Category: Blog

This weekend we attended the The Nordic Ferry Tale conference arranged by the Swedish Games Industry. Adam, Hans, Felicia and I took the ferry ride with nordic game developers from Sweden to Finland and back.

On the speaker list were people from Supercell (Clash of Clans, Hayday), Mojang (Minecraft), Grand Cru (never released anything) and (on video link from Japan) music game maker Masaya Matsuura – the man who created Parappa The Rapper!

So we boarded in the afternoon in Stockholm, had dinner and crazy ferry buffé with fellow Swedish developers. Arrived in Helsinki and had breakfast with developers, before being bussed out to SuperCell’s offices in downtown Helsinki.

Then back to the boat for a few conference sessions, more crazy ferry buffét, this time with Swedish + Finnish developers.

Back in Stockholm in the morning Sunday, and walked up to Paradox’ offices for another bunch of talks.

But unfortunately it was three days of mostly undergraduate content. With exception of Matsuura’s talk, there was very little insight provided in the conference. Especially as the entire audience consisted of professional game developers.

SuperCell was, by far, the most basic. Two guys talked about what a great company SuperCell was to work for. They discussed their new game without ever showing it, and didn’t let us take photos of any slides due to confidentiality. The questions from the room were pretty great (how much do you spend on user acquisition?) but they went, mainly, unanswered.

The trip was not an entire bust, however. We did get to reconnect with some of our awesome alumni who also attended the conference. The ferry was comfortable, and during the traditional conference-drinking sessions I got enough down time to play through Primordia – a gorgeous, clever, and melancholic science-fiction adventure game that I highly recommend! Easily the best experience of the entire weekend. 🙂

We participated in Game Over / Play Again, a one day conference hosted by The National Library of Sweden, attempting to start the discussion on how to best gather, protect and make available this culture of ours. Despite having some international speakers on the list, they opted to run the entire event in Swedish – always a missed opportunity, we feel.

Vad händer med våra datorspel och vilken bild av spelvärlden kommer framtiden att ha? Kommer dagens datorspel kunna spelas upp om några decennier? Vad vill vi att vår framtid ska ha för bild av datorspelens utveckling? Vilka åtgärder krävs för att bevara och tillgängliggöra dessa spel?
 
Vi på Kungliga biblioteket vill anordna det här heldagsseminariet i egenskap av Sveriges nationalbibliotek och nationalarkiv för ljud och rörlig bild. Vi har i vårt uppdrag att samla in, bevara och tillgängliggöra datorspel med svensk anknytning för framtida forskning. Det känns angeläget för oss att få igång diskussionen kring datorspel som en del av vårt kulturarv.

 
Det är hög tid att skapa ett nätverk där bransch, arkiv, museer, intresseorganisationer, utbildningssäten, forskare, upphovrättsorganisationer m.fl. kan mötas och föra diskussionen vidare.

Program för dagen

09.00 Kaffe och registrering

10.00 Presentation av moderatorn Orvar Säfström

10.15 Andreas Lange, Computerspielemuseum, Berlin

10.45 Jakob Moesgaard, Det Kongelige bibliotek, Köpenhamn

11.15 Kaffe och mingel

11.45 Ann-Sofie Sydow, Game Assembly

12.15 Åsa Anesäter, Dataspelsgruppen i KLYS

12.45 Lunch

14.00 Jon Manker, Södertörns högskola

14.30 Martin Lindell, DICE

15.00 Bensträckare

15.15 Panel – Vilken bild av spelvärlden kommer framtiden att ha?

          Per Strömbäck, Dataspelsbranschen

          Henrik Erngren Othén, Repository Lane

          Johan Andersson, Paradox Interactive

          Angelica Norgren, P3 Spel

          Thomas Sol Sunhede, privatsamlare

          Peter Du Rietz, Tekniska museet

          Åsa Roos, Avalanche

16.30 Summering