The department of Game Design at Uppsala University, campus Gotland
This is the highly informal blog of the GAME-department. We use it mostly to document the things we do outside of running one of the worlds strongest game educations. For information about our education, programs and courses, check the official site at Uppsala University.
We had a christmas decoration
and a bar.
We invited friends, old and new
and fed them pizza.
We basked in the glow of good videogames,
socialized,
had a laugh
And we looked like a boss doing it
Robert Bäckström from Fatshark started us out with the tales of Krater.
Krater was released earlier this year, and was designed by an old student of ours – Victor Magnusson. You might know him from the worlds most charming “special editions” we’ve ever seen: Krater – $10 000 Victor Edition – for 10 000 US dollars, Victor would personally deliver the game to your door, anywhere in the world, and cook you a Swedish dinner.
He couldn’t make it himself today because his baby boy arrived three days before the event. Good job man!
Max Tiilikainen gave a great post mortem for Fumbies, released in 2012.
Carsten – our subject mentor for programming – shares war stories from the industry. This guy has been in the business for more than 20 years and is credited in games like Urban Assault, Diggles, Paraworld, SuperBike, MotoGP, Fuel, MK vs DC, Smackdown vs. RAW, WWE, UFC Undisputed, Spec Ops: The Line, and then some.
Speaking of a localization team that felt the need to crack the studio’s copy protection and (very successfully) hack their own, Carsten mused; “when in doubt, the Russians will do it themselves”.
The Alumni Panel is always interesting. 🙂 But you came for the photos, so ’nuff said.
After a hiatus in 2011, the Alumni Days are back in full glory.
At the end of the autumn semester, just before christmas break, we invite former students currently working in the industry and try to learn from them. We’re doing two full days of guest lectures and a discussion panel – hanging or with our people from FatShark, Might & Delight, Happy Finish, PixelTamer, Meow Entertainment, Zeal Game Studio and more.
As always, we will end with a nice Christmas Party to wind down and celebrate the end of our semester. There’s currently 145 people registered for the party – that’s all game developers on the island; our students, staff, all the local game studios and our invited industry guests.
Here’s some links to previous Alumni Days:
Alumni Day 2008
Alumni Days 2009
Alumni Days 2010
See you out there!
26 pupils from Richard Steffengymnasiet’s media program, mix with 1 Ylva Sundström from the GAME department and pour into a classroom on campus.
The result? A workshop on identifying target audiences, seeing niche markets and developing products to exploit them.
This was doubly fun and educational for us, as we got to work with a very different type of designers this time. There are enormous differences between students and pupils, game designers and game players. We are mostly exposed to active gamers, hobbyists. Only rarely do we get to talk with people who might not even be aware that they do play! It was fascinating hearing these young creatives reason about games and the games market.
