Teemu Vilen

In an article in GamesIndustry.Biz, Sophie McEvoy dig into why the games industry in Sweden is still growing. (despite the harsh climate we’ve experienced globally in recent years) “Swedish developers are feeling somewhat optimistic as the local development scene continues to experience rapid growth.” She writes after talking to Per Strömbäck, spokesperson at Dataspelsbranschen / Swedish Games Industry, Oskar Wolontis, COO at Hazelight Studios and Christian Lövstedt, general manager at Midjiwan AB - Polytopia Strömbäck notes that “while there are fewer vacancies at the moment due to the current global economic turmoil, there aren't as many layoffs as in some other places, and the industry here is still growing. The number of people working in the industry having grown from 2,500 to 8,500 people in the last decade” This success has not come without challenges however For Midjiwan, recruiting locally has been challenging because "the demand for talented game developers far exceeds supply" Christian states "As a smaller studio, we face extra difficulties in attracting the best local talent since people tend to gravitate towards the bigger studios, believing it's safer (which is incorrect in our case)." Oskar agrees, "The interest in investing in the Swedish game development industry in recent years has been higher than the local talent pool can reasonably support," he explains. The good news for Swedish game developers is that remote has opened up the possibility to utilize a much larger and global talent pool to support continued growth. From my experience working with providing Swedish studios with senior global talent for 3 years now, I can say that our Swedish work culture, success rate and innovation spirit has not gone unnoticed by developers globally. People want to work with Swedish studios. And now it’s easier than ever. The Swedish games industry is growing, and with our great reputation we have a unique opportunity to leverage the power of remote to continue getting more hit titles out. Remote work in games has so many benefits in my humble opinion The studios get a smoother production with fast access to the right people The developer get to work on games they are passionate about The talent is developed and kept within gaming Increased diversity benefits productivity While it may not be for all and for all situations, it sure has a lot of upsides for those who can make it work.

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