The Creative Europe program is the main program of the European Union that provides financial support to institutions and organizations in the field of culture in order to preserve, develop and promote European cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as heritage, and improve the competitiveness and economic potential of cultural, and especially audiovisual, activities.
It is divided into three subprograms – Culture, which covers all areas of culture and art, with the exception of audiovisual activities which are covered by the MEDIA subprogram, and the Intersectoral strand, which enables cooperation between different creative areas covering, among other things, the area of information and media.
The goal of supporting the development of video games and immersive content is to increase the capacity of European video game producers, XR studios and audiovisual production companies to develop video games and interactive immersive experiences with the potential to reach a global audience. The support also aims to improve the competitiveness of the European video game industry and other companies producing interactive immersive content in the European and international markets by enabling the retention of intellectual property by European developers.
The competition is open to activities related to the pre-production phase of narrative video games and interactive narrative immersive experiences, regardless of platform or expected method of distribution. The current open call for supporting the development of video games is open until January 24th 2024, and on this occasion it will be presented by Una Domazetoski, in front of the MEDIA Desk.
What is specific about this presentation is that we will be joined by representatives of the company Codemancy from Niš, which successfully applied in the previous cycle of this program and secured the support of the European Union for its Endless Light project. Saša Veličković and Dragan Stoiljković will be with us, who will share their direct experience of preparing the application for this competition.
Codemancy is a full stack software development company from Niš. Founded 9 years ago, the company employs over thirty bright and curious people with different skills, interests and specializations. Over the years, we have evolved into a diverse team whose expertise lies primarily in the development and integration of enterprise platforms for e-commerce, analytics, logistics and marketing. Their first foray into commercial game development began with the release of the game Lawbringer on the Steam platform earlier this year. Their goal is to channel nearly a decade of experience in the development and organization of complex software projects into the video game market.
Endless Light is a narrative roguelike action game about a girl trying to fix a world that has survived a kind of surreal disaster. Our protagonist, a young girl called Owl, grew up in one of the isolated communities that exist on the border with Conjecture – a changing and fluid manifestation of Entropy. Her world does not follow the laws of strict, objective reality, but is shaped by ideas, ideologies and beliefs and undergoes constant transformation. The game explores themes of transformation, ideology, objective reality, and the cyclical nature of life and the universe. Although primarily a sci-fi story, Endless Light borrows many elements of the weird fiction genre, inspired by physics, philosophy, mythology and speculative fiction, as well as the history and culture of our climate.