Arrowhead partners with Swedish Game Awards 2015

As main partners to Swedish Game Awards this year, we are excitedly waiting for the Finals days and the Gala announcing the winners this upcoming Tuesday!

We started our own story in 2008 by winning Swedish Game Awards with our early 2D version of Magicka, which became Game of the Year. Now it only feels right to go full circle and give back to where we came from.

It seems both not very long ago, and a lifetime away that we were up on that stage, newborn game developers shaking of surprise and not understanding what had just happened.
Let us present you with a recently resurfaced (and tiny bit embarrassing) video of the event! (this time it’s all in Swedish but hopefully Youtube’s subtitles will help a bit)

I believe winning Swedish Game Awards and the fantastic boost we got from the encouraging comments from both judges and established game developers was a huge factor in starting Arrowhead Game Studios.

The Magicka of those days was very different from what we released in 2011. It was fully 2D, slower paced but crazy hardcore. You could not move while conjuring elements, and every element was created by drawing a more or less complicated symbol with the controller stick.

The Magicka from days of old, 2008

Magicka has turned 3D, 2009

And of course the final version of 2011 we know and love

The competition this year has been tough as always, but our very own Helldivers Game Designer, Patrik Lasota, was on hand to help make the decision as part of the judges panel.
At the SGA Conference we also had Patrik and Rob Tatnell (Art Director for Gauntlet) give talks about their line of work and all the ins and outs of working in a developer studio.

You can see Patrik’s wonderful talk here on designing for co-op and Rob’s inspiring talk on visual FX here.

The final event for the Swedish Game Awards 2015 is taking place soon, on June 16th. During the day there is the Expo showing off all of this year’s contestants, and visitors can also vote for the winner of Gamer’s Choice.
If you have time and are in Stockholm why not join us? Arrowhead will be around at the Expo, and you can find more details about the event on the SGA website.

But don’t fear, if you’re one of the other 6 billion people in the world that don’t happen to be in Stockholm for the awards you can always watch the livestream which starts on the evening the 16th, at 19 CEST!