Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
7
The Development of the Swedish
Game Industry
A True Success Story?
Ulf Sandqvist
Little research has been done about the development of the digital game
development industry especially from a smaller country's perspective. This
chapter will try to contribute to this research area while presenting the
case of the history of the Swedish game development industry. The chapter
will describe sixty years of digital game development in Sweden but with a
focus on the game industry the sprung into life in the late 1980s and early
1990s. Many companies have tried and a couple have had international
successes. The growth has been rapid but unstable and ultimately it seems
like no signifi cant profi ts from these companies have ended up in Sweden.
INTRODUCTION
Swedish game companies have developed many well-known digital games;
some big-budget games like
Battlefi eld
,
Riddick
,
World in Confl ict
and
Just Cause
are produced in Sweden. These games were developed by Digital
Illusions, Starbreeze, Massive Entertainment and Avalanche Studios, some
of the largest and most well-renowned Swedish developing companies.
Alongside these major game developers, Sweden also has a fairly large
community of indie game developers who have made games like
Minecraft
,
Blueberry Garden
and
Cactus Arcade
. These were developed by some of
Sweden's famous individual game developers like Markus Persson (aka
Notch), Erik Svedäng and Jonatan Söderström (aka Cactus). From this per-
spective it is fair to say that Sweden overall has a thriving game developing
community. However, as with all cultural industries, it can be problematic
and misleading just to focus on famous creators and successful individuals
and companies. Many tend to try but very few will achieve economic suc-
cess (Hesmondhalgh 2007, 18-19).
In Swedish media it sometimes seems like the industry is extraordi-
nary successful and that Swedish companies are especially successful and
signifi cant. As an example, the somewhat dramatic term “the Swedish
the industry is also high. In the last ten years many dif erent educational
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