Jan-Pieter van Seventer wins first ever Dutch Game Awards Lifetime Achievement Award

Managing director of Dutch Game Garden, Jan-Pieter (JP) van Seventer, has won a Lifetime Achievement award at the 2017 Dutch Game Awards, winning over fellow nominated Dutch development legends Mark Overmars and Martin de Ronde.

This is the first year for the Lifetime Achievement award, which was created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Dutch Game Awards. JP van Seventer joined Dutch Game Garden, a game incubator and business centre, in 2008, rising to managing director in 2014. The incubator helps new game companies to grow and succeed and van Seventer has helped bring his two decades of gaming experience to developers and professionals.

“I get a lot of energy from guiding ambitious people and helping them discover their place in the industry,” he said in a statement. "This award is not just a recognition for me, but also for the visible and invisible work we do as Dutch Game Garden. Thanks to the support of the Province of Utrecht, the municipality of Utrecht and the Economic Board Utrecht, I can devote myself to my mission to help starting game developers with entrepreneurship."

Also nominated for the award were Martin de Ronde, one of the founding members of Guerrilla Games, and Mark Overmars, who was one of the developers of the original GameMaker engine software.

Guerrilla Games was one of the big winners of the Dutch Game Awards, winning five awards for Horizon Zero Dawn, including ‘Best Core Entertainment Game’.

(Photo Credit: Dutch Game Garden, Ruben Tinman)