The department of Game Design at Uppsala University, campus Gotland
Category: Guest Lectures
We use our ever-growing network to lure speakers from the game- & movie industry, academia and independent scene to the island. Unfortunately we’re very poor with keeping this category up to date; including the Gotland Game Conference we average 1 guest lecture every 14th day! Some of these are recorded – check the youtube channel. If you wish to speak with Sweden’s strongest game design students (or their staff), contact Ulf!
Posted on - Comments Off on “Cunt Touch This!”, our sixth and final talk is in place CategoriesBlog, GGC Updates, Guest Lectures
This talk will touch a particularly hot subject: The vulva. And by extension it will let us consider topics like pleasure, shame and embarrassment in gaming.
you never win ‘over’ the Cunt. You win for it.
While games fetishise “fun” they still have a problem embracing subjects like intimacy, sex and pleasure as possible variants of it. Using the case of Cunt Touch This, a vulva-based tablet colouring game designed as a tribute to Tee Corinne’s iconic Cunt Coloring Book, Sabine Harrer will introduce the mechanics of the game and explore some of the “cuntroversial” responses it received.
Our fifth speaker presented us with not just one idea, but four(!). We wanted all of them, natch, and the arguing about which one to pick was so fierce we just decided to abdicate our responsibility and let someone else choose. You all voted in our Facebook poll and the result was 40% for a critical examination of so called “empathy games”.
So Bonnie Ruberg – founder of the Queerness and Games Conference, academic overachieverper-excellence and a well known fan-favorite of ours – is coming to GGC to talk about games that allow players to experience the lives of the marginalized. These games, designed to be immersive, impactful, and socially meaningful, run the risk of being appropriative. As Robert Yang recently put it; “If you walk in someone else’s shoes, then you’ve taken their shoes.” So Bonnie will help us look at the problems with game empathy, and methods of solving these problems.
So let us just gush about Bonnie for a while, because we have been fan-girling overfollowing Bonnie for quite some time! We had her on the island back in 2010 when she ran a full day workshop with our students, about bravely (yet responsibly!) approaching sex and gender representation in their game designs.
From Bonnie Ruberg’s 2010 workshop “Re-Doing Sex/Gender in Games” on campus Gotland
Then we had her back for the keynote at GGC 2011 where she talked about close reading video games – because there is no such as thing as taking your entertainment media too seriously! More recently her work with the Queerness and Games Conference have contributed greatly in helping us make not only our education, but also this conference as inclusive, welcoming and safe as possible!
In short; we like Bonnie quite a lot, and we think you will too. 🙂 We are extremely happy to have her back, and slightly embarrassed it’s been so long!
Thank you Bonnie, and thanks to everyone who participated in the poll! We hope you take the opportunity to see Bonnie deliver the presentation live next month!
Posted on - Comments Off on Alumni Days 2016 gallery CategoriesBlog, Guest Lectures
The weekend 8-10th of December sees old students returning to the education for our annual Alumni Days. All of them started where our students are now, and are now firmly part of the games industry either as members of a AAA studio, or as a lone indie developer. By bringing alumni back we kick start our students industry networks, and show them how our education can help them get a start in the industry after they leave.
This year’s speaker line-up cover the full range of industry positions, but don’t worry if you can’t be here in person – most of the presentations are recorded and will appear on our YouTube channel.
Here’s a schedule for your copy-paste convenience. Please note that the schedule is tentative. Talks might be brought forward or delayed. ALL UPDATES REGARDING TIME CHANGES WILL BE DONE ON THE FACEBOOK EVENT. So please sign up if you want updates. And not just regarding time, but whether a session is full or other important updates.
08 December, Thursday, B51
10.30 Sebastian Larsson – Game Designer, Team Crew. Sebastian is giving a postmortem for Frog Climbers.
13.00 Robert Graff – Game Designer, Freshly Squeezed. Robert is giving a postmortem for Defunct.
14.15 Christian Kähkönen – 3D/Tech Artist, Zoink Games. Christian will be talking about how he went from never had worked on a game to be a Tech Artist. And what a Tech Artist does at Zoink and what you should think about before seeking out an internship.
15.30 Niklas Hallin – Solo Developer, Neckbolt. Niklas will present his timeline. From student, to studio founder, onto freelancing artist and arrive as a well-renowned solo developer and his time at Stugan. He’ll also give a sneak peek of his next project after he’s done with the elephant game.
16.45 Malin Lövenberg – Game Designer, Lionbite. Malin will give some tips about how to get your first job. And then go on to talk about everything you can learn as level designer by writing comics. As well as challenge tropes.
09 December, Friday, B51
09.30 Maria Norkvist – 3D Artist, Lionbite. Maria will talk about how she is building the world of Rain of Reflection. She will also talk about and demonstrating how to build props with modularity in mind for optimization. So environment artists don’t want to miss this.
10.45 Olof Wallentin – Gameplay Programmer, Starbreeze Studios. Olof’s presentation is a two-parter. First he’ll be covering his time in Kyoto, the new indie scene that is growing in Japan and how the corporate culture can suffocate creativity. The other half is dedicated to Starbreeze ambition and vision for games as a service and the future of VR, primarily StarVR.
13.00 Robin Powell – QA Art Analyst, DICE. Robin will be talking about how he balanced his work as an Art Analyst on Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Battlefield 1 and at the same time studying for a master in Human-Computer Interaction. How can you combine work and studies and how do they overlap.
14.15 Annika Fogelgren – Producer, King. Annika will talk about how to create the best environment for your team to deliver a game in a 10 points format. She’ll also talk about how she views the current state of the game industry.
15.30 Daniel Hagström – Developer, Resolution Games. Daniel will give the latest updates on what Resolution Games has learned from developing games for VR, as well as talking about soft values. The importance of a good work environment, dealing with imposter syndrome and that perks shouldn’t replace pay or sleep.
10 December, Saturday, B51
13.00 Viva Ivarsson – Game Designer, A Sweet Studio. Viva will be talking about how to design games for soft launch as well as presenting 7 lessons you can learn from Jack Skellington (The Nightmare before Christmas) about game design.
14.15 Karin Bruér – Art Director, Fast Travel Games. Karin will be talking about going from artist to Art Director as well as going from mobile to VR. She also give some inside tips about how to recruit artists and what your portfolio should contain. As well as 5 lessons from 5 years in the industry.
15.30 Aydin Afzoud – Game Designer, MachineGames. Aydin will talk about his work on Wolfenstein and DOOM as well as things you should know as a designer.
20.00 Alumnipanel & Party (at Rindi) Come hang out, play some games and make new friends.
In order to attend the Alumni Panel and the party you need to fill out this form before 17.00. And while you’re at it, send in a question for the panel!
