My First Jam 2018

~7 hours of development time. 85 students participating. 17 teams, 17 games delivered – that is an astounding success rate! 30 individually wrapped prices, 45 pizzas, 6 cartons of soda, 4-5kg of sweets (for much-needed energy throughout the day), 4 silo-sized thermoses of coffee and one rented minivan to taxi non-Visby students home after the awards.




















Tons and […]

Educating social workers on problem gaming

Patrick Prax was invited by Region Gotland to educate our local social workers and medical providers about problematic gaming, youth and “addiction”.

(The video is currently being re-uploaded. Sorry for the technical snafus)
The talk was in Swedish but Patrick recommends the book “What’s the Problem in Problem Gaming”. It is an anthology which provides a number of perspectives on the issue, such as players’ life conditions and lifestyle choices, problem gaming from a family perspective, the voices […]

Prof. Bartle back on the island!

We’re continuing the expansion of our research wing at the Department of Game Design, and we are happy to announce that Prof. Richard Bartle is joining our team on Gotland as a guest professor!
We welcome professor Richard Bartle – Honorary Professor at University of Essex and Guest Researcher at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University!
Professor Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world (MUD, in 1978), making him a pioneer within the massively multiplayer online game industry, […]

More GAME students on the Switch!

Defunct was originally developed as a student project back in 2014 and has been available on Steam since 2016.
Today this team of former students are joining Niklas Hallin and his “Yono and the Celestial Elephants” with a release on the Nintendo Switch!

Well played and congrats Robert Graff, Jonatan Keil, David Forssell, Mikael Karlsson, Simon Öqvist, Petter Vernersson, Anders Hedström!

GGC 2019, 5-6 June!

Gotland Game Conference 2019 is in June 5-6th, with the Educators Summit right after.

Join the Facebook event for updates!
… and get your tickets from ti.to as always.
Want to volunteer for the Jury? Read the rules and apply here.
Until then, feel free to check out the previous conference here!

GGC 2019, 5-6 June!

Gotland Game Conference 2019 is in June 5-6th, with the Educators Summit right after.

Join the Facebook event for updates.
Add gotlandgameconference.com/2019/ to your feedreader.
Get your tickets from ti.to as always.
Want to volunteer for the Jury? Read the rules and apply here.

The Pioneers 2018: celebrating the schools that do things differently

“Creative education is vital. But creative education is, in places, broken.”, WeTransfer says. In order to support new, better, types of programs they teamed up with Lecture in Progress and developed The Pioneers list – highlighting schools around the world who deserve credit for doing things differently. They recently visited us on the island and spoke with our Director of Studies, Jakob Berglund-Rogert which led to this great write-up on how we approach game design […]

GAME Alumni leading by example

There’s a good chance that your reading list is overwhelmingly male if you follow a lot of game developers and designers, even though you might be making a conscious effort to follow more women.
Well good news, everyone! Finding new sources for inspiration, experience and skill just became a lot easier. Our former student Emma Johansson and her New Zealand studio Runaway Play has created #GirlsBehindTheGames – a worldwide movement to highlight the women […]

The talks are online!

The presentations are now available on our YouTube-channel. Even better – if you prefer reading you can click through these links to find a) a description and the video for each talk and b) our live Twitter coverage of each talk. Highly recommended!

Welcome! by the Department of Game Design
Making Them Care: The Narrative Burden for Creating Empathy, by Heidi McDonald
Existential Game Design – Lost in the Woods, Searching for Bliss, by Doris […]

Photos from GGC 2018

To avoid completely swamping this post, we’re putting only a few photos here and sharing the full set on Facebook. There’s also a lot of activity on the Instagram tag – #GGConf2018.
Recordings of all the talks are available on our YouTube-channel.
Show Floor:

You can browse all the student projects right here on the GAME Department blog. We keep a specific tag for the awarded games too.

The award winners

Photos and video to come! Meanwhile, enjoy all the game trailers, and here’s the final award list:
The award winners

Best Presentation: Take My Shift
Best Arcade Experience: Coal Rush
Student Choice: Momentum Drift
Alumni of the Year: Max Tiilikainen
The Social Game Award: Twined
Public Choice: Bench Warmers, Neon Nemesis (tie)
The Almedalen Library Award: Symbio
The Innovation Award: Nova Factor
The Woke Award: Re Leap
Expression in Game Design: Momentum Drift
Jury Spotlight: Bolt […]

The GGC 2018 award winners

Photos and video to come! Meanwhile, enjoy all the game trailers, and here’s the final award list:
The award winners

Best Presentation: Take My Shift
Best Arcade Experience: Coal Rush
Student Choice: Momentum Drift
Alumni of the Year: Max Tiilikainen
The Social Game Award: Twined
Public Choice: Bench Warmers, Neon Nemesis (tie)
The Almedalen Library Award: Symbio
The Innovation Award: Nova Factor
The Woke Award: Re Leap
Expression in Game Design: Momentum Drift
Jury Spotlight: Bolt […]