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Towards a History of Finnish and Swedish Game Industry Platforms
Key insights
7 takeaways- 01Finland and Sweden have established themselves as global game industry leaders, with 122 and 227 developers respectively publishing games between 1979 and 2020.See it on page 2
- 02Finnish and Swedish development strategies diverged in the 2000s, with Finnish developers focusing on mobile platforms (notably Symbian) while Swedish developers maintained a stronger focus on PC and console titles.See it on page 2
- 03The adoption of third-party game engines, such as the LPMud engine used in 1990's BadMUD, significantly accelerated game development and the transition to 3D graphics during the 1990s and 2000s.See it on page 3
- 04The number of game companies in both countries grew rapidly after 2010, though Finland experienced a notable peak in company count in 2014, coinciding with a local economic recession.See it on page 4
- 05Higher education in game development, which began in Sweden in 2001 and in Finland in 2005/2006, is a key factor in the sustained growth of the industry and the professionalization of the developer workforce.See it on page 4
- 06Early industry formation in both countries was heavily influenced by the 'demo scene' and the widespread availability of affordable home computers like the Commodore 64, supported by strong local mathematics education.See it on page 3
- 07While the number of platforms used for development has increased over time, there is no statistically significant difference in the types of game engines used between Finland and Sweden as of the 2020s.See it on page 3
Summary
This is the published version of a paper presented at FDG 2023, Lisbon, April 12-14, 2023.. Citation for the original published paper: Lankoski, P., Dymek, M. (2023) Towards a History of Finnish and Swedish Game Industry Platforms In: Phil Lopes; Filipe Luz; Antonios Liapis; Henrik Engström (ed.), FDG 2023: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 57 New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3587214 N.B.
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