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Guest Lecture: Jan-Jaap Severs (Grendel Games)

  • Grendel Games (Netherlands) have been making serious games since 1999!

Jan-Jaap Severs is visiting us again next week for a guest lecture on serious games and the challenges inherent to the production and design of these types of games. Jan-Jaap is one of the co-founders of Grendel Games, a studio that’s been producing validated and commercially successful serious games for twenty years now! That is a lot of experience to be listening in on.

Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th March
Place: E22, Campus Gotland

“Dealing with stakeholders, requirements and evidence in serious games development”

Jan-Jaap Severs, Grendel Games

During this lecture we will discuss several aspects that make serious game design and development a challenging endeavor.

We will look at managing stakeholders and domain experts with different backgrounds, who speak totally different languages. We will investigate methods of gathering requirements from these stakeholders and the common obstacles we face during that process. Finally, we will discuss the gathering and dissemination of scientific evidence of the effect of a serious game and how we can prepare for this during the design phase.

The lecture will be structured around three in-depth examples in the fields of surgery training, behavioral change pertaining to water consumption and mathematics training for children with learning disabilities.

Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th March
Place: E22, Campus Gotland

Please note: students taking the Serious Games class must be given priority. There are only ~20 free seats available, so guests have to be prepared to sit in the stairs!

Questions? Contact the course responsible; Ernest Adams.

Posted on - No Comments on Apply for the Games Research Summer School!
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Apply for the Games Research Summer School!

At last years game educator’s summit there was a desire to set up a Research Summer School. The idea was for a roaming event, highlighting and strengthening games research. Together with our colleagues at Högskolan i Skövde and Södertörns Högskola we are happy to announce that applications are now open for the first Research Summer School in Skövde this August!

The three day summer school is open to PhD- and graduate students who are working in areas connected to digital games and takes place in Skövde, Sweden, from 21 to 23 of August 2019. Both early PhD students who are presenting conceptual work and planning for research as well as advanced students who near their defense are welcome. The course is worth 3 credits (ECTS).

Students will present their work and get individual prepared feedback from a senior researcher and a peer. The summer school also offers lectures and workshops led by senior researchers. The topics for 2019 are:

There will also be a seminar that allows participants to find collaboration possibilities and partners and formulate possible topics and agendas for shared research projects. 

Application (25th of March)

If you are interested in participating, please send the following to Patrick Prax before the 18th 25th of March*:

  1. An academic text that you are currently working on (between 500 and 1500 words excluding references)
  2. A short description of the over-all (research) project this work is a part of. This could be your dissertation, a master thesis, or another kind of publication or design work.
  3. A brief CV showing your academic and professional work related to games
  4. A few small travel stipends are available on a first come, first serve basis (it will not cover the full cost). If you have financial need, please include this in your email and you will be notified if any stipends are available based on the time you submit your application. You do not need to submit financial information

* The application deadline has been postponed by a week. The new deadline is 25th of march!

Continue reading for the curriculum, schedule and morek!

Continue reading “Apply for the Games Research Summer School!”
Posted on - No Comments on Meet us in Stockholm on the 5th of March!
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Meet us in Stockholm on the 5th of March!

The Swedish Game Industry is hosting a Career Fair (aka: Arbetsmarknadsdag) in Stockholm next month and we are, naturally, going to be there too. 🙂

  • the Game Industry Career Fair 2018
    Photo from last years’ career fair

The event is free to attend and aimed at people who are considering going into games – whether it’s a mid-life career change or looking for higher education. Ergo: it is an excellent opportunity to meet a ton of game studios and whole lot of game educations in one place!

Like last year we will be running a lottery in our both – so come speak with us if you’d like a chance to win free tickets to visit Visby the Gotland Game Conference!

  • Our colleague Mariam Forsmark (adjunkt, Game Design) answering questions at the Game Industry Career Fair 2018
  • From our both at the Game Industry Career Fair 2018

The 5th of March is roughly a month before the national application deadline, so we highly recommend you swing past and check the options out before applying to higher education.

To recap:

See you there!

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New recruits!

With 7 days left on the international application deadline to our Master programme we’ve got some great news to share! Professor Doris C. Rusch and Mischa Hießböck (DePaul University) are moving to the island and joining the department full-time, in June!

Doris C. Rusch on stage at the Gotland Game Conference 2017!
Doris spoke at the Gotland Game Conference 2017! Watch the talk here.

Mischa hails from a series of Austrian studios such as Game Gestalt, Sproing and Ferrytells, while Doris founded the Deep Games Laboratory at DePaul, worked at the GAMBIT Game Lab, MIT and at Vienna University of Technology. Their work represents a veritable smörgåsbord for our department’s wish list. Not just encouraging, but dragging games to be better: to talk to the human condition; to represent nuance and a range of emotions.

Rusch’s work is focused on the theory and practice of game design, particularly in regard to games that model the human experience. For example she’s made;

  • Zombie Yoga a game for emotional empowerment
  • Elude – a metaphorical game on depression
  • For the Records – an interactive documentary that deals with young adults and mental disorders such as OCD, ADD, eating disorder and bipolar disorder and
  • Soteria – Dreams as Currency, a game to teach strategies to overcome anxiety disorders.
  • Doris also published the book Making Deep Games, on how to make games about the human experience using metaphor and allegory.

Join us at the Gotland Game Conference (5-6th June) to say hi and welcome them both!