Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) and Game Plus link Adelaide digital gaming sector
Game Plus is a not-for-profit co-working centre for game developers in Pirie Street in Adelaide’s CBD.
The AIE (Academy of Interactive Entertainment) campus in Grenfell Street and Game Plus working area in Pirie Street are two pillars of Adelaide CBD’s close-knit creator digital sector.
AIE is a non-profit award-winning career-focussed educator in 3D animation, game design and visual effects with around 100 students graduating each year. Its campus neighbours major film and computer game studios such as Rising Sun Pictures, Six Foot Kid and Mighty Kingdom
The games developer Mighty Kingdom is the anchor tenant at Game Plus, a not-for-profit co-working centre for game developers in Adelaide’s CBD. In 2019, Game Plus was already at 95% of its 60-person capacity and housed more than 20 companies. The not-for-profit space was partly funded by the former Labor state government, which provided $450,000.
Known for its Lego, Shopkins and Disney games, Mighty Kingdom has firmly positioned itself in the global gaming market – with close to eight million customers each month worldwide.
Another of Adelaide’s gaming industry’s quiet achievers is Team Cherry who have sold more than 2.8 million copies of their debut game release Hollow Knight.
Another is Last Minute Entertainment, a modest team of four – James Buttfield, Jess Kempf, Stefan Scuteri and Stephen Gregory – who released its debut title Tiki Trials in 2019 on Steam, a distribution platform for PC games. Tiki Trials sees the player undertake challenges in the hopes of appeasing the Tiki gods and progressing to the next stage; the Last Minute team describes it as, “easy to learn but hard to master”.
The Last Minute team met studying at AIE – with many of their classes taking place in Game Plus – and went on to enrol in the school’s incubator program, which provided them with a free work-space at Game Plus and hardware to help develop the game.
