Why are there so many successful Swedish gaming companies?
swedishstartupspace.com
swedishstartupspace.com
Mojang AB[1]'s profit is 324m SEK after taxes (39.3% profit margin before taxes) but they also paid out a lot money to Notch Development AB [2] (Which is 100% owned by Notch) in licensing fees. Notch Development AB had 637m in revenue, (almost?) all of it from the licensing fees from Mojang, with a profit of 467m (97.24% profit margin before taxes)
Mojang AB is owned by Notch, Carl Manneh and Jakob Porsér while Notch Development is soley owned by Notch. That is some good future proofing of his assets, in case of disputes or whatever down the line.
http://www.dataspelsbranschen.se/media/134049/spelutvecklari... Swedish only sorry, page 6 & 7 for the numbers
We should see a good spike in Starbreeze's revenue as well as both Payday 2 and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons have sold well and received good reviews.
I expect there will be a fair few mobile/casual game companies coming up once the devs over King start creating new companies. Candy Crush has been such as success that we will probably see more along that line in the future.
Göteborg: Hotline Miami, by Dennaton http://www.hotlinemiami.com/
Malmö: rymdkapsel, by grapefrukt http://rymdkapsel.com/
Malmö: Year Walk, by Simogo Games http://simogo.com/games/yearwalk/
Stockholm: Eleven, by Christoffer Hedborg http://elevenminutesofspace.com/
[1] The full IGF finalist list annotated with location: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/igf2013_geography.html
I've heard a similar argument made for why Dundee became a hub of computer game development in the UK — access to cheap computers for working-class families. (plus Dundee also has long cold winters)
In Dundee's case it was access to Sinclair ZX Spectrums that 'accidentally' went missing from the Timex factory.
Quite nice, specially the advanced mode with access to a better sound chip than the standard 48+.
However one needed the ZX Spectrum compatibility cartridge to proper load Spectrum games.
It is definitely both a culture and a climate thing. The point about consensus culture is a good observation - in some contexts it can be crippling, but in creative-technical hybrid endeavors like games, these teams can really do some damage.
Trivia: Stefan Boberg who is a technical director on Frostbite wrote the Amiga version of LHA which was the file compressor on Amiga.
Oddly there's not a big game scene in Norway, though. The Norwegian demosceners seem to have either gone into other things, or gone into games outside of Norway.
Are there cases or profiles of people talking about it?
I'm quite proud of the IT scene in Sweden.
Edit: To clarify, Malmö is smaller than both Göteborg and Stockholm.
So if you want to hack hardware I suggest hack space called Fabriken at Stapelbäddsparken in Malmö.
If you want to hack software I suggest hack space Bageriet at Volframsgatan (http://forskningsavd.se) or Hack space at Kontrapunkt (Norra Grängesbergsgatan 26b).
So that makes Kontrapunkt, Bageriet at Volframsgatan, Fabriken at Stapelbäddsparken and this 4th near Värnhem.
Of course, I believe there aren't enough nerds for 4 hackspaces but it's still pretty cool. :)
We do currently cooperate with the Filurum (https://www.facebook.com/filurum) gifted children group to provide a meeting place every week - in fact, it's what I'm doing later today.
Actually this fuels some controversy ( tig ties to IGF and the excessive amount or Nordic judges and Nordic winners, while good games from Latin America and Africa are ignored )
http://www.tubefilter.com/2013/08/15/its-official-pewdiepie-...
(It's not that screwing up doesn't have any consequences at all. You won't be able to keep your expensive apartment or fancy car while on welfare, but all your basic needs will be covered.)
I read Atlas Shrugged (painfully) and kept being bothered by the simplistic ideals put forth. Your argument seems to me to be the perfect counter-example to her deluded ideals.
Thanks!
Swedish people in my not entirely unbiased opinion tend to be exceptionally good at this and I think that's because education tends to be very broad - if you want to take music lessons and learn to play an instrument in Sweden it's essentially paid for by the state. Want to create a study group to learn about painting, same thing. If you go to study say engineering physics at a masters program, they'll also force you to learn at least the basics in fields like construction, electrical engineering, software engineering, etc. When you exit high school, even if you've taken a scientific route, you've learned about wood work, mechanical engineering, probably at least 2 languages beyond Swedish, etc.
Part of this I think is attributable to the culture isn't so focused on knowledge being measured or "accounted for" financially.
A second reason is probably that it's pretty cold in Sweden in the winters, but I don't think that has nearly as much to do with it.
Disclaimer: I'm born 77 and left the country 99. Some people claim that education isn't as good as it used to be. I don't know, but I think most of the people creating kick ass products right now are people that were born in the 80s or earlier.
Paradox's own games (Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4) are also more successful than ever.
The Swedish game developers seems to be booming.
My guess for why there are so many game developers in Sweden: people are free to pursue whatever they want, without much financial pressures. People don't rush through college, because there's no tuition. They're not as pressured to go into high-paying industries because they have less debt to pay off. That combined with early access to computers and internet creates an environment where people pursue their passions, for better or worse.