(Part 2) Swedish Game Awards Conference 2014 Report – Talks

Another thing that also happens during SGA Conferences is talks from various people in the game industry. Below is a short summary of the talks that I could attend.

Romi Gråhed from DICE had a talk about development of games in general, what pitfalls a developer might run into and some general tips and tricks for better development of games.

Linnea Harrison from DICE has a talk about something that DICE calles Levolution. In short, it’s how you can change a level in (for example) battlefield that isn’t necessarily destruction. She also decided to talk about how they had applied that in a Battlefield 4 level called “Do the Dish”, as well as some development tips in general. This talk made me get some inspiration for potential game design ideas as well.

Ida Häggström & Jenna Sourander from Fondia has a talk about legal matters in games. This was a really interesting talk, as you might not be aware of all the legal regulations that exists when you are making games. If you are going to develop games, make sure that you get help to sort out all legal matters.

Martin Lindell from DICE had a talk about the preservation of games and what challenges that it possess. This was a really interesting talk; as it highlighted what makes preserving games hard compared to preserving music for example; as well as some legal problems behind doing just that.

Lead by Angelica Norgren (P3 spel), there was a panel discussion on the Saturday with Josef Fares, Novi Flink and Roger Tónlist about gender issues in games. It brought up a couple of interesting points of discussions, especially from Josef Fares(despite that he contradicted himself a good couple of times)

Johan Pilstead from Arrowhead Studios had a talk about game development in general. He also brought up some general experiences from Arrowhead’s own experiences. A really good talk that everyone should listen to if they can.

Daniel Ström of Guru Games had a talk about a concept called Agency. In short, Agency is about being able to make choices in your life and how that could be applied to video games. He also talked  about how agency was applied in their own project called Magnetic.

Timea Tabori from Rockstar North had a talk during the lunch on Sunday. She talked about how she went from being a university student to become a programmer at Rockstar, and also giving tips to other who want to do the same.

Daniel Thronström from Avalanche had a talk called “Why AAA is the new indie”. The talk was primary focused on what AAA developers can learn from indie developers and the other way around. General game development tips was also brought up and how the market has changed the past few years. If you ever get a chance to hear this lecture somewhere else, I strongly recommend that you do so.

Bonus: Campus Gotland Group Photo