Announcing the jury!

Jury hard at work. :)

The jury represents the most hard-working participants at the Gotland Game Conference (save for our students, naturally). Jurors travel from near and far to listen to our students’ presentations a day before the conference even starts, and to play all of the student productions on the show floor.

Each members brings their own set of experience and expertise, and share that insight directly with the students during the presentations. This is followed by two days of hard labor where each jury member needs to play enough to provide meaningful written feedback (as well as numeric scores) on each game. These scores does not affect student grades, of course, but are an integral part of the GGC Awards and for our students’ learning outcomes!

The jury is absolutely massive, as they need to cover all three years of our education!

Without further ado, here is the complete 2017 Jury!

  1. Anton Albiin, Association of Swedish Game Developers
  2. Bonnie Ruberg, UC Irvine
  3. Chris Franklin, Errant Signal
  4. Doris Rusch, DePaul University
  5. Maria Guadalupe Alvarez, Högskolan i Skövde
  6. Joakim Sjöberg, Odd Raven Studios
  7. Joshua Juvrud, Uppsala University
  8. Martine Pedersen, IndSpark
  9. Mattias “Ditto” Dittrich, Art in Heart
  10. Mike Sellers, Indiana University
  11. Richard Bartle, University of Essex
  12. Sabine Harrer, University of Vienna
  13. Samson Wiklund, Diversi
  14. Patrick Seibert, Founder: indiecouch.org
  15. Travis C. Parrott, Westlaw Legal Solutions
  16. Fred Ström, Pixel Ferrets
  17. Jens Berglind, Might and Delight
  18. Joakim Andreasson, Paradox Development Studio
  19. Jona Marklund, KJ Interactive
  20. Martin Greip, Eat Create Sleep
  21. Max Tiilikainen, iGotcha Studios
  22. Olof Wallentin, Starbreeze Studios
  23. Pernilla Sparrhult, Paradox Development Studio
  24. Peter Stråhle, Might and Delight
  25. Sigrid Svederoth, Cortopia AB
  26. Teddy Sjöström, Pixel Ferrets
  27. Thommy Siverman, Electronic Arts
  28. Tobias Wahlberg, TOB-E GAMES
  29. Vilya Svensson, Pixel Ferrets
  30. Ylva Ljungqvist, Paradox Development Studio

Bold is GAME alumni  – welcome back! 🙂

And thanks in advance to all the jurors for taking the time – and putting up the effort – to help improve our students, our education, and our medium!

Puzzle game Cryptogram uses a real bookshelf to open secret doors

I’ve never in my life had the experience of tilting a book off an old dusty bookshelf and unlocking a secret passageway, but I hope I do before I die. Movies have never sold us a more believable-but-still-magical fantasy than the passage behind the bookshelf, or the revolving bookshelf that turns under your feet and rotates you, speechless, into a hidden laboratory. But I have now gotten to play a game inspired by that fantasy, and it’s one of the most creative things I’ve seen at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference.

GDC hosts a small selection of games with weird input methods every year under the banner of Alt.Ctrl.GDC, and the standout for me this year was bookshelf game Cryptogram.

[PCGamer: Puzzle game Cryptogram uses a real bookshelf to open secret doors]

Swedish Game Awards in Visby

The Swedish Game Awards is the nation’s largest video game development competition, pitting all Swedish game educations against each other. It has been held annually since 2002 and is organized by a student-driven, non-profit association. They just announced that the 2017 finale will be held in Visby – just a few days after the Gotland Game Conference!

Ergo, you might want to adjust your travel schedule to allow for a few more days in this medieval town of ours. 🙂

Anouncement over at the Swedish Game Awards blog

The Wikipedia page is a good source of information for the SGA, including the competition categories and winners from previous years. We will of course shamelessly point out that our students generally fare very well; last year Gotland took home Best Diversity Effort, Best Execution in Design, Best Technical Execution and Best Execution in Narrative. Head on over at our less-official department blog for a full list of all SGA-awards earned by our students.