Thanks to the generous support of both the City of Melbourne and the City of Port Phillip, the Smart Program: Games Career Accelerator is back for 2025 and better than ever!

The Smart Program is a free 90-Day career accelerator program that creates career pathways for aspiring game developers by integrating them into a supportive local game development community, providing them with a substantive professional training program and giving them access to a wealth of invaluable industry knowledge supplied by an array of highly skilled games industry professionals.

The goal of the program is to seek out future leaders of industry and set them on the pathway to success by bolstering their career confidence and commercial capabilities so that they can improve their employment prospects, create innovative game prototypes and secure investment opportunities.

Logan Urlichs, co-founder of game development studio Suspicious Jam and graduate of the 2024 Smart Program spoke highly of the program’s benefits:

"The training and support that the Smart program provided leading up to the launch of our game and beyond was tremendous. We've now been able to confidently evolve our team into a studio and negotiate our first publishing deal. These successes would not have been possible without the Smart Program.” said Urlichs.

"We've now been able to confidently evolve our team into a studio and negotiate our first publishing deal.
These successes would not have been possible without the Smart Program.”

The Smart Program has continued to thrive year on year thanks to the City of Port Phillip’s ongoing support of the program since its inception back in 2021.

As part of the Smart Program’s broader industry offerings, the City of Port Phillip will also be hosting two free games industry events later in the year that will provide the collective games community an opportunity to connect, learn and celebrate the year’s successes (stay tuned to the Smart Program events page for more details).

Thanks to the generous support provided by the City of Melbourne, the 2025 Smart Program will once again be housed within the vibrant heart of the Melbourne CBD at Collins Street Studios. City of Melbourne’s portfolio head for innovation and education, Andrew Rouse had this to say:

“The Smart Program provides aspiring young game developers with the knowledge, tools and most importantly the interpersonal support to take an idea, nurture it and turn it into reality. Housed in Collins Street Studios, we’re wrapping community around great people, who with the right support can go on to have a massive impact, putting Melbourne truly on the global map.” said Rowse.

Grad Party 2024 - Credit: James Klonis

“We’re wrapping community around great people, who with the right support can go on to have a massive impact, putting Melbourne truly on the global map.”

King of Ping Pong: MEGAMIX - Suspicious Jam

This year, the City of Melbourne have gone above and beyond in their efforts to support both the growth of the Smart Program and the entire Australian game development industry, by commissioning the creation of two professional development resources specifically designed for the Australian games industry. These resources will be available for free via the Smart Program website (with more details coming later in the year).

In addition to this, the City of Melbourne’s increased investment in the Smart Program has allowed all of the program’s core components to improve in both quality and quantity, meaning that the number of program mentors has now doubled, the amount of group-based activities has tripled and each mentee will now be receiving on average an additional 60 hours’ worth of learning content over the course of the program.

The Smart Program’s designer and director, Ceri Hutton expressed how immensely impactful the increased support for the Smart Program has been:

“Thanks to the increased support the program has received, every single aspect of the 2025 Smart Program has been significantly improved upon. These improvements will ensure that the program participants’ learning experience is engaging and applicable, and will have a lasting positive impact on their careers”

Over the course of 90 days, the Smart Program delivers three key learning modules worth of bespoke educational content to its participants:

  • Communication & Identity: Unlocking opportunities for self-growth by utilising critical reflection frameworks and mastering communication techniques.

  • Marketing & Commercialisation: Creating unique value differentiation by identifying market gaps, analysing data and establishing a strong brand identity

  • Leadership & Business Strategy: Simultaneously balancing a budget, managing a studio and securing future investment in a simulated business environment.

This content is delivered via four core program components that make up the core structure of the accelerator program:

  • Professional Development Workshops: Comprehensive group training covering curated topics that address industry skill gaps and empower career progression.

  • Industry Immersion: Residency within an active community of game developers complemented by access to the broader games community via industry events.

  • Personalised Training: Tailored 1on1 coaching and mentoring sessions with the program director and a number of highly skilled games industry professionals.

  • Experiential Learning Exercises: Rapid prototyping challenges and bespoke business simulations custom designed to emulate current industry challenges.

 The 2025 Smart Program applications are officially open as of today and will close on August 15th 2025.

You can apply to be part of the 2025 Smart Program by submitting an application form here.

Alternatively, if you are a games industry professional interested in being a mentor for the 2025 Smart Program, please fill in an expression of interest form here.