Boden doesn’t just grow the smart and green. The unique Boden Game Camp ecosystem attracts students and game companies from around the world to a growing industry, locally and globally. Their annual gaming conference Boden Game Changer was recently held. and the result was a success.
Recently, the Boden Game Changer gaming conference was organized. More than 250 gaming enthusiasts of all levels met and learned about the latest in the gaming world. The program consisted of 21 speakers and was moderated by Andrew Allen, site manager for Changemaker Education’s trainings at Boden Game Camp at Boden Business Park. Some of the inspiring speakers included
• Hind Toufga, EMEA Representative, Nordic Game.
• Björn Flintberg, researcher and strategist, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.
• Nika Bender, Lead Live Producer, and Kevin Moore, Supervising Technical Director, DICE
• Nickole Li, Principal Game Designer, Mojang Studio.
• Christian Fonnesbech, CEO & Head of IP, Leverage.
• Joel Nallo, Senior 3D Artist/Designer, Metagravity.
• Peter Lindgren, Technical Director, Arrowhead Game Studios.
• Jenny Österlund, CEO, Gameboost.
Find out more about the conference here:
Strong development
With Boden Game Camp, Boden set its sights on the gaming industry as early as 2017, to meet the increasing demand for expertise within the video game sector. What started with a single program has now grown to about 250 game students, spread across seven different courses plus two parallel EU projects. One project targets line operations with a focus on existing and new gaming companies. The second is to find bridges between gaming talent and the rest of the business community.
Boden Game Camp is also part of Northern Europe’s fastest growing games cluster Arctic Game, which creates a strategic platform of business development, investment support, games education and events to build a strong games community for the games industry in Northern Sweden.
“There are currently about 20 gaming companies locally here in Boden. There are many people who have very good ideas but need help with the corporate side. We are there to capture and help through our incubator solution,” explains Hanna Müller, business developer at Boden Business Park with a focus on the gaming industry.
Boden Game Camp is based at Boden Business Park, which is a creative meeting place between business, education and development. The site is a daily melting pot where the region’s various conferences, state visits and industries meet under one roof.
International gaming companies
The conscious effort to develop the gaming industry in Boden has attracted major international gaming companies to Boden, both with guest appearances that provide mutual exchange and with Boden as a base for their operations. The companies work closely with the talents, who are sometimes handpicked directly from the courses and also have the chance to do internships and participate in high-level computer game development during their training.
The American game studio House of How is one of several game companies located here and offers opportunities for new trainees and employees. For example, trainees from Boden Game Camp have participated in parts of the development of the game Minecraft Legends. (An action strategy spinoff of Minecraft, which is one of the world’s best-selling games).
According to Dataspelsbranschens Spelutvecklarindex 2023, the Swedish computer game industry’s turnover has grown to SEK 32.5 billion, which is an increase of 18 percent in Swedish-registered companies. In total, including subsidiaries abroad, the Swedish industry had a turnover of SEK 86.5 billion, an increase of 47%.
