Working at over 480 gaming studios, Scotland is home to a new generation of game developers which contributes significantly to the economy, employs thousands of creative staff and launches hundreds of new games.
“Not many people globally know this, but gaming in Scotland is world class — we’ve got things like Grand Theft Auto, but it’s not just original IP. Minecraft is built in Scotland, there’s a huge part of Fortnite that’s made in Scotland, and there’s lots of smaller studios that have cool, indie titles,” says Steven Drost, cofounder and executive vice chairman at startup ecosystem builder CodeBase.
But for Scotland’s ambitious young studios, challenges remain. Gaps in funding, particularly for underrepresented founders, persist and discoverability can be an issue in a saturated market.
So, to up their game, a cohort of representatives from eight Scottish gaming startups — Konglomerate Games, Buildstash, Yaldi Games, Speech Graphics, Blazing Griffin, Wardog Studios, Bearhammer Games and Glitchers — headed to Japan in early 2025, as part of a two-week “pop-up”, supported by the Scottish government’s Techscaler programme, which is run by tech ecosystem builder CodeBase.
Why Japan?
Like Scotland, Japan has a renowned gaming sector. Home to sector giants like Nintendo and Sega, Japan is a world-leading producer and consumer of games. The country’s revenue in the gaming market is projected to reach $50.94bn in 2025, with a 5.11% annual increase predicted every year to 2029.
“It’s a very robust and very mature ecosystem, so we thought it would be a great showcase for Scotland to take companies to Japan that come from the gaming world,” says Drost. “The Techscaler pop-ups help startups meet peers overseas and be part of a wider conversation, getting out of their familiar environment.”
Scotland is set for even more success in the sector… Japan can be a key territory to drive this.
The £42m Techscaler programme was launched in late 2022 to create, develop and scale tech startups and position Scotland as one of Europe’s leading startup economies. In addition to supporting startups and scaleups in Scotland, Techscaler has also launched similar international programmes in Silicon Valley and Singapore.
“Scotland is the birthplace of GTA, and the quality of the Scottish founders that recently travelled to Japan with Techscaler to showcase their groundbreaking games is proof that Scotland is set for even more success in the sector, and that Japan can be a key territory to drive this,” says Sandeep Casi, partner at VC firm Antler, which has offices in 30 cities, including Tokyo.
Connecting across continents
The two week trip spanned two cities — Tokyo and Kyoto — and involved events, meetings and visits with Japanese industry leaders, investors, publishers and creators. These included pitching at the Antler IbexGaming Series event at Megalis, meetings with Skeleton Crew at 404 Not Found, a studio visit to Q Games in Kyoto and exhibiting at the UK pavilion at Osaka Kansai World Expo.
“The Scottish Government’s expert team had arranged an event at the Osaka Global Expo in the UK pavilion. This allowed the Scottish Games delegation to meet a number of major companies from the Japanese games industry as well as raising awareness of the Scottish games industry more broadly,” says Chris van der Kuyl, chairman and cofounder at 4J Studios, who added he even gave people a “sneak peak” of its new game Reforj on the trip.
The ability to be part of a cohort and have everything centrally organised was just so valuable for your first time going to a place.
Elena Höge is the founder of Edinburgh-based Yaldi Games and one of the gamers who went on the trip. She makes games which combine playing with learning — her first, Out and About allows players to discover and identify over 100 real plants and mushrooms. Höge says she specifically enjoyed working at Tokyo Tunnel, a coworking space run by Sega Sammy and Pegasus Ventures.
“The ability to be part of a cohort and have everything centrally organised was just so valuable for your first time going to a place,” she says. “If I had gone to Japan myself, I wouldn’t have known where to start and wouldn’t have been able to be in the same meetings and meet the Japanese game developers.”
Höge says she went to Japan with an idea for a design and “completely changed it” after absorbing the lesson she learned in Japan about IP and merchandising.
“Another impact was, of course, meeting Japanese game studios, especially Skeleton Crew and Q games both in Kyoto, and just really learning more about how they do business and how they build relationships,” she adds.
Strengthening business strategies
Another member of the cohort was Maxwell Scott-Slade, founder and game director at Edinburgh-based Glitchers, which works with scientists to build video games that solve complex problems. Its game, Sea Hero Quest, supports research into Alzheimer’s dementia. He says that because of its aging population, Japan is a key potential market.
“When you have a product that you feel is global, how do you adapt it to local markets? How do you actually make sense of what it means to talk about Alzheimer’s in that country?,” he says were his key questions.
“To take the time out of the day to day running of the business, and spend the time in an environment that was very open to new ideas with people who were interested and talking about how these things could be adapted for the Japanese market, gave me a completely different perspective on what we’re doing back home,” he adds.
When you have a product that you feel is global, how do you adapt it to local markets?
Scott-Slade says he came up with his company’s entire commercial pricing structure and wrote an executive summary for his business in Japan. As well as connections with Japanese entrepreneurs and businesses, Scott-Slade says the trip also strengthened his connections with fellow Scots.
“I was able to connect with other companies who are doing games or game adjacent technologies in Scotland, in a way that meant that it wasn’t just like, ‘hey, here’s my business card. I’ll see you at the next event’,” he says. “We went out for dinner together. We really got to know each other. I made friends.”
CodeBase is currently curating the fourth iteration of the Techscaler Silicon Valley programme and second version of Techscaler Singapore, its two other main international programmes, with the next cohort of founders set to depart for the Bay Area and Southeast Asia’s city state later this year.
Techscaler Japan 2025 showed what’s possible when creativity meets international ambition. For more information about Techscaler, click here.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/scottish-gaming-startups-in-japan-brnd/
