Roland Sillmann (WISTA) about places for cooperation like the new House of Games Berlin

Cooperation as the key to success – that’s what Roland Sillman strongly believes in. The CEO of state-owned WISTA Management GmbH, which will operate the new House of Games Berlin, focuses on shared growth and creative collaboration. “We really look for companies and people that really deeply believe that cooperation is the key.”

In the interview, Roland Sillman talks about the vision behind the House of Games Berlin, the careful site selection process, and why it’s about much more than just real estate.

My name is Roland Sillman. I am the CEO of WISTA Management. We are a state-owned company, well known for operating the largest and most successful science park in Germany. We will also be running the House of Games here in Berlin in the future.

Like most cases, I imagine it was a creative process involving several people coming together. This involved medianet, game and Ubisoft, as well as politicians and people from the administration. And then, as a team, you create this idea.

What you can expect is that we always aim to create an extraordinary design on a medium budget. This is our approach. The design you can see here has been specially created for this space. It won’t be exactly the same in the House of Games because gaming is another branch. But I imagine that we will have these lamps, for example. This is something that will always serve as a sign to indicate that you are in one of our WISTA spaces.

You can see that half of the space will be used by larger companies and the other half by smaller ones. But what they will all have in common is that they believe in the ecosystem. We only need people who truly believe that it makes sense to be there, because my company will grow faster and I will be more successful through cooperation with others.

Well, you can have a large space all over Berlin; that’s not an issue. But, as you know, it was a process where we watched more than 80 different spaces. We evaluated about 30 of the spaces and took a final look at four of them. But we didn’t do it completely alone. We did it together with the future tenants.

Honestly, no. I played the older games, such as Kaiser and Hanse. Those were already strategic games. But, you know, for me it’s not about the course or real estate. For me, the focus is always on this aspect: what do we have to do to attract talent? What do we have to do to make them feel safe and valued, so they can collaborate with others and really shape the future with their potential?

Published 15 December 2025