In the first in a series of articles where we interview with Swedish Game Awards 2008 jury members, we talk to Tobias Sjögren, CEO at competition partner Peligroso Entertainment Group.
Tell me a bit about yourself and what you do for a living.
I have been in the industry since 1996, starting with working on the production of games, but for the last six years have mainly worked with the business side and management. I worked at DICE between 2001 and the end of 2004 during the time Battlefield 1942 was produced. Since then I have been running a two-man consultancy company which helps Nordic developers do better business by assisting them with sales and connections but also business strategies and advice. For example, I helped the SGA winner of 2005, Atomic Elbow, to get a contract with the publisher Sierra Online and get on the Xbox 360 platform with the Xbox Live Arcade game Switchball (called Crazy Ball in the SGA competition).
I feel very strongly for the Nordic region as a game development community and have been a great believer in and supporter of SGA since it first started. This year I’m the chairman of the group which reviews the games sent to the Nordic Game Program that gives out grants to different Nordic projects and also on the board of the Swedish developer association Spelplan.
In your opinion, why should someone participate in Swedish Game Awards?
First of all I think it is always great working against a set goal and deadline competing with others, because it keeps you on your toes trying to do the best possible result.
Also, it is clear that some of the participant projects became real companies and published games and many others from the team got hired by game developers. So it is a great way of market your game and yourself!
Can you give any advice on how to get into the game development industry?
First of all you have got to be very interested in producing and building games rather then just playing games, it is actually a huge difference.
Secondly, be sure on what you want to do. Nobody will hire somebody that offers to do anything just to get the foot in the door. So be clear to yourself and in interviews what you want to do exactly, why you think you are really great on doing that and how you would like to develop yourself in the future to become even better.
What do you look for in an entry as a jury member?
A great idea regarding game play and passion. Passion is hard to describe but you can most often see it in the game if the team have had great fun when doing the game and if they worked well as a team, getting the game to feel like a job of a team rather than a bunch of random people.
It is very important to note that I do not look for a finished game that could go to retail tomorrow, the potential and fun factor is the key.
What are some common mistakes you see in entries?
It is teams trying to do to much and not being able to leverage the actual game play because they focused too much on graphics or technology. The game has to be fun to play, period!
It is now around one month left until the game deadline, have you got any final advice for our participants?
It is much better to do less really great than a lot quite bad. Focus on the core of the game, the thing that makes it most fun and build from that and make sure you don’t try to do too much, but rather spend time on polishing the game experience, gameplay and graphics!
Thank you for the interview!
