kojima Productions casually waiting for my drink and got pranked into thinking he’s an indie developer from Japan doing mostly walking-sims - which is correct, if you think of it :)
The practical approach to mixers: don’t stand with the people you already know. That’s comfortable and useless. Identify two or three specific people you want to talk to before you arrive. Find them early. And have a one-sentence answer to “what are you working on” that’s interesting enough to keep the conversation going, but not so long it sounds like a pitch.
Also: listen more than you talk. Most people at mixers are looking for an opportunity to tell someone about what they’re doing. Being the person who asks good questions and actually pays attention is rarer than it should be, and it’s memorable. And people looooooove talking about themselves or their precious projects.
After parties
After parties come in two varieties: official, which are extensions of the mixer format but later and louder, and unofficial, which are someone’s dinner reservation that became a table of twelve, or a studio’s private event, or a bar where everyone ended up after the official thing closed.
The unofficial after parties are often better. They’re smaller, which means conversations go deeper. They’re self-selected, which means everyone there wanted to be there. And they’re where the relationships that started at the mixer get followed up properly. Another plus is that there are fewer people so it might be easier to reach someone who wasn’t available to schedule in M2M or any other way. Go get them tiger!
How do you find out about after parties? Ask people. “What are you doing later?” is a perfectly normal question at an industry event. If you’ve had a good conversation during the day, invite them to join you for dinner. The games industry runs on genuine human relationships, and those get built over food and drinks more often than at scheduled meetings. It’s a cultural thing - many important events and decisions are made over food and drinks in a semi-formal environment. On my very own wedding, one of the guests made a million-dollar deal while waiting to use the bathroom. You never know!
One note on stamina: you don’t have to go to everything. By day two of a three-day event, some people are running on fumes. A bad after party on Thursday night will hurt your Friday. Know your limits and use your energy where it counts. On the other hand, if you see someone you want to be friends with or keep them closer for future opportunities, bring them coffee, ask if they’re alive or compliment their karaoke skills. Be human!
Panels, talks, and keynotes
Most professionals use these as breaks between meetings. That’s fine, but there’s a networking angle worth considering.
Before a panel, you often know who’s sitting around you - you can see their badge. If someone you’ve been trying to meet is in the same row, that’s a low-pressure moment to introduce yourself. After a panel, the speaker is usually accessible for ten to fifteen minutes before the next session. Most people at a conference see the speaker as untouchable. They’re not. “I thought what you said about X was interesting - I have a slightly different view from my experience in Y” is a conversation opener, not an interruption.
The talk itself can also tell you things. How a publisher rep frames the challenges they’re seeing tells you a lot about what they’re looking for. A platform holder’s keynote about where they’re investing signals what kind of games they want. Good listeners take notes. Great listeners take notes and figure out what the subtext means.
If you’re an indie developer
Let me be direct about something first: going to an industry event as an indie developer, especially for the first time, is intimidating. You’re surrounded by people who seem to know everyone, who speak in industry shorthand, who have schedules packed with meetings while you’re hoping someone will respond to your requests.
That feeling is normal. And it gets better - but only if you put yourself in situations where it can.
Before the event
Your work starts well before you get on the plane. Research which publishers are attending. Not all publishers - the ones who have published games like yours. Look at their recent releases, their stated acquisition criteria, their public statements about what they’re looking for. Build a short list of five to ten companies where there’s a genuine fit.
Send targeted meeting requests. One sentence about your game. One sentence about why you’re reaching out to them specifically. One clear ask - “I’d like to show you a demo and get your feedback” is better than “I’d like to discuss potential partnerships.”
Prepare your materials. A short pitch deck (ten slides maximum). A playable demo if you have one - on a laptop you control, not a link you’re hoping they’ll click on later. A one-page fact sheet with the key information. Leave-behind materials that have your contact details on them.
And prepare your pitch verbally. Practice it out loud. Not in your head - out loud, in front of another person if possible. The first time you say “our game is like Expedition 33 meets Cyberpunk but set during the period of cold war in Poland” it will sound strange. By the fifth time it will sound natural. You want it to sound natural by the time you’re in the meeting.
During meetings
The most common mistake indie developers make in publisher meetings is talking too much. You have twenty minutes. The publisher needs to understand the game in the first five. If you’re ten minutes in and still setting up the context, you’ve lost them.
Lead with the hook. Genre, platform, comparable titles, what makes it different, current stage, what you’re looking for. Then show the demo or the deck. Pick just one. Going through a pitch deck might not leave time for actually playing the demo. If you showcase the demo first, the pitch deck can be sent later - they already saw what the game is about. Then ask what questions they have.
Pay attention to what publishers ask. The questions they ask tell you what matters to them. If they immediately ask about monetisation, that tells you something about their model. If they ask about team size and whether you’ve shipped before, they’re assessing risk. If they ask about the story and the world, they care about narrative. These are signals you can use to calibrate the conversation.
When a meeting isn’t going the way you hoped - and some won’t - don’t let it become a disaster of awkward silence and polite nodding. Ask directly: “It sounds like this might not be the right fit - can I ask what’s missing for you?” That question gets you useful information. It also shows maturity, which publishers remember.
And before you leave any meeting, even a bad one, ask two questions. “What would need to be different about this project for it to be interesting to you?” And - if it feels appropriate - “Is there anyone at this event you’d recommend I speak to?” The second question is the more valuable one. A warm introduction from someone the other person trusts is worth ten cold meeting requests.
I want to tell you a specific story here because I think it illustrates something important about how to approach these situations.
When I was working on the publisher side, I sat through a lot of pitching sessions. Most developers come in alone or with a colleague. One time, a young developer came in with his game - and his father.
The father ran his own businesses, unrelated to games. He’d clearly come along to support his son, maybe because the son was nervous, maybe because the father wanted to understand what his kid was doing with his life. He sat quietly through the entire pitch, watching, taking it in.
After we’d gone through the game and the son had handled the questions as best he could, the father spoke. He gave his son feedback from a pure business perspective - about the structure of the pitch, about how he’d handled objections, about what the “ask” was and whether it had been clear. I was stunned in a very positive way.
I added my own feedback. About the game specifically - what was working mechanically, what the market context looked like, what the pitch would have needed to land differently. The developer wrote everything down. Not on his phone - in an actual notebook. He asked follow-up questions. He thanked us both and left.
He didn’t sign a deal. But he left that room with more useful, actionable information than most developers get from ten meetings combined. Because he was genuinely open to feedback, he asked for it explicitly, and he received it without getting defensive.
That attitude - “I’m here to learn as much as I’m here to close” - is the right frame for your first several events. Maybe longer than that.
Indie showcases as an indie developer
If you have a playable build, get a showcase slot if the event offers one. Even if you’re primarily there for business meetings.
The showcase gets you in front of people who aren’t in your meeting schedule. It gives you something to point people to when you meet them - “come play it, stand three is in the back left.” It gives press an easy way to cover you. And it gets you real, unfiltered reactions to the game from strangers, which is its own form of market research. It’s also a free QA. I cannot stress how many times I went back to the company with several cases to reproduce and fix.
Stand at your station, not behind it. Make eye contact with people passing. “Want to try it?” is enough of an opener. Some people will say no. Many will say yes. The ones who play for more than a minute and then start asking questions are the ones to talk to properly.
After parties as an indie developer
Go to them. Even if you’re tired. Especially if you’re tired and your schedule was light.
The formal meeting structure at events disadvantages smaller developers. Publishers with full schedules won’t always have a Meet2Match slot for you. But they’ll be at the mixer. They’ll be at the after party. And a conversation that starts “I was the one pitching the Expedition 33 and Cyberpunk mix game earlier” is a very different conversation than a cold meeting request.
If you’re a mid-size or AA/AAA developer
Your event experience is different in almost every way. You probably have a publishing deal, or you’re not looking for one. You’re not pitching for survival - you’re maintaining relationships, doing competitive intelligence, talking to platform holders, maybe looking for co-development partners or technology vendors.
The structured formats matter less for you than for indie developers. Your value is in the corridor. The dinner with a platform holder rep you’ve known for five years. The conversation at the mixer with the head of business development at a studio you might want to work with someday. The panel where you finally meet in person someone you’ve only emailed.
What you’re actually there to do
Relationship maintenance. The games industry has a remarkably small core. The same few hundred people show up at Nordic Game, Gamescom, GIC, and Digital Dragons every year. Keeping those relationships warm - not just when you need something, but consistently - is what networking actually means at this level.
Competitive intelligence. What games are getting buzz on the showcase floor this year? Which publishers seem to have a lot of meetings and which seem quiet? Who’s hiring aggressively, and for what roles? Who’s not at the event this year that usually is? All of this is signal.
Platform relationships. If you have games on console platforms, events are where you maintain those relationships face to face. Platform holder reps are often easier to reach at events than through normal channels. Use that access.
Talent scouting. Mid-to-large studios are always looking for people. Industry events are full of talented people between jobs, unhappy at their current studio, or open to something new. You don’t have to be crass about it - just keep your eyes open and your conversations genuine. I myself met my last boss at one of these events, and a simple follow up on LinkedIn landed me a role.
What you shouldn’t do
Don’t spend the whole event only talking to people you already know. It’s comfortable and unproductive.
Don’t skip the informal formats because your schedule is full of formal meetings. The best intelligence comes from unstructured conversation, not scheduled ones.
Don’t treat junior developers or first-time attendees as not worth your time. The person with the indie game and no publisher today might be making something you want to work on in three years. The assistant who took notes in every meeting at GIC this year is going to be a senior producer somewhere in five years. Treat people consistently, not according to their current status.
If you’re a publisher
You’re the most sought-after person at the event. Every developer wants a meeting. Your Meet2Match slots will fill up completely, and you’ll get requests from people who haven’t done basic research about what you publish. By day two you’ll be exhausted and your pitch reception quality will have declined significantly.
Here’s what good publisher behavior at events looks like.
Managing your schedule
Be deliberate about what you accept. Yes, your schedule will be full - but full of the right meetings or full of whoever applied? It matters. Spend time before the event reviewing incoming requests and prioritising the ones that seem like genuine fits. Decline politely but clearly the ones that aren’t.
Build real breaks into your schedule. Not “lunch at a different table with different people.” Actual breaks where you’re not performing. You’ll have better conversations in the meetings you do take.
In the meetings
Listen before you evaluate. Let the developer show you the game before you form a conclusion. The number of publishers I’ve seen who clearly decided “no” in the first two minutes and then spent eighteen minutes visibly waiting for it to end is embarrassing. Even if you know it’s a pass, the meeting has started - be present in it.
Be honest early. If you can see in the first five minutes that this isn’t a fit, say so. “I can see this is a polished project, but we’re not actively looking for games in this genre right now” is a complete sentence. It respects the developer’s time and yours. It’s far kinder than letting them pitch for twenty minutes to a publisher who checked out before the demo started. I’d sooner apologize and maybe suggest another company and leave earlier, than pretend to have a genuine interest if the project is clearly too low quality or not a genre fit.
Give specific feedback. “Not for us” is the beginning of a sentence, not the end of one. Why not? What would need to be different? Is the problem the game, the timing, the team, the stage of development? Specific feedback is valuable. Generic feedback is noise.
One more thing about feedback: give it without condescension. You’ve seen a hundred games this week. They’ve made this one for the last two years. The power differential is real. Use it to help, not to perform.
A note on long-term thinking
The developer whose game you pass on today might make something exceptional in four years. The way you treated them at this meeting will influence whether they come to you with it. Publishers with reputations for being fair, honest, and respectful in pass situations get first looks at the best projects. That’s not an accident.
Your reputation at events is built meeting by meeting, year by year. People talk. The games industry has a long memory. And you’re not as anonymous as you might think. Don’t be that guy who just wants to have pictures with everyone, but we all know hasn’t delivered anything in years
If you’re an investor
Almost everything in the publisher section applies. You’re evaluating deals, you’re managing a full schedule, and you have the power in most of the conversations you’re having.
A few things specific to the investor context:
Be clear about what you actually invest in. The number of investor meetings where the first ten minutes are a developer trying to figure out whether this person invests in games at all, or at what stage, or with what ticket size, is absurd. Have a clear and accessible profile. State your thesis. It saves everyone’s time.
The decision to pass is also a service. A clear, early, honest “this isn’t for our fund because X” is genuinely useful to a developer. They can cross you off their list and move on to the right investors faster. Dragging out a process you know is going nowhere is not kindness - it’s discomfort management on your part and a pain in the butt if you’ll get dragged in countless emails after the event.
Drop the performance. Some investors at events seem to be there to be seen as investors more than to actually do deals. They drop fund names, they speak in jargon, they make developers feel like they should be grateful for the audience. It’s unimpressive to anyone who has been around long enough. The investors I’ve seen do the most interesting deals at events are the ones who ask simple questions, listen carefully, and treat developers like adults.
Give back something real. If a game isn’t right for you, but you have specific expertise - in market positioning, in fundraising, in a particular platform or genre - offer it. One or two concrete observations from someone experienced costs you five minutes and can genuinely change how a developer thinks about their project. The reputation you build by being that person is worth more than any short-term advantage you gain by keeping your cards close.
If you’re a service provider - PR, influencer marketing, QA, localisation, co-development
You’re in a structurally awkward position at most industry events, and it’s worth being honest about that.
Most of the networking formats at game industry events are designed around developer-to-publisher or developer-to-investor relationships. If you’re a PR agency or an influencer marketing studio or a QA house, the formal structures often don’t serve you well. Meet2Match profiles are optimised for developers seeking publishing. Pitching sessions aren’t for you.
Showcase floors are quite tricky, and I have my own experience with these. A project that is looking for a publisher now might realize that having 150k wishlists means they’d be better off self-publishing and hiring an agency. Take a card, ask when they want to release, follow up 3-6 months before launch, asking for an update (check their Steam page first - maybe there’s still no publisher listed there).
Your event is the informal one.
What actually works
Being genuinely useful in conversation before you’re useful commercially. If you run influencer marketing campaigns, have an informed opinion about what’s working right now in the market and be willing to share it without a pitch attached. If you’re in PR, know which outlets are actively covering which types of games and be able to give a developer real, specific information about their options. If you do localisation, know which markets are growing and which languages are underserved for the genres you work in.
People hire service providers they trust. Trust gets built by demonstrating knowledge that helps them, not by handing out decks.
The positioning that works best for service providers at events is something like: I’m not here to sell you anything, I’m here to be a useful person to know. When you need what I offer, you’ll know where to find me.
The mixer is your office
If the formal formats don’t serve you well, the informal ones do. Mixers, after parties, dinners, the coffee queue before a morning panel. These are where you build the relationships that turn into client conversations later.
The bar is different here too. You’re not trying to close anything at the event. You’re trying to be in the right conversations so that when someone needs PR three months from now, or influencer marketing for their launch, or QA before they go gold, your name is the one that comes up.
On pitching your services
Don’t lead with what you offer. Lead with what they need. If a developer is telling you about their upcoming launch and they mention they haven’t figured out press coverage yet, that’s the moment for “that’s actually an area I work in - happy to share some thoughts if useful.” Not “we have a five-tier PR package that includes...”
The hard sell doesn’t work in a relationship business. The games industry is a relationship business.
The stuff that applies to everyone, regardless of who you are
Be a human being.
This sounds obvious. At events, under the pressure of schedules and deal-making and the performance of professional competence, it’s surprisingly easy to forget.
The person across the table from you at a pitching session, or in a Meet2Match meeting, or at a mixer - they’re a real person with real stakes in how this conversation goes. Maybe they’ve flown here from another country. Maybe this is their first event. Maybe this is their fifth year attending and they’re exhausted and wondering if it’s worth it. None of that changes whether you’re polite and decent and honest with them.
The best networkers I’ve seen at events aren’t the most aggressive or the most well-connected. They’re the people who make everyone they talk to feel like the conversation was worthwhile. That’s the thing that gets you remembered. That’s what builds a real network rather than a list of LinkedIn connections.
Take notes and follow up.
The number of meetings that end with “let’s stay in touch” and are never followed up on is staggering. Don’t be that person.
Within 24 hours of a meeting that went somewhere, send a specific follow-up. Not “great to meet you” - reference something specific from the conversation. “You mentioned you were looking at games with a strong Eastern European narrative - I thought of [specific thing] when you said that, wanted to share it.” That level of specificity tells them you were actually listening.
For meetings that didn’t go anywhere, it’s still worth a brief follow-up if there was any genuine connection. “Thanks for the honest feedback on the pitch - I’m going to work on X based on what you said” is a response that most publishers and investors remember positively.
Manage your energy.
Events are a marathon, not a sprint. The most valuable meetings often happen on the last day, when schedules open up and people are more relaxed. If you’ve burned yourself out by the second evening, you won’t be there for them.
It’s okay to skip a mixer. It’s okay to eat dinner alone. It’s okay to go to bed early. The goal isn’t to attend everything - it’s to be present and useful in the conversations you do have.
The follow-up is where the event actually happens.
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. Events create the context for relationships. The relationships themselves get built afterward - in email threads, in video calls, in the slow accumulation of “we keep running into each other and the conversations keep being good.”
The value of an event is proportional to what you do with it after you get home. Clear your head, go through your notes, and actually do the things you said you’d do. Every person who said they’d send you something and didn’t is a small erosion of trust. Every person who followed through exactly as promised is a small deposit into a relationship that might matter a lot someday.
I’ll be at Digital Dragons 2026 this week. If you’re there - come find me. I’ll be the one with strong opinions about all of the above and a genuine interest in what you’re working on.
And if you’re not there this year: pick one event in the next twelve months, prepare properly, and go. The games industry is small and warm and weird and full of people who are genuinely happy to talk about what they do. You just have to show up.
Some great points here, cheers Matt! I'll admit I've succumbed to the "only talking to people you already know" trap more times than I can remember, and it requires a deliberate effort to break out of the comfort zone and start hearing what other people are up to. It seems to get easier with age and experience, but it's still something you have to *remind* yourself to do!