The DE:HIVE Game Incubator is an industry-specific embedded incubator for games and playfull experiences projects in the start-up phase. The incubator is part of the entrepreneurship education for the games industry and supports start-up teams from the GAME DESIGN and SYSTEM DESIGN GAME degree programmes.

Through coaching, financial advice, the provision of studios and infrastructure equipment as well as comprehensive service packages, up to four founding teams are extensively supported each year. In addition, the founders receive mentoring in team building, idea generation and the application for financing.

Through the vertical segmentation on the games industry, the founding teams can be supported in a targeted and industry-specific manner. External partners can be clearly addressed. 

Services:

• Coaching and counselling
• Incubator room
• Use of studios, conference and meeting rooms
• Playtesting and Evaluation
• Monetary benefit as co-financing to external funding programmes

Duties and costs:

• Cost none.
• Know-how transfer to teaching
• Communication tasks
• Collaboration in the studio service

Furthermore, the embedding offers mutual advantages and potentials for the founding teams as well as for the game design students. Founding teams can concretise their ideas in a secure framework, they can use the shared infrastructure they are familiar with, and they have hundreds of playtesters on site. Students are sensitised to start-up options and stimulated to start-ups through the role model function of the founding teams. Through embedded curricularisation of an entrepreneurship mindset in various modules, students are trained early on in the necessary skills for entrepreneurial thinking in a variety of situations. In special start-up projects, students receive practical training even before a start-up phase.