- One year… We actually started last summer, in the end of july.
Emanuel Dohi of Dohi Sweden kind of chuckles when he realises that it has been one year since he and his business partners first came up with the idea that would become Lawn Mower Kids. It has been a year of highs and lows, hope and despair, but being at the end of the road he seems really pleased. And he can’t wait to show off the result of all the endless late night work sessions.
Day one of the 2010 Creative Summit in Skellefteå, Sweden, started off with moderator Alf Rehn and David Eriksson, CEO and Creative Director of North Kingdom, welcoming the attendees to the Nordanå theatre. Creative Summit is an event that is tailor-made for creative and talented people in the region of Västerbotten.
I meet up with Nicklas ”Nifflas” Nygren at a coffeehouse in Umeå just hours before FiNCK (an abbrevation of the nonsensical ”Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer”) is about to be released. He’s sitting at a table with his laptop, playing through the game one last time to make sure there aren’t any bugs that he might have missed. When asked if he still gets nervous when releasing games, he tells me that most of all he’s just excited to finally let people play it.
In such a vast region as the nordic countries, filled with so much talent and dedicated entreprenuers, one cannot overestimate the importance of an event like the Nordic Game conference. A couple of days each year you’re given the chance to meet up with your colleagues, make new friends and find inspiration for another year’s worth of work.
Skellefteå based company Morningdew Media has won third place in the “Games that Challenge the World Contest” with their puzzle game Luminati
The motivation is:
“Connect 4 on crack, this game combines the classic strategy of Connect 4 with powerups to alter the game play. Morningdew Media put together amazing SFX and great design to deliver this classic game to another level.”
A production management course is right now going on in Umeå. It started yesterday with production manager Karolina Heimburg talking about Movie Magic budgeting and we also looked trough the very useful production manager “bible” that been produced for the course.
The Umeå based game developer Coldwood Interactive have not only got their office located on top of the world, they’re also about to see their business reach the top of the Swedish gaming industry. Formerly known for their snow mobile and freestyle skiing games, the studio just warped to the next level. During wednesday night’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony Computer Entertainment presented the new Playstation Move – a motion sensitive technology similar to the one used in Nintendo’s incredibly succesful Wii. One of the main attractions was Coldwood’s Motion Fighter
Directors Camp is a festival that will put the spotlight on some of the best new generation directors in Sweden today. What the directors at this particular festival have in common is that they all live or have lived in Västerbotten.
Random Bastards are a constellation of creators that works with web-TV, skateboard and snowboard films, clubs, clothes and merchandise.
