That’s correct Game Central has now successfully completed a whole lap of the solar system and goodness we’ve had a busy 365 days as you can see from the scope of our achievements detailed below. So here’s to year one and how we can build on our achievements in our second year.

Over £250k has been invested by Game Central in conjunction with Screen WM in West Midlands games companies across a wide array of projects including pervasive games, educational games, social games and digital distribution which has helped launch five new games companies in the region , including Chromaroma and Soshi Games.

Game Central has supported high profile events such as the first State of Independence games conference focused on opportunities for indie games developers and self-publishing, forging partnerships with regional networks Game Horizon and Game Republic; X48 Microsoft XNA Gamecamp, alongside Microsoft and Mudlark and a pervasive games lab run by Hide&Seek and Fierce Festival.

The network also continues to host regular regional networking ‘Meet‘em Up’ events in conjunction with partners including BAFTA & bluegfx which bring together those working in the region’s industry with high profile speakers such as Activision, Blitz, Freestyle Games, Six to Start, Fish In A Bottle, Hide&Seek and more.

Game Central has also supported the development of a pioneering games skills initiative Gamer Camp in association with Birmingham City University – a Birmingham-based training course for aspiring games artists and programmers from both within and outside the ever-expanding industry. Following a successful Game Central-supported pilot project last year, this has now been officially launched as a fully-fledged skills training programme with four week, three month and nine month courses across a range of development platforms.

To mark its first year and to help cement its future, Game Central invited Noah Falstein, international games industry consultant and former senior employee of both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for their LucasArts and Dreamworks Interactive games divisions, to Birmingham to present a keynote speech at Hello Business.

Game Central will be seeing out a successful 2010 with the last Meet‘em Up of the year‘Save the Videogame’ on Wednesday 24 ^th of November in Birmingham. Speakers Iain Simons (Game City Festival director) and James Newman will be talking about their work on the National Videogame Archive explaining the origins of this new project, and addressing the issues surrounding digital heritage and inviting the regions industry to have their say in the preservation of this most important of cultural forms. Meet‘em Up: Save the Videogame 24 ^th November, 6:30-10pm, Urban Coffee Company, 30 Church Street, Birmingham. http://savethevideogame.eventbrite.com

As the West Midlands is a major centre of games development and home to some of Europe’s most innovative companies, Game Central aims to build on this work to facilitate more collaboration, improve knowledge, increase local and international trade for regional games companies and help connect industry to policy-makers to inform UK policy on support for the industry with the aim of building a robust sector over the coming years.