Ulas Karademir

💭 Question of the day: How to craft moments of excitement and stillness so players stay curious but not overwhelmed? ◼️ Today we had Simon Etienne Rozner at Espoo Game LAB and discussed one of the most overlooked aspects of design for newbie designers: 𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆. ◼️ We talked about how 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 you introduce new things (skills, areas, items, challenges, etc) matters just as much as 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 you introduce. ◼️ If excitement stays high for too long, it starts losing its impact. Players need space to breathe, to cool down, process, and anticipate, so that the next spark of discovery feels truly satisfying. ◼️ After almost two years in the game industry, I’ve realized that game design has a lot to do with human psychology and emotions, which is amazing and challenging at the same time, but it's definitely a fun job to do. #gamedesign #learning #psychology #emotions #playerexperience

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Today something we’ve been working on for years finally goes live. We’re opening the GOALS beta. I’m currently at GDC while the team back in Stockholm has been heads down preparing for this moment. Late nights, endless testing, fixing the same problems again and again until they finally disappear. Building a football game is hard. Building one that feels fair and responsive online anywhere in the world is even harder. GOALS has been built from the ground up for internet play. Our proprietary SENTEC simulation and rollback networking are designed to remove the delay and inconsistency that have plagued online football games for years. The goal is simple: the game should feel responsive, fair, and consistent even at high latency. A growing community has already been playing in our early tests and hanging out in our Discord. Now we open the doors wider. Players around the world can jump in, play, and tell us what we’re getting right and where we still need to improve. This moment is the result of years of work from a small but incredibly dedicated team. Engineers, designers, animators, artists, UX, audio, QA, marketing, live ops, community and operations. Everyone pushing toward the same goal: a football game where skill actually decides the outcome. GOALS is free to play because the more people who can step onto the pitch, the better the competition becomes. And better competition makes better games. If that vision resonates with you, come play. Open Beta is live today on PC, Xbox and PlayStation: https://playgoals.com

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Tomorrow, the Committee on Culture will hold an open hearing on video games and board games. For me, it feels like an important moment to pause and reflect on the long-term health of the Swedish game industry. From my perspective, the industry has struggled for quite some time to achieve real stability over time. Not because of a lack of talent, creativity, or international success, but because the surrounding conditions have often been short-term in nature. That affects how companies plan, how teams are built, and how safe and sustainable careers in the industry can be. In the years around and after covid, several underlying issues have become more visible. Many experienced developers have left the industry, production models have become more uncertain, and the inflow of new talent has slowed down. To me, this looks less like a temporary downturn and more like a sign that some of the structures don’t hold up well when the market shifts. My hope is that tomorrow’s hearing can mark the beginning of a more long-term conversation about how the game industry can be given better conditions to be sustainable over time, for companies, for games, and for the people who build them. #Games #Culture

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🎉🇸🇪Celebrating Wins, Without Ignoring Losses! A Strong Industry with Real Struggles Beneath the Surface Studios such as Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft Stockholm, Toca Boca, Starbreeze Studios and others have been part of Sweden’s global success story. Sweden-based developers have shipped internationally recognised titles, expanded studios, and attracted global investment. At the same time, layoffs and restructurings have affected hundreds of professionals across the country. Developers have described the past two years as: -Stressful and uncertain -Especially difficult for international workers on work permits -Emotionally heavy, as experienced colleagues suddenly found themselves without work A reminder that even a “booming” industry is not immune to global economic pressures. Some industry voices have called it a “perfect storm”, post-pandemic market corrections, rising development costs, cautious investment climates, and global publisher restructuring all converging at once. 🏆 Sweden remains one of the strongest game development hubs in Europe. We’ve seen: -Major global releases -Continued international recognition -Strong education pipelines -A vibrant indie scene 👉 That deserves recognition. But growth headlines don’t tell the full story. Behind them are talented artists, designers, programmers, producers, QA specialists, and support staff who were laid off over the last two years. For some, the impact wasn’t just professional; it meant relocating families, leaving Sweden due to visa constraints, or stepping away from the industry entirely. 💡 If we celebrate the wins, we must also hold space for those who paid the price during this correction. 🛠️ What Can We Do? Some Possible Solutions If we want a stronger, more resilient Swedish game industry, here are constructive paths forward: 1️⃣ Stronger Safety Nets for International Talent Sweden benefits enormously from international developers. Exploring longer visa grace periods after layoffs or industry-specific support systems could reduce forced departures. 2️⃣ Sustainable Growth Over Hyper-Expansion Studios and investors can prioritise long-term stability over rapid scaling during boom cycles. 3️⃣ Support for Laid-Off Talent Industry-wide job boards Cross-studio hiring initiatives Mentorship and retraining programs Better transparency during restructurings 4️⃣ Strengthening the Indie Ecosystem Encouraging funding access for small studios and spin-offs can help absorb experienced talent into new ventures. 5️⃣ Open Industry Dialogue We need more honest conversations, not just celebrating success stories, but discussing structural challenges and workforce sustainability. BECAUSE the future of Swedish games isn’t just about the next big release, it’s about the people who make them. As we celebrate our wins, let’s not forget those who faced layoffs over the past two years. 🎯🇸🇪Let’s build more sustainably! Game Dev Stockholm #SwedishGameIndustry #GameDevSweden #GameDev

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Job hunting is an emotional drain, but any accomplishment feels like progress and helps ward off the mean reds. Starting a studio (or any project really) not only keeps your spirits up, it hones you at a time when you want to look and feel your best as a productive force in the industry. Make connections, realize your strengths, work on your weaknesses, find people who do the things you can’t and support one another. What’s the worst that can happen? You look awesome to hiring managers? What’s the best? You turn around and find you have a company making a game.

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We’ve put together a practical guide to help developers speed up their game prototyping process and discover what makes their game truly fun faster and smarter. 🔷𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐞 Define the main gameplay mechanics early on. Test fast, test often, and make sure they’re fun before adding layers of complexity. 🔷𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐚 𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰 Start with a clear concept, build quick prototypes, gather feedback, refine, and validate your idea. 🔷𝐀𝐬𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 Is the gameplay intuitive? Can players understand the goal instantly? Does your prototype show what makes your game stand out? 🔷𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐢𝐭𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 Expanding scope too early. Stay focused on the core experience. Ignoring feedback. Quick testing cycles save time later. Over-polishing. Refine after validation. Weak onboarding. Guide players with small, clear hints. 🔷𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 Keep an eye on win rate, retention, playtime, and player churn. Numbers tell the real story behind your fun factor. Golden Rule 𝐹𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡. 𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟. Smart prototyping leads to better games. Feative Studios continues to refine creative processes to help developers find the fun behind every great idea. #FeativeStudios #GameDesign #GameDevelopment #Prototyping #GameDevTips #IndieGameDev #LevelDesign #GameUX #Playtesting

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It’s been a turbulent few years for the games industry and the shift isn’t over yet. My role in the industry, if it wasn’t already clear, is talent-related. We’re constantly speaking with studios across Europe about their projects, challenges, and how they’re manoeuvring around the current gaming industry board game. My perspective... - 4–5 years ago, during and just after the pandemic, player engagement exploded.  - More people were playing than ever before — and with that came more money.  - Studios grew fast, racing to build bigger and better games.     Then it all changed...     Wars, tariffs, rising development costs, privacy changes, funding slowdowns, and shifting player behaviour have all played their part.     The trend didn’t continue at the same pace.     I’ll acknowledge that for some studios it’s still business as usual. Some live service games continue to bring in stable revenue (especially in mobile), helping studios glide through relatively unscathed:   - FTE hiring still happening - Outsourcing for specific elements - Continued use of contractors (good for Evolution!) However, as David King highlighted at our recent event, the industry has been in decline over the past couple of years and the way games are made needs to evolve. Studios that rely on investor funding, publisher milestones, revenue from a past hit…have seen the tap run dry. And when that happens, we see redundancies, projects cancelled, and sometimes studios shut down.     So what are we seeing from our side at Evolution Recruitment Gaming?   - A big increase in the use of contractors - Preference for temporary or backfill roles over long-term hires - Outsourcing larger chunks of game development than before   The industry isn’t collapsing... it’s evolving.   Studios are becoming leaner, more flexible, and smarter about how they resource projects.     So that’s my five cents on the industry... What’s yours?

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The gap between what students learn and what studios actually use just got smaller in Norway. Recently, we had a very interesting meeting with a big university in Norway that teaches game development. And they were very interested in our AI tool Lumos. We also see more natural areas of usage for Lumos later in the curriculum run. Especially in connection to the Bachelor pre-production and the follow through of Bachelor projects after the summer. I see too many talented junior developers pour months into games that fail because they're building blind, without data, and no way to validate mechanics. That gap kills good ideas. Educators see it too. Students need actual market intelligence before committing months to a project that won't work. With Lumos students get access to player preferences across 75,000+ games. The ability to validate concepts before investing time they can't get back. It's the guidance we never had when we started. If you're a junior developer wondering if your idea has legs, or involved with game dev education, try it free: asklumos.com Huge congrats to Gameopedia team who made this possible. 🙏 Curious if this resonates with anyone teaching or learning game dev right now.

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🚀 It just keeps getting better for the Swedish games industry… Embark Studios has just launched 𝐀𝐑𝐂 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬, and the response has been nothing short of phenomenal. After celebrating the incredible comeback of DICE last week, it’s time to spotlight another major Swedish success story. The numbers say it all: • The pre-launch Server Slam playtest reached nearly 190,000 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦. • At full release ARC Raiders climbed past 260,000 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫𝐬. • Steam reviews are on 90% 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, an exceptional achievement for a brand-new IP. This is the kind of launch most studios dream about. But what makes ARC Raiders special isn’t just the numbers. It’s the story behind how it was made. Embark first originally introduced ARC Raiders as a co-op PvE shooter. Who doesn’t remember that first trailer with music from Swedish pop star Robin. Absolutely brilliant! But as development progressed, the team recognized that the experience wasn’t living up to their vision. It simply wasn’t as fun as it needed to be. So they did something brave:  they paused, they reflected, and they rebuilt. ↳ They shifted the game toward a PvPvE extraction experience that creates tension, agency, and surprise.  ↳ They adjusted the business model.  ↳ They reworked core systems. And through it all, they leaned into the 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐤: 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠-𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧. You can feel it in the final game. 🌟 The responsive AI. 🌟 The procedural systems. 🌟 The dynamic, living environments.  It all reflects a studio that is experimenting, iterating, and challenging what’s possible. Earlier this year, at one of our Boost Breakfast events, Embark’s machine learning lead Martin Singh-Blom joined us to share how they think about AI At embark AI is not a buzzword It’s a practical tool to empower designers and artists to bring their visions alive and enable richer, more organic gameplay. Hearing his perspective then, and seeing it come to life now, makes ARC Raiders even more impressive. Passion + technology + innovation = success. And Embark is excelling in all three. And they now have the success to show for it. Hats off to the entire ARC Raiders team 👏 What you’ve created is a new success-recipe of how to make games that I’m sure we’ll see more tech focused studios follow. And if anyone still needs a reminder of just how strong Swedish game development is right now, take a look at Franz Rier’s roundup of top-performing Swedish titles. The momentum is real. 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲! Photo of me at my very first visit at Embark back in the days when they had just moved to their new office. Thank you Terri Kim Bell for giving me the grand tour ❤️

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As a freelance rigger, I need to make sure my builds have a lot of flexibility. So I've recently reworked my lid modules to add variable joint counts. By utilizing a curve-based output I can changed the amount of joints used based on the needs of the project. Higher joint counts for fidelity and control, lower counts for simplicity and optimization. Or I can test and iterate to find a happy middle ground. So animators using my rigs on film or game projects can enjoy the same features, such as: - Automated lid follow with eye movement - Main controls to position the lids through translation and sculpt the curvature with rotation/scale  - Secondary controls for finer detail (If there are enough joints to support it) - Manual or automated blinking. Animate controls, or activate the automated meet point between your posed lids for a perfect seal I've been using iterations of this system over my last few projects, both commercials and games. The core elements of this system have been floating around in my head since 2018, so it's been great to finally put it to the test. 

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It's GDC time! Markus Kiukkonen and I will be in San Francisco next week showing off the latest from Bitmagic. This fantastic trailer by Ilmari Ihalainen highlights some of the games currently available that have been made with Bitmagic, but we have so much more to share in 1-1 meetings that has not been made public yet. We have always been the pioneers of AI-assisted game development and based on what I've seen revealed ahead of GDC, we're still in a league of our own. 🔥

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After a couple of decades bouncing in game development between indie, AA and AAA, I’ve had to get quite clear in my own head about what actually changes from a developer’s point of view as well as what is exciting and motivating in each of these. Very loosely, this is how it feels to me: • Indie is about the idea and getting it into players’ hands in the simplest form that still says what you mean. Minimum process, minimum friction, maximum intent. • AAA is about starting from the current state of the art in tech, visuals, pipelines and player expectations, and asking: “Given all this, how far can we push without breaking everything?” • AA sits in the middle: you start from the idea, then see how close you can get to “state of the art” within your constraints in time, budget and people. That’s the pattern I keep seeing when I zoom out on my own experience. If you’ve worked across those spaces too, does this line up with how you see it, or would you draw the boundaries differently? How does that line up with the players expectations if those categories still even exist?

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Exciting news about the Swedish Games industry! The annual industry report 'Swedish Games Industry 2025: Game Developer Index’ is here! Read more here (In English): https://lnkd.in/dqE3ZRfi In Swedish: https://lnkd.in/d2bAJnKX New record for the Swedish Games industry reaching a turnover of more than sek 73 billion.

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Hey we are making new version of the. game Industry report bssed on Central Fo land region. The hunt of finidng game industy companies has began so let us know if you have established game company all the way from sole trade ”toiminimi” to limited ”Oy” just to have Business ID ”y-tunnus” But we are also interested to hear from you if you are about to establish a company but it does not yet have business id Lets collect great report!💎

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The latest Finnish Games industry report states: “Record: 270 studios in Finland.” Knowing context matters: It's clear that many of these studios exist because of layoffs, not because of growth. Turnover shrank. Profits halved. Our lovely Supercell keeps on hard carrying for ~60% of all revenue. Investments to the games industry fell from €300M+ in 2021–22 to €128M in 2023–24. Studios making €1M+ dropped from 45 → 37. What this means in practice: For 90%+ of Finnish studios, capital is difficult to get. €1M projects are a struggle to finance, especially to the newer studios without previous industry ties. Investment circles remain narrow. Companies that are in continuous survival mode will not hire juniors. Despite their skills and showcased knowledge. This creates a bottleneck of unused talent. We risk building an industry with only one to two giants at one end, fragile indies at the other. With very little to no middle ground whatsoever. What’s needed in my opinion? We need funding mechanisms for the €0.5–5M project range. We need more mentorship pathways We need structures that let junior talent show measurable value inside smaller teams. We need knowledge and support with marketing (We're finns after all, we have indies building miracles, but often they're unable to market it so that it would break even, while the games are actually super good!) The Finnish industry is still ever-resilient and creative. But unless we solve the capital + talent mismatch, we’re hurting our growth and development back to the powerhouse position we we're previously known for. I'd love to see us there. As Chair of IGDA Finland, my role is to inspire. So here we go: I’ve seen us do better before, and I know we can do so again. But we need to have the ability to look back at our starting point: the mentors who shaped us, the companies that believed in us, and the spirit of giving back that built this community in the first place. We also need to CONNECT. The community has very much grown apart since COVID. It’s easy to stick to our "inner circles", harder to talk to new faces (Life of a Finn huh!😅). But rebuilding those bridges is part of the solution. I’m working to the best of my ability to connect the bridges more tightly abroad, bringing the industry knowledge and sources back to Finland. Here, we will need government support and openness to expats and companies moving to Finland, as well as a steady foundation to build upon, without internal conflicts. We're not big enough as an industry to fight among each other. It's clear that anyone's win should be considered everyone's win. With this, I wish all of you a joyful beginning of the autumn times. See you in Northern Game Summit as well as the Finnish Games Week And if you're a Finnish company representative or a Finnish indie developer, or a community member interested in game development no matter your role, my DM:s are always open. All you need to do is to connect. Let's get to building bridges!

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If you are at Nordic Game next week, Hind Toufga has organized something worth showing up for. Hind has partnered with SpecialEffect, a charity that builds adaptive technology so disabled gamers can play the games they love. Unforunately, I won’t be there since I’ll be in Seoul for GAMES AiCON that week. But Hind has been a friend since the Nordic Game spinoff in Helsinki many years ago. She is one of those people who keeps showing up to organize events for good causes, and the industry is better for it. A small story on why this cause matters to me. In 2016, we made a game at Dreamloop Games called Stardust Galaxy Warriors. One player messaged us saying he wanted to play, but he could not use one of his hands. So Kimmo Kaisla and I built in a single-hand button option. He played the game an unprecedented number of hours after that. Left us a positive Steam review. Accessibility in games is not always ’bout reaching every possible audience. Some design choices have real limits. But within reasonable bounds, making games more playable for more people is something studios should be defaulting to, not treating as a nice-to-have. If you are in Malmö that week, this is worth signing up for. The run is social paced, so all levels are welcome. Donations to SpecialEffect are optional but welcomed. Thanks to Hind Toufga for her work in the industry and beyond.

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The yearly report on the state of the Swedish games industry is always a fantastic read and an in-depth look at our ecosystem and the challenges it faces. Highlights from the very latest, which analyzes the data from the year 2024: - Revenue generated by Swedish game companies grows by 6.4% ; - Employment was stable in 2024 ; - The majority of Swedish game companies are profitable ; - Investment and M&A activity was down during the year, although seems to have picked up in 2025. A picture of stability despite a very threatening environment, with many great games released in 2024 from Helldivers 2 to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Mouthwashing, and many more. 2025 has seen many more amazing releases from Swedish studios, but also a lot more instability and layoffs. As such, I'm not sure next year's report will have as positive an outlook, but either way the sheer creativity and ingenuity of our fellow game makers here in Sweden is something to be extremely proud of.

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There's something quietly radical about deciding that your industry deserves to exist on Wikipedia - properly, accurately, and with the depth it's earned. That's what the collaboration between Games Denmark and Wiki Skrivestuer is about. Not a campaign. Not a content strategy. Just people who care about Danish game history sitting down together and writing it into the world's most-read encyclopedia. And they've been busy! Since we started, there have been edits across a growing number of pages - SYBO, Hugo, Tribands WHAT THE CAR? among them - filling in gaps, correcting errors, adding context that was missing or simply never there. Entirely new entries have been created for studios and games that had no Wikipedia presence at all, including NIMBI – Danish Institute for Game Development and Hutlihut Games' Void Crew. That matters. When a journalist researches the Danish games scene, when a student looks up a classic, when someone outside Denmark stumbles across a studio they've never heard of - Wikipedia is often where they land first. We should be the ones making sure that the information is good. The Danish games industry has a history worth knowing. Decades of creativity, craft, and stubbornness. Studios that punched far above their weight. Our games are played by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It deserves to be documented with care - and that's exactly what the people showing up to Wiki Skrivestuer are doing. If you want to be part of writing that history, the next session is open to everyone. You don't need to be a Wikipedia expert. You just need to know something worth writing down. So join our next event right here: https://lnkd.in/eQyVEtk4 Thank you to all the people who have joined so far - I hope to see you again! Sarah Sander, Lars Boe, Hans Oxmond, Kateryna Kryshchenko, Mark Staun Poulsen, Miki Anthony, Emil L., Johannes Kjems, Rasmus Simonsen, Hichem T. and many more. And thank you to Niels A. Wetterberg 🕹️, Ashley Kelleher and Allan Christophersen for co-organizing and making it a reality.

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