world,” offers Peter Lübeck, studio director at Malmö-based Tarsier, which is working with Double Eleven and Sony XDev Europe to bring Media Molecule’s lauded LittleBigPlanet series to Vita. ”It is constantly gaining momentum. The
larger studios are growing, as well as the small and medium ones. Start-ups are popping up everywhere, and the quality of the results of games development education and competitions has increased dramatically in the past few years.”
COMMUNITY MATTERS Clearly, then, Swedish developers are besotted by their homeland, and delighted by its success in the games sector. But why is the country proving to be so prosperous in such a fiercely competitive industry? “The most important success factor is our small home market,” offers Per Strömbäck, managing director of The Association of Swedish Game Developers. ”Sweden shifted its focus to the global audience when the PS2 was released. That was the juncture when the local audience could not sustain a development budget for the new platforms and it gave us a head start on larger countries like Germany and France that kept focus on their home audience for another console generation. ”Also, Swedish culture has a healthy
From top-to-bottom: SimplyGon’s Martin Ekdal, LocalizeDirect’s Christoffer Nilsson and Massive Entertainment’s Martin Hultberg. Main image: Swedish sensation Minecraft
56 | AUGUST 2012
perfectionism, promotes honesty and transparency, endorses creativity and has a strong sense of collective effort, all of which make for a perfect development environment.” Strömbäck has highlighted an important
point. Community is indeed particularly crucial to Swedish business, and it’s something that generates unanimous enthusiasm from developers, tools outfits and service providers. “There are quite a lot of events organised
by the studios where people from different parts of the games industry meet up to
socialise, and staff moving between studios obviously leads to a lot of best practice sharing,” states Samuel Ranta-Eskola, senior producer at project management tools firm Hansoft. “I would say that the two clusters – Stockholm and Malmö – are pretty independent of each other, but within them there is a large sense of community. There is no cross-studio collaboration business-wise that I have seen thus far, but I would not be surprised if that was going on between some of the smaller studios.”
Although the games development scene
is fairly small in number of people, it certainly has left a permanent mark on the global scene.
Patrick Liu, EA DICE Swedish games devs also typically work
together to attend international conferences, and like many other important hubs round the world, there’s a mutual appreciation within the country for one another’s work. “Importantly, we’ve never had to compete
for contracts, only for talent,” adds Strömbäck. ”There is this sense that there is enough fish in the sea for everyone. Now if we can only find enough fishermen.”
BACK IN THE DAY Looking back over the history of the Swedish games industry, it also becomes apparent that the country’s governing authorities have long-supported the establishment of computer technology as a part of everyday life in Sweden, from Malmö in the south to the country’s northerly-most point. From the early days of the personal computer, the
ANGRY FLEDGLINGS
EARLIER THIS YEAR the Swedish games industry got an enormous seal of approval when some of Rovio’s team left the Finnish nest to set up a new studio in Stockholm. According to Rovio's senior team,
Sweden was selected due to its vibrant games developer and start-up scene, and the rather more practical matter of its proximity to the Angry Bird's studio's headquarters in neighbouring Finland. “2012 is going to be a big year in gaming for us, and we’re constantly on the lookout for great new talent,” says Petri Järvilehto, executive vice president of games at Rovio. “We’re excited to expand to Stockholm and work in one of Europe’s gaming and innovation hotspots.” Maria Sipiläinen from the
company’s HR team adds: “Rovio’s rapidly growing business provides continuous development opportunities for devoted professionals. Our fun, creative atmosphere and unique brands, products and services make Rovio an internationally attractive employer.” Set to serve as a satellite office,
Rovio Stockholm will ultimately house a team of up to 30 developers.