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.
Free pizza, snacks, video games, a Microsoft Surface and six meter long bar counter. With guests already invited for- and students still buzzing from the Alumni Days we pimped out the Motion Capture Studio and gathered everyone for a celebration!
The Alumni Days is such a great tradition at GAME. At the end of the winter semester we invite former students and industry contacts to share insights and inspiration with us. This year saw two days of events.
Some of our invited alumni provided talks on topics of their expertise such as “effective tweaking of gameplay variables” and detailing the role of an art director. But then they all ganged up and arranged a panel discussion – talking about life in the Swedish game industry!
Leo Sandberg talked about his business and how he made himself a professional illustrator. Our “permanent guest lecturer” Carsten Orthband shared his wealth of experience; fifteen years as an international white label developer and from creating and running two successful studios. Bonnie Ruberg flew all the way from the University of California at Berkely, to enlighten us further on the topic of (sexual) representation in games.
She had a great lecture custom made for us, followed by an insanely insightful Q&A with our students. She followed it all up with a workshop where student teams produced game concepts and -designs on order, requiring attention to issues of representation in narrative, character design, mechanics, marketing, public relations and much more. Superb!
Our local incubator Science Park Gotland helped us complete the friday with their evening gathering exploring modern collaborative company structures. All in all it has been a great couple of days and we’d like to thank all our alumni, friends and guest lectures for taking their time and graciously helping out!
Invited alumni for 2010:
All details after the jump.
09:30 E22:
Commercialize your projects! РJohan Zill̩n (Science Park Gotland)
Use your time in school to develop as an entrepreneur! Johan explains what the SPG Incubator can do for you and presents some of the current GAME-projects being housed and developed there.
We will be handing out tickets for the Christmas Party here. Don’t forget to sign up your significant other!
10:00 E22:
Warstories from the industry – Carsten Orthbandt (Pixeltamer)
Carsten Orthbandt talks about founding and running Pixeltamer. Expect lots of war stories from our German supreme-developer, from his fifteen years in the international game industry.
11:00 E22:
About The Artist – Leo Sandberg (Fabpics)
Leo has made a living as a freelance illustrator for more than 20 years. This is an opportunity for the curious to see Leo Sandberg present himself and his freelance business Fabpics.
13:00 E22:
Re-Doing Sex and Gender in Games (Lecture) – Bonnie Ruberg (sex- & game journalist)
Bonnie has written for Gamsutra, Wired, Joystiq, Terra Nova, The Village Voice, The Economis, Forbes and many, many more. Her lecture is an introduction to our medium’s poor understanding of gender, sex and sexuality. Expect lots of juicy examples. 🙂
15:00 B25-27
Re-Doing Sex and Gender in Games (Workshop) – Bonnie Ruberg
Following the lecture identifying problematics, Bonnie will have student work in teams to come up with their own content: character design, storylines that include sexuality, sex mechanics.
Note: This workshop follows her lecture, so the start is +-45 minutes! Be there early if you’re not attending the lecture.
10:00 B51
Alumni Panel (GAME Alumni)
All invited alumni sit down to answer and discuss questions from the students. What did you do after graduation? How do I get your job? What’s a work day like for you? Open discussion, questions and answers.
Moderator: Johannes Wadin
Attending alumni:
Micke Karlsson (Developer, IP Solutions)
Staffan Persson (Level Designer; Avalanche, Lionhead)
Niklas Norin (Game Designer; Avalanche),
Mats Andersson (Game Designer; Avalanche),
Tobias Lundmark (Quality Assurance; Starbreeze),
Johannes Wadin (Level Designer; Avalanche, Lionhead, Tapeduck)
David Hammarström (Art Director, B-Reel)
13:00 E22
Practical Profiling & Performance – Micke Karlsson (Developer, IP Solutions)
Micke Karlsson is a programmer and project lead at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration. He’ll walk you through practical profiling and performance through cache optimizations and introduce the concepts of datadriven programming. You’ll need to install CodeAnalyst to participate in this lecture.
Note: Due to scheduling conflicts Micke had to cancel his lecture. You can still meet him at the Christmas party this evening though.
13:00 B51
The role of an Art Director РDavid Hammarstr̦m (Art Director, B-Reel)
David has been an Art Director at B-Reel for more than five years and is responsible for a lot of their interactive productions. He’ll explain what an Art Director really does.
14:00 E22
Analysing Games – Tobias Lundmark (Quality Assurance, Starbreeze)
Tobias shares his immense experience on how seemingly insignificant parameters can have very concrete effects on the gaming experience: camera controls, input latency, jump durations and lot more. Thoroughly researched and brimming with facts for designers and developers alike.
15:00 Strandgatan 1
The Networked Business – Science Park Gotland
Two lectures and three speakers over at Science Park Gotland. This is about modern company values and how to run a business in a flexible way, where you band together for specific projects and short term needs. We recommend that you register on (“Web & IT bar Gotland”) and participate. You’ll get a chance to visit the Science Park’s locales and will make it back to the Christmas Party with time to spare.
19:00 GAME Motion Capture Studio
Christmas Party for GAME students, staff and alumni!
Bring currency and don’t forget your ticket!
Gamex is an entirely new game trade show – Swedens first – and took place for the first time last weekend in Stockholm. The show is somewhat smaller than the world-record holding GamesCom 😛 but still managed to pack some 28 000 visitors and 54 exhibitors during the three days.
One of Gamex greatest strength obviously, is allowing us to meet a Swedish audience just in time for next years study applications. It was a perfect match for us not only due to the obvious geographic benefits and common interests but also due to the huge audience diversity. It was very cool the way Gamex went out of their way to address a wider audience than these events usually attract. We saw a heavy emphasis on family-, party- and casual titles – allowing us to reach females, families and casual gamers. Just the type of material we need to build the talents of a modern gaming industry.
So even though it was a smaller event and lacked a business-to-business area we didn’t pull any punches.
We built a huge booth and brought along student projects matching the diverse audience: from the online children-friendly Fumbies, to the regular console title Pawns, the party friendly Vertigo and Abzolium, super casual Walkabout and the more “hardcore” Dwarfs, Cause of War and Gods of Steel. All of them represented by the student developers, of course.
