On the evening of July 27, 2008, more than fifteen young men sat sequestered in a basement room in Skövde, Sweden, just a stone’s throw from the city’s college. Twenty-eight hours later, they would emerge into the daylight, one summer night poorer, dozens of new computer games richer. The event was called No More Sweden and it was the first of what would become a recurring event in the Swedish gaming world.
In attendance were Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, then mostly known for the strategy game Harvest: Massive Encounter, and Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren, who’d created the popular platform games Knytt and Knytt Stories, based on the character Knyttet (Toffle, in English) in Tove Jansson’s Moomin books. Erik Svedäng, developer of the prizewinning adventure game Blueberry Garden and the arcade game Shot Shot Shoot for Apple’s iPad was there, and of course Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström, a twenty-six-year-old self-taught programmer from Gothenburg, known to be unbelievably prolific (in just a few years he had developed and self-published more than forty games, with names like Burn the Trash; Shotgun Ninja; Clean Asia!; and Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf, an interactive music video for the Gothenburg post–punk rock band Fucking Werewolf Asso). The guys in the basement all belonged to the world of self-financed game developers who have always lived alongside the mainstream industry. In a nutshell, the cream of the Swedish indie game scene had gathered to meet for three days to mingle, swap stories, and create games.
The “cream” is a relative concept. The Swedish indie scene is a narrow subculture kept alive by a small number of enthusiasts. Fifteen people in a basement in Skövde doesn’t sound particularly glamorous, but if someone in the future decides to track down the roots of the Swedish indie game scene, he or she will probably discover a programmer meet-up just like this one.
Twenty-two-year-old Erik Svedäng took the initiative and organized the first No More Sweden. He had been programming games for as long as he could remember, and for several years had wanted to attend the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco. However, it’s hard just to scratch out a living as an independent game developer, and in 2008 Svedäng was forced to accept that, once again, he couldn’t afford plane tickets to San Francisco that year. So he decided to organize his own festival instead. All he needed was a venue; finding enthusiastic game developers to fill it wouldn’t be a problem.
After the programming contest, in which everyone present got twenty-eight hours to create a game, there was an awards ceremony. Svedäng and his friend Petri Purho won in the categories “Most Next-Gen” and “Most Erotic,” with the creation You Have to Knock the Penis, a precision game they’ve described as a “feminist statement.” The prize for “Best Game” went to Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström, for Stench Mechanics. Since then, No More Sweden has taken place every year, and the number of participants keeps growing.
Both Erik Svedäng and Nicklas Nygren work full-time developing games and selling them on the Internet. In contrast, Jonatan Söderström gives his games away online and lives off donations. By indie standards, they are all successful. They don’t make big money, but all of them agree it’s better than working for a mainstream game company like DICE. Nicklas Nygren feels big game studios lead to creative stagnation.
“Walk into any game shop and look at the boxes. It’s the same thing everywhere, just macho men with big guns shooting at other macho men. It’s all stereotype and a real drag,” he says.
“Of course, there are big productions that break the pattern and do fantastic things, but for the most part, it feels like the whole industry is making games for teenage boys.”
All three identify the freedom to transform their own ideas into reality as their main driving force. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet, but in exchange, indie developers have full control over their creations, from the graphics and sound, to design, to game mechanics. You have room to experiment and can complete a product in a relatively short time, without having to listen to the views of other developers or anxious publishing representatives.
“If you have a really clear idea of what you want to do, it’s no fun to compromise. I want to do my own projects, not just work on a small part of a huge game,” says Jonatan Söderström.
Most indie developers agree that interest in small, different, and innovative game concepts is growing. With the right conditions, it’s only a matter of time before more games rooted in the indie scene will reach a larger audience. According to Nicklas Nygren, “As the game industry grew, it left a hole in its wake. During the Nintendo era, there were no megasized development teams and budgets. I believe that many people long for the simpler and more experimental games of that time. That’s what makes indie games work so well today. We fill that void.”
The world of Nicklas Nygren and the rest in that basement in Skövde bears strong resemblances to the origins of the gaming industry, found in the early computer culture of the 1970s and ’80s, and especially in the very popular (at that time) demo scene. A demo is a kind of programmed piece of artwork, combining sound and moving images into a visually impressive demonstration. The purpose of a demo was mainly to showcase a programmer’s coding skills in creating visual effects. Back then, before user-friendly programs made it possible for anyone to create digital animations, such work was complicated and time-consuming.
Demo programmers would often work in inventively named groups, and compete against other groups to try and create the most impressive works. Rival groups would meet up and exhibit their creations at demoparties, a kind of predecessor to today’s gaming and computer festivals. Several Scandinavian groups became famous through demoparties—Hackerence and Dreamhack, in Sweden; The Gathering, in Norway; Assembly, in Finland. These events established networks and began collaborations, giving rise to the largest export giants of the Swedish game industry. DICE has its roots in a demogroup called The Silents; Starbreeze, who developed the acclaimed games The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness, was formed from the group Triton; and the Finnish group Remedy, known mostly for the Alan Wake and Max Payne, has its origin in the demogroup Future Crew.
When the very first computer games were being created, development was pretty much all small-scale. Spacewar!, released in 1962, is considered one of the world’s first computer games. It was a hobby project for programmers Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen working on the PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before Atari mass-produced Pong and it became a global success, programmer Allan Alcorn had written the game as a school assignment in 1972. Likewise Tetris, perhaps the world’s most famous game, was written by a Russian programmer, Alexey Pajitnov, in his free time, with the help of two colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Compared to today’s games, these were very modest productions, with simple graphics and mechanics. Putting three hundred game developers to work for several years was unheard of—what in the world would they all do with all that time?
Not until games were packaged and sold in retail shops did the gaming industry in its present form begin to take shape. In the early 1970s, as game consoles made their way into homes, the emerging power structures became even more evident. Printing floppy disks, cassettes, boxes, and manuals was expensive. Producing console games demanded long and complicated copyright agreements with hardware manufacturers. Professional publishers were needed to take care of the paperwork and provide the capital so programmers could concentrate on creating games. And as game consoles became more powerful and games more numerous, developers’ financial resources grew into the budgets of today, often totaling more than $100 million per title.
It’s tempting but incorrect to describe the history of the game industry as a classic David and Goliath saga, with the crass, capitalist corporate interests in one corner and the idealistic indie scene in the other. In reality, the indie scene has always lived in a kind of symbiotic relationship with the established gaming industry, like a creatively brilliant but impossibly unbusinesslike experimental greenhouse. Those who wanted to make game design their career and not just a hobby haven’t had many options to do so, except by applying to work on one of the giant companies’ multimillion-dollar productions. Lately, though, modern forms of distribution have given independent developers new ways to make money.
As is often the case, Apple is a good starting point. In the summer of 2008, the company’s legendary CEO Steve Jobs stood onstage at the company’s main office in Cupertino, California. That morning, he wasn’t presenting a new cell phone or computer. Instead, on the agenda was an update of iPhone’s operating system, with a special focus on developers.
After Jobs demonstrated the telephone’s new security functions and improved e-mail support, it was time for the big news: App Store. Apple was turning the iPhone into a shop. It would be a marketplace where anyone could sell games and applications to millions of iPhone users around the world. To demonstrate the excellence of the new technology, Electronic Arts’ boss Travis Boatman was invited onto the stage. He showed the audience an iPhone-compatible version of the game Spore and showered praise on Apple’s invention.
It should be noted that Apple was, in fact, far from first. In typical Steve Jobs style, Apple’s mobile store was more like refining an already established model and applying it to its own market. The idea had come from the game industry, which had taken the first steps toward online sales almost five years earlier. In 2003, Valve, known primarily for the game series Half-Life, launched the distribution platform Steam. It soon became the market leader and is today the natural home for PC games distributed over the Internet. In 2004, Microsoft launched the Xbox Live Arcade platform, and in 2006 Sony started its PlayStation Store. Nintendo was last out of the gate, releasing WiiWare in May 2008. When the App Store saw the light of day, all four major game platforms already had digital distribution channels on the market.
Today, Electronic Arts probably feels a little left behind. The company has of course reaped huge success on Apple’s platforms, but the App Store and other digital distribution platforms have proven most advantageous for small-scale, independent game developers. In a telling move, Travis Boatman left the company in 2012 to join Midasplayer-rival Zynga. During the last few years, the portion of digitally sold games has increased greatly, and in 2010 it totaled one fourth of the game industry’s overall turnover. Many of the most popular games are still released by traditional publishers, but the move to digital distribution has also revolutionized the conditions for indie developers. Both Apple and Valve take 30 percent of a game’s sales, and the rest of the money goes directly to the developer. That’s a large piece to pay, it may seem, but keeping 70 percent of the retail price is but a dream for those studios working in accordance with the traditional publishing model. The most important change brought about by digital distribution, it turns out, is not lower costs for the publishers—it’s that the publishers are no longer needed.