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I am here at the sixth run of the yearly event Swedish Game Awards
A competition for amateur game developers here in Sweden
I am here to hand out prizes in three different categories,
Best Innovation, Best Execution and the Best Mobile Game
There are a total of 10 nominees out of 47 submitted games We shall have a talk with the game developers who are here
Jonas and Niklas from the team behind Colosseum are here beside me, What can you tell me about Colosseum?
That it's a cool game
I do hope so, what type of game is it?
It's a fighting game.
It's an arena fighting game with a large focus on multiplayer which you can play together with your buddies and have some fun.
It revolves around fighting but there are also some other game modes that one can try out
The first thing that you notice about the game is that it is cel-shaded, that is, it looks "cartoon-ish".
Why did you choose to work with that kind of graphics?
I'm to blame for that, I think.
It's a long story but I draw in a special kind of way and when we were trying to create the graphical profile, all the graphical designers were...
Are you the one who drew all the pictures back there? Some of them, yes.
I have also drawn this character here.
And so people were thinking, "Nicke's characters expresses a clear 'style', so let's go with it"
and yeah, so it looks like this and you would think "Cel-shading fits"
So regarding the technology, what have you been working with to develop this game?
We worked with XNA. Our hopes are to get the game into Live Arcade eventually.
So yeah, XNA as a platform and that means it is also very easy to port the game to PC
- What does a competition like this mean, then? That you, first of all, can gain some attention,
but also that there is a clear deadline and that you have to finish it, etc?
It is really good to have a deadline... You know...
you need to get whipped a little to make things happen,
and in that case it's good to have a final date.
"Aw crap, we must do this, this and this, and also this and this for this date".
It results in everyone sitting up until 2 AM and we wouldn't have unless... so.
But at the same time, well, it's a good opportunity to be seen as well.
Have you had the opportunity to meet and talk to the other competitors?
We had a quick look at the others, and we're very impressed.
Most of all, it is fun to see that there are so many finished games. It feels like many have taken this very seriously, and that is very fun to see.
Is it difficult to choose, when entering a competition like this,
to make a tiny piece of a game and keep it really polished or a complete game which can be seen more as a prototype?
Go small and polished.
We have stated as our own guideline to only show the best bits and that's how we've done as well.
What are your hopes next? You mentioned the Live Arcade, for example.
Our biggest wish is to get in contact with a publisher as soon as possible.
So if there is any publisher watching this... check out shortfuse.se.
Because it's really hard as an independent developer to get into the market.
We're convinced that we have such a good product that if we get to demonstrate it, there will be good hype around it.
But it's really hard to take that step, so that's our next big thing.
I wish you the best of luck tonight, and we'll see how it goes.
I'm standing here with Johan and Emil who are working on Magicka. You have a large team. How many are you?
There are 8 of us. The core team consists of 4 persons, that is the people who are working night and day.
Then we have some people on concepts, mostly the initial stages.
And then we also have Micke who is in but still not really. He's creating our beautiful graphics.
He is getting the pizza and stuff like that?
Yeah, exactly
Alright, can you tell me a little about the game?
The game is an arcade-like gauntlet game, as we usually want to describe it.
And What's "gauntlet" for those who weren't around back then?
Gauntlet is a good old game where 4 players who fight against an endless horde of monsters through an endless number of levels, perhaps hundred levels or so.
It was a large consumer of coins during its era.
Yeah, exactly. We don't want to re-create the coin-consumption,
but the fact that you fight over and over again and try to improve yourself.
What we want to promote with Magicka is that you as a player develop, not that your ingame character develops.
In other words the opposite to, say, World of Warcraft then?
- Yeah, exactly.
- I tested briefly here and it's a game which uses many different combinations with your controller to create spells.
It feels like the learning curve is pretty steep
It is. It is hard to balance. We really want to reward the fact that you become skillful as a player.
We have tried to work out a tutorial which so far is a little unclear. But that's something we have to put some effort into.
Alright, if you win this. How would that make you feel?
That would feel amazingly good, and we would absolutely keep on developing the game, during the summer.
Regarding the technical aspects, is this a game built from scratch or have you built it on top of something else?
We used XNA as the foundation.
We used as much from XNA as we could, and the rest is built from scratch.
What impact have XNA and game engines like OGRE had for amateur game developers?
XNA in particular has had a great impact, especially when you're using C# instead of C++.
It has reduced the development time by at least 1,5 months. It has been of great use.
So it allows you to focus more on concepts etc and eases the need of digging into the technology?
- Yes, absolutely.
There's a certain "downtime" during the development where you're just building the foundation.
And you get rid of that phase completely and can focus more on design and making a good game.
Some say that's too much of a shortcut and removes the challenges of creating a game,
but I'd say the opposite, that it let's you focus on the game development itself and not the engineering aspects.
Finally, I'd like to wish you good luck tonight and regardless how that goes, good luck with the project!
- These are Stefan and Elias and half the team behind MEGACHILE PLUTO. What can you tell us about the game?
It's a game where you save plantets in various solar systems from dying,
and the reason for them dying is that they lack certain elements that they need to survive.
The player, in form of a rabbit named Chow, is supposed to pick up these elements and bring them to the planets to save them.
You're here as nominees for the Swedish Game Awards. How much does a competition like this mean to you as an up-and-coming game developer?
To us who are in the early stages of the game development it means alot that people get to play the game and can react to what works and what doesn't.
It's the greatest benefit at the moment.
One thing that many others have mentioned, is the importance of an actual deadline
and not working on something for several years which ends up being a hobby project.
Has it been of the same importance to you, since you're still in the early stages?
Yes, absolutely. Early on, we set a deadline and emphasized the importance of tying up loose ends,
and that we limited our fantasy for this deadline to finish it, with limitations.
What is the most important lesson you've learned working on this game for this competition?
What wouldn't you do again?
We should perhaps have focused more on the control-part because it's immensely important.
We've already worked on it, but at the same time, you can't "overdo" that part.
How the player experiences the game environment and his ability to control the character to the place he wants.
Finally, I'd like to wish you good luck tonight.
I'm standing here with Oskar from Avalanche. Why are YOU at SGA?
We're here because... we're an independent swedish game company and we want more people to take this journey.
Before I've been here pretty much to recruit, but now we want others to start up companies.
We work really hard to inspire others to start something up,
but also this year we will offer a mentorship, so whoever is here is able to send in an application to come and learn from us,
and we'll help out during the autumn.
What criteria do you have? What kind of people are you looking for?
They should be people who have good ideas and want to start companies.
Some are here just because they want to get employed by DICE, Avalanche, Starbreeze or where ever.
But we want them to have a game that they want to work further on and ship out to consumers. And work with, in a small group.
So that's pretty much our criteria. Other than that it doesn't really matter what they need help with, some may want help with strictly code-related issues
and others help with the business development, and everything in between.
How's the structure within Avalanche when it comes to the balance between people who work with ideas and concepts, and people who work with strictly technical issues such as programming and such?
We're quite few who only work on concepts.
Pretty much everyone has a role as a part of a larger production,
but then we have some who help out when it comes to a pitch or something new. So everyone are involved in the production in some way.
Is it technical competence you look at when you look to recruit people out here or is it about vision and ideas?
It could be pretty much anything. If one is looking to start working at a large game company it's quite unusual that they're looking for someone who has a vision or something like that.
Then they're more likely to look for someone who can produce, who knows programming, make graphics or finetune game mechanics.
But it's unusual that they're looking for someone who can come up with a new concept.
Big thanks, good luck in the future. I know you have a game just around the corner, could you tell us a bit about that?
Just Cause 2 is being worked on at full pace and we're really looking forward to releasing it.
We've only released one game so far and we're really looking forward to releasing the next game.
One more game, at least. Thank you very much. We'll leave it at that.
Boingo is an orange little monster who lives in the jungle.
He's created by five people, two of which I have next to me here. They are Alex and Peter.
Boingo, where does the idea come from?
Originally, it is Alex's idea actually.
It started out as an idea about a ball who was supposed to bounce and stick to surfaces,
and that's pretty much what we started out with. Then it has evolved to this lovely jungle creature that we have here.
It's quite a simple idea.
How did you make this game? Did you use any existing tools? Maybe open source or XNA?
Maybe I should answer that question. I'm a programmer and the tools we've used for the graphics is an engine called HGE which is based on DirectX.
Other than that we have reused plenty of old code, for example the tile-system, the geometry itself, the logging, all that stuff comes from the past.
It went about quickly, developing this. Ten weeks I think it took. And those are ten weeks of mainly gameplay.
Alright, only one more question. What would it mean to you to win here today?
It would mean we could spend the summer further developing Boingo.
We will still work with Boingo as much as time allows it, but the money would us to work with it more intensely during the summer.
Build more maps, polish the game and maybe even release it online more or less like a finished product.
- Good luck, also in the future.
Johan Lindfors, you're here as a representative for Microsoft and XNA.
What is XNA and why is it relevant here at Swedish Game Awards?
XNA is a name under which we assemble our game developing technologies
like DirectX, XNA Game Studio, XNA Framework. But primarily it represents our XNA Game Studio
and that is our development environment for building games to PC, Xbox360 and also other platforms like Zune in the future.
And that's why I am here.
And what are the benefits for a young game developer to use XNA?
The benefit is that you're very productive in this environment.
You can quickly build a game which shows your ideas. And really produce it from the start to the finish.
And that's something that's highly regarded by big actors if you want to get employed by them.
So you want to reach out with XNA. How important is an event like Swedish Game Awards to you?
It's brilliant, especially for Sweden. SGA has good cooperation with nordic...
Norway for example has started looking at it.
SGA is the event we've chosen to prioritise to reach out with XNA, to students and hobby developers.
But we also have some other activities involving the professional developers which is a little bit on the side.
But SGA is doing a great job.
They have a great structure with for example the tour to meet university students on-site and of course these events which are arranged with high quality.
You're in the jury. True. That is correct.
How's the quality this year? Really high.
We had a super-nice weekend last week where we sat down and played 47 games, and we had a really hard time choosing the winners.
What's funny is also after we had finished and went home, which was quite late,
we still sat down at home to play these games which we had receieved on CD just because the quality was so high.
And that I think all the competitors should bring with them, don't stop just because you weren't nominated or didn't win,
the fact that you have something finished that you can get jury feedback on,
should you take advantage of when you move on with your game.
There is lot of competence behind the submissons even this year.
Your personal favourite this year?
I don't dare to tell you yet. We'll see when the results are presented on stage,
which will be presented by you by the way!
Thank you. Thank you.
I'm standing here with Robert and Dag from the production RGB.
Robert, what can you say about this game?
It's a game which revolves around colours. Every colour has a property.
You can blend your colours with other colours to create new properties.
You start out with a pretty empty map that you will paint, and the gameplay changes as you paint the map.
But it's still a competitive game, isn't it? It's not just a paintbox with spray paint?
Yeah, it actually is. It's supposed to be a multiplayer game where you play against each other,
but for now it's more of a time-trail type of game so it's more about finishing the course as quick as possible.
Is that something that you get to work on in a competition like this,
that you make something small which shows the grander idea that you can build on later instead of making a complete game?
Yeah, precisely. We would have liked to work with network and such
but it's better to have a small finished game than a complete game that keeps breaking and crashing.
How much time have you had to polish RGB since you were notified that you were going to the final?
- Since we found out that we were going to the final, there has barely been any time at all. It was just a week ago or so.
But we've been fixing the game up during the spring. Fixing some menus and things like that. So in all, we've had quite some time.
How has this changed your perspective of the game developing business? Is this what you want to do and work with?
Of course. I've already got a job, so I'm very pleased.
Where are you going to work?
Level design at Grin in Göteborg
Then let me wish you the best of luck for tonight, and I'll see you at the prize ceremony.
I'm standing here with Erik and Anders who have developed Ödlespelet, a Swedish name in contrast to many other games. How come?
We were thinking that we would call it something like Bollspelet or Ödlespelet, so we just went with it.
I've tested this game and it feels, in a positive way, very simplistic.
It feels like an old arcade game with a simple idea brought to its maximum.
Is that your source of inspiration, that type of older arcade games?
Yes, absolutely. I play a lot of arcade games myself and have a machine at home that I play on.
We wanted to make a game that you can play on the arcade machines that we have at the school in Skövde.
People should just be able to walk up there, start it up and understand how it works right away.
We've been quite successful, it's quite popular at school.
We have that as a source of inspiration and hopefully those people would find it enjoyable to play.
Okey, it seems like you've had quite a smooth development process of this game.
Is there anything you've found to be problematic technically, any obstacle that you've had to work your way around?
I can tell you one thing, I'm colour blind so this is not the optimal situation.
A game that's based on different colours?
Yeah, exactly. We thought of including symbols that represented the balls instead, as a complement to the balls.
Anders here who makes the graphics couldn't come up with enough symbols to cover it, so that will arrive in another version instead.
We're happy to be here but we don't think we'll win, at least I don't.
If someone is good enough to break into the high score list on the machine from our school, that's enough of a victory for me.
Okey, so how do you think it will go tonight? Are you counting on winning or are you a little humble?
I really hope things will turn out good for you and it was fun talking to you.
Starbreeze is one of the big Swedish game companies here at Swedish Game Awards and I'm sitting here with Robert Nyberg who is in Human Resources.
Why are you here at SGA?
Because we find SGA to be a very, very good platform to recruit from.
This is an incredibly good "training field" for future talents within game development,
so there's actually no doubt for for us to participate here.
You work with incredibly costly and detailed games with grand stories and of natural reasons students and amateurs can't reach the same level.
So what is it that you look at in small productions like the competing games here? What do you use to pick out the talents here?
Usually, it's that they're building on a feature that's interesting for us.
For example if there is alot of multiplayer, co-op or something, then it could contain a certain type of programming that we're looking for.
Other than that we also look at polish, how finished the game is and the will to complete a project in full-scale.
So between someone who makes a large game where nothing is polished and someone who makes something small but very very thorough,
you would choose the latter?
Actually, yes. It's better with specialization, in general.
What other things are there to consider? If you're young and seek to enter the game business. Where do you start?
It's hard to say, but generally, find an education that suits your goal
and take every opportunity you get to develop games. Hobby projects, build further on school assignments and things like that.
Make games out of anything you can make games out of.
How many are you at Starbreeze today?
We're about 85 people.
Do you need more? Yes.
Some of the competitors today are as many as 10 people, but here I'm standing with a one-man-project, Erik Svedäng and Blueberry Garden.
Can you tell us a little about the game?
Yes, it's a platform game which takes place in a large vivid world
where you shall discover and interact with plants and animals who reside there.
Which sources of inspiration have you had gameplay-wise?
Gameplay-wise, I think Shadow of the COlossus is the game that's closest in terms of layout,
it can be hard to see, but that's the greatest source of inspiration.
It feels like a game with a good atmosphere, not to mention the music. Where does it come from?
I found the music on the Internet. There is a guy who had uploaded it for free.
He's called Daduk.
In technical terms, how did you create this game?
During this semester I've been working XNA and C# through my thesis project.
I've drawn and scanned pictures and then worked on them in Photoshop. And then programmed the game and such.
This has a unique style and it feels really "cartoonish".
Is that something you long to work more with instead of trying to achieve this realistic graphics mania which is so popular currently?
I think you can gain a lot by not trying to achieve realism,
but instead create something more personal which can appeal to people in another way than realism does.
How does it feel to be in the final of Swedish Game Awards then?
It's fantastic. It's the big competition in Sweden so it's a lot of fun.
Finally, what would it mean to you to win today?
Some attention never hurts, it would be really fun of course.
I wish you good luck and we'll see how it goes.
There are crazy shootings behind me. And this is actually not one of the competitors in this year's competition.
Some of the big and established game developers are here as well.
Here I have Love from Digital Illusions who is here with the new Battlefield game. Why are you at Swedish Game Awards?
We're always interested in seeing and to be seen.
We want to show up and look at the new talents and also show ourselves, especially with our new game, Bad Company which can be seen here in the background.
And it's game which has been developed in Sweden?
Absolutely, entirely in Sweden. We have a studio in Stockholm, at Slussen.
It will be released this year, so we really want to show it off. We're very proud of it.
What is your advice to someone young who would like to get into the game development business?
Should you attend some of the large existing game development programmes, participate in a competition like SGA
or should you sit around and work from home, waiting to be discovered?
Definitely, I think you should show yourself both in competitions and events like this, but also in modding communities and such.
There is a point in being active, both online and communities in general, like this. Also in the various educations which offer many good things.
There are two different nominees in the category Best Mobile Game and I'm standing here with the representatives for one of them, Blocky.
Jonathan and Christian, what can you tell us about Blocky?
You could say it's a classic platform game. You jump and run, you jump on the enemies, and it gets more tricky the further you get.
There are some elements in the levels that you need to figure out and we won't say anything about that, since it's up to you to figure it out.
You discover new situations and you need to solve them.
Do you need to think differently when you're making a game for mobile devices? Like a different target audience or people who aren't used to playing games etc?
Yeah, first of all, you need to keep in mind it's about casual gamers, not regular gamers. Regular gamers don't play mobile games, so you need to make it easy enough, to start with.
And then we have some technical requirements as well, you can't make a large game. It has to be quite small, smaller than a Super Nintendo game.
It sounds like a lot of limitations, but what are the advantages of working with such a platform?
The limitations make an advantage, since they trigger you and give you creativity.
You've been working with the levels and helped out writing the music as well.
Do you feel that you've been suddenly sucked in to this or do you have an ambition yourself to work with games?
Nah, I was mostly sucked in to this.
Have you had fun then? Yeah, it has been fun.
I wish the both of you good luck with the competition tonight and with the game in the future. Let's hope we get to see it in every man's cell phone in the future.
There are a few games here today which are created by a single person.
Swarm is one of them and I'm here with Kian. What can you tell us about Swarm?
Swarm is a mobile game as you said and it's a racing game so you control a swarm of pixels and you should bring them to the end of the course.
And then there's a story on top of that, which is about you being the game maker and you created this game.
These pixels should be moved to the end of the course but now they're at the start so you need to guide them through all the courses.
On your way you shall fill out place holder graphics and remove them, which means you can release more teaser material and push up the deadline.
The deadline must not expire because then we would release a bad game.
Deadline is what's always lingering ahead of a game developer.
How is a competition like Game Awards here where you have an actual deadline and can't work with it for as long as you want?
It's great fun. It's a great motivator to finish something else you tend to pile up unfinished projects.
But now it's a competition and you can see what the opponents are all about, and you also get something to aim for.
It's fun to "crunch" until it's done.
How many hours do you think you have spent on Swarm?
I'm counting on 120 for the game and 50-60 for the map editor where I create the courses.
And how much do you have left?
Hard to state in hours, but plenty. I'm going to create more courses and do some tweaking. So plenty to go.
What would it mean to you to win here tonight?
That'd be great fun. Then I'd get the feedback that it has been worth all the work. I would be really happy.
Okey, what can we expect in the future. What plans do you have?
Well, I like making strange games. So there might be many more short games, similar to "YOU HAVE TO BURN THE ROPE"
Does it feel like both the Internet and the Xbox Live Arcade markets suit this type of game better?
Yes, I think so, no doubt. That's why we see so much of these at the moment. It is something I will go for as well.
We wish you good luck tonight and in the future.
One of the nominees were not able to attend. It is David Piuva who is nominated in the category Best Execution.
Then we also have people who have submitted games but didn't get nominated who are here to demonstrate their games.
Well, that's all we had from the floor, but the day isn't over just because of that.
We have a prize ceremony to look forward to, and that is what's coming up next!
The jury's motivation is as follows:
"A game with distinct, stylish graphics, well thought-out game mechanics, and solid presentation and control. Gives the player a complete experience."
The winner is...
Boingo!
- The jury's motivation is as follows: "A polished and innovative game that stands out with humour and style."
The winner is... Swarm!
- The jury's motivation is as follows:
"A brilliant game concept that is executed with precision and presented beautifully.
Intertwines graphics, sound and gameplay and evokes the feeling that the game world is truly alive."
Blueberry Garden!
- Is anyone at these tables a little nervous?
Alright, if you think you won, raise your hand!
I just wanted to see who's cocky and who's not!
The jury's motivation:
"A game of great depth and style, with polished gameplay and excellent presentation.
Successfully combines humour, great visuals and complex game mechanics."
The Game Of The Year is Magicka!