SAN FRANCISCO — In today’s hyper-kinetic global gaming marketplace, it can be difficult to stay informed about innovations taking place in the U.S., let alone overseas. Fortunately, nine powerful players in Swedish game development are attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) to provide a sneak peek at their latest wares. The companies from Sweden are exhibiting as a block in a 900 square foot booth, dubbed the Nordic Pavilion (booth #1824 in San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center).
The Nordic Pavilion is a collaboration between the Swedish Trade Council, the Swedish Computer Game Industry, The Consulate General of Sweden in San Francisco, and computer game industry associations from Finland, Norway, and Denmark. These dynamic and intensely productive organizations will come together under the Swedish banner to showcase their most recent offerings for the global electronic entertainment market.
“Gaming has become a major Swedish export,” notes Anders Olsson, project manager for the Swedish Trade Council’s participation at GDC. “The GDC will enable fans, licensers, publishers, distributors, and other key industry players to get an inside look at some of our leading entrepreneurs and projects in this dynamic and constantly evolving industry.”
The following Swedish companies are part of the Nordic Pavilion:
Avalanche Studios was founded in 2003 by Christofer and Linus Blomberg and is the original creator of the award-winning “Just Cause” franchise. The company develops games based on its proprietary technology, enabling unique open-worlds to be created based on original or licensed content.
Massive is a fully-owned subsidiary of Ubisoft Entertainment, one of the world’s largest independent games publishers. Massive is working on a range of games in addition to online technology used by the entire Ubisoft group.
DICE is an award-winning developer best known for creating the phenomenally successful Battlefield franchise, with the widely acclaimed Battlefield 3 as the latest installment. DICE also is the home of the Frostbite Engine and the creator of Mirror's Edge and Medal of Honor multiplayer experience.
Donya Labs is the leading provider of automatic 3D-optimization tools for the gaming industry. Donya provides the revolutionary Simplygon software, which automates optimization of 3D assets to shorten production time and reduce development cost and has been licensed by some of the world’s most renowned game developers, including Blizzard, CCP Games, BioWare, NCsoft, Nexon, Blue Byte, Funcom, as well as companies in other industries such as Boeing Phantom Works. Donya will release v.4.0 of their Simplygon middleware at GDC.
Hansoft is an integrated solution for agile and lean development, collaborative scheduling, real-time reporting, bug tracking, QA, workload coordination, portfolio, and document management. The new Hansoft 6.7 bridges tools and methodologies with improved SDK capabilities, including readymade integration with JIRA, allowing entire organizations to work together in real time despite using different tools
University of Skövde is the largest university-level game development educator in Sweden. With 10 years of experience in game development education, the university has gained a thorough understanding of how to structure programs and courses in order to prepare students for work in the industry after graduation, either as employees at established companies or as entrepreneurs.
Localize Direct are localization tool and translation content providers. Using Localize Direct’s online localization tool, developers can massively streamline their localization pipeline. The company’s technology-based approach helps large and small companies remove many of the issues encountered through more traditional approaches. Localize Direct’s clients include THQ, WB Games, Sega, 7Sixty, 505 Games, and several other prominent companies.
TeliaSonera provides fiber-based telecommunications services and infrastructure that deliver supreme customer value with high quality in every dimension. In addition to serving Operators and Services Providers, TeliaSonera plays a vital role in delivering content and applications to millions of passionate and demanding users worldwide through solutions for the media, gaming, and other online entertainment industries.
Imagination Studios is an art outsourcing studio that specializes in providing art assets and animation to the game and entertainment industry. The studio provides motion capture of body, face, or eye, or full performance capture. From preproduction, to final delivery in a rendered movie, or direct to engine, Imagination Studios can help with any stage of the art pipeline.
The Swedish Trade Council (http://www.swedishtrade.com) offers professional services and has the competence and resources to identify international business opportunities for Swedish companies.