Hopscotch


Marcus Ingvarsson, the Swedish voice of Adam Mayes and mastermind behind last years Theme Park, cooked up this awesome workshop for our second year students:

“Today you will use your game design skills to reflect over the ongoging protests in Ojnareskogen on Gotland. There are many different sides to the situation, with many possible solutions.

In this assignment you have to:

  1. Research the situation
  2. Find the systems you can use to express the conflict.
  3. Express these systems through the mechanics of hopscotch

The second half of the day was spent outside, with the groups testing all designs by the harbor in Visby. Fourty adults engrossed in the various complexities of a traditional playground game.

They… drew some attention. 😀

GDC Europe 2012

Like the silly, silly boys we are we made a decision to drive to Cologne this year. Three game developers, a reasonably comfortable Volvo and an eight hour road trip from Copenhagen. What could possible go wrong?

… little did we expect that the Germans had built the WORLDS LONGEST CAR PARK where there used to be an autobahn.

But then we finally got to the conference and stepped into a time machine fueled by

Four days passed like nothing! We we’re like

ehrhm. no I mean

As always the GDC provides an insane amount of

and

and

and even a bit of

Gotland wins Game of the Year!


Pixel Ferrets’ Secrets of Grindea just won Game Of The Year at the Swedish Game Awards! These awesome news arrives just a week after them receiving the Public Choice at the Gotland Game Conference.

Dialogue_Quinton

Teddy Sjöström – solo programmer at Pixel Ferrets – is a veteran. He ran PowerOf2 Games (in collaboration with Robin Flodin) and created the 2010 game of the year Dwarfs!?.

Swedish Game Awards is the largest game development competition in Sweden. It aims is to stimulate the development of new and original games and inspire to entrepreneurship and creative thinking with entries being judged on execution, innovation and market potential.

Gotland had THREE games nominated to the finals this year! First year student project Clapper was nominated for Best Innovation. Lucid Dreams’ Post Mortem and Secrets of Grindea were both contenders of Game of The Year!

Congratulations, Vilya, Ted and Fred!

Secrets of Grindea competition profile
Secrets of Grindea web page

Speaking at Sundsvall 24


Sundsvall. The capital of norrland. 100 000 inhabitants. 50 000 in the city. The stone city, after no less than four raging fires. Heavy industry; forest, paper, aluminum. 1 percent of the Swedish population, using up more than 5 percent of the electricity. Apart from industry also banking, insurance and IT.

And an alarming unemployment rate.

Adam and Ulf were invited to keynote at Sundsvall 24 – speaking about digital entrepreneurship with a focus on games.

From Gotland University GAME, subject responsible Adam Mayes and program coordinator Ulf Benjaminsson will talk about life for digital entrepreneurs.
 
Starting a business is simple, but the amount of games that make their money back is laughingly small. Adam and Ulf will give a whirlwind tour of the current market for games to show how the business is changing (rapidly!), and then provide methods for adaption. They’ll give advice for setting up your company, planning your business and managing your creative process.
 
Reality is not broken, but it is a lot less glorious than you might think.

If the audience approves, the two are also happy to talk about the GAME education at Gotland University, and give some handy tips for getting the most of your student loans. 😛

Our local game developers Zeal Game Studio and Meow Entertainment were also on the program.


Max Tiilikainen (founder of Meow) spoke about honing the drive and motivation required to be an entrepreneur. Robin Flodin (CEO of Zeal) spoke about his journey from game design student to game developer to business owner and employer.

Sundsvalls Tidning covered the event.

This was a first attempt on an event like this in Sundsvall. Mikael Bergvall and his crew did a tremendous job in generating buy-in from the city. We’re looking forward to next time, and hope to see many more of the local (Sundsvall) studios on stage!