If you’re a young game developer and looking for a place to live that will foster your gaming talent, Sweden might just be the place for you.
The Game Incubator Network, a national cooperation that hosts development start-ups to offer support for young developers and their intellectual properties, is now being funded by the Swedish government. The program has been established for well over the decade and is located at Sweden’s Gothia Science Park in Skovde.
The Incubator has actually been able to bring new IP’s into the mainstream. By offering some of the basic business and marketing help that many publishers do. This means offering business development, sales and legal consultation and development technology. They are currently in the process of creating a Game Development Fund and an IP development process to offer further aid to fledgling developers.
One such company was Coffee Stain Studios. The Swedish based company created the first-person shooter/ tower defense game, Sanctum. With the games critical success and commercial success on Steam, Coffee Stain Studios has managed to gain some notoriety. The studio is already on its way to making the sequel Sanctum 2 through Reverb Publishing. I think 180,000 units might be convincing enough for any small publisher.
The company also managed to earn several first place awards for Sanctum at Epic Games “Intel Make Something Unreal” contest in Best FPS-game mod and Best game mod.
Along with the central incubator there are also seven other incubators located across Sweden that are also involved with the program with two dozen developers under their belt. The central incubator at Gothia Science Park has seen the most action being the first one to have experience to oversee development of AAA games like Chronicles of Riddick and many of the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games.
While it’s not likely that many other developers around the world will have this kind of help in their own countries it would be pretty damn cool if this were offered in other countries. This could help get a lot of unknown developing talent. A program like this could help a lot of unknown game developers get some recognition and foster a lot of talented people.
And judging by statements made by Nichlas Dunham, who oversees much of the business consultation process at The Game Incubator, they’re looking to continue to prove the strength of this program in a recent press release:
“The government here in Sweden is very proactive when it comes to the videogame industry, and myself and the rest of the incubator leads are looking forward to producing the next round of development superstars to prove to them that this program is a resounding success.”
Let’s hope this can spread to other countries and benefit many more young developers. The one thing I can say for sure is that Sanctum has found a spot on my ‘games I need to play’ list.
[Sources]
www.gamespress.com (press release)
