GAME

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: