Da americano sono stupito di quanti giochi di qualità arrivino dalla Svezia. Per una popolazione di circa 10 milioni di abitanti hanno prodotto molti grandi titoli come Minecraft, Battlefield, Helldivers, Arc Raiders ecc. e altri in arrivo. Non sapevo che provenissero da studi svedesi prima di fare qualche ricerca.
Come fa la Svezia a farlo e i paesi europei più grandi no? Come ad esempio la Germania.
https://i.redd.it/ywfd32903jcg1.jpeg
di batukaming
25 commenti
Creativity and realizing what the audiance actually wants instead of making slop versions.
It’s just mad skillz.
Cause we got alot of darkness from oktober to like march that means alot of gaming has to be done, with that comes creativity 😉
Were a creative country id say. We also make a ton of popular music as well.
Getting an education you actually want is free. It allows for more creative freedom, Swedes don’t have to be doctors and lawyers because Daddy is paying for school.
Sweden was really fast to adapt to computers in the 90s, so a lot of regular people got a hold of it for a cheaper price due to taxes.
Thus making it easier for people to learn computers and creating game developers
through that.
It’s basically the same for musicians.
Taxes helps a lot. Your country should try that one day.
A society that’s both egalitarian and has a strong focus on creativity and culture.
The strong focus on creativity and culture means that these virtues extend into the engineering sphere as well.
The egalitarian part means that the hierarchical structures tend to be very flat and that people very low on the totempole are free to pitch ideas and influence the final product.
All of this helps innovative design in general and game design in particular.
I think the programs for highschools towards gaming and pcs that started around 10 years ago is a reason.
There is a documentary about it made by state tv: svt. “Det svenska spelundret.” I am not sure if it is available anywhere with subtitles.
It started with a boom of roleplaying in the 80s and then a big adoption of personal computers. First the c64, amiga/atari and then the 286-486 pcs. And a early build out of internet broadband.
Also, the social safety net and that you can get a state loan to go to university/college are also mentioned.
Sweden where also dominant in the demo scene on c64 and amiga in the 80s/90s.
It’s the same with music. We have some of the best music producers too.
Some believe it’s part of the genes. That we have a higher percentage of some old gene that make us have higher emotional intelligence (but perhaps lower logical intelligence).
My guess is that we have a state that allows failure. So if you start a company in Sweden and fail, your life is not turned to absolute shit. It’s obviously worse than if you didn’t start the company, but the social welfare system is very kind on failures. This makes it easier for people to realize their dreams without risking their whole family. Your kid still goes to the same school, you still have enough to put food on the table and you got a roof over your head.
Some really cool public investments into digitization and good internet for the avrege citizen in the late 90s and early 00s probably helped.
Kidz back then are making great products today.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hem-PC-reformen
Well I can’t answer for why they get popular but I do believe that there a good underlying reason for it.
In the 90’s the Swedish government decided that schools and homes should have access to computers and that people should be comfortable with computers.
Many homes could afford a computer. Schools had lessons very early on how they worked.
So a broad mass of the population became interested in this and many continued to study later on in life.
We called it the “IT-satsningen” or “IT-push” or how you would call it in english.
I do believe that this helped us with this. Not just for the gaming industry, but for alot of IT related subjects.
Sorry for bad English, it’s not my first language.
Good economics enabling art and education plus a very tech advanced nation with many people growing up with games and the internet. It’s one of the least dense populstions so connecting with people online through things like games became really popular in the 90s and 00s.
All education is free, even for us adults. We have good study grants and student loans that allow you as an adult to train for whatever you want.
Quality over quantity, hombre
Sweden is by no means a small country my dude. It’s the fifth largest country in Europe and by far larger than say the UK. That statement struck a nerve in me since I drove from one part of Sweden to another last week and took me 19 hours lol.
Free higher education and a stable society allows many people to do what they want from a very early age, and do so in a professional setting.
This is a good read: [https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/skovde-sweden-video-games-goat-simulator-valheim-v-rising](https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/skovde-sweden-video-games-goat-simulator-valheim-v-rising)
Because our DNA has mutations from the Nordic alien race
As your gf comfortingly says to you; size isn’t all that matters.
US is all about profits. Sweden is more about quality.
Same goes with everything that is American. Majority is just quantity shit, even you’re houses are cheap plywoods (I know because I lived in one for a year).
It’s all about the culture.
Because of democratic socialism which has shaped the policys we have since like 60 years of free education, free healthcare, lots of activities funded by taxes so kids and adults become much more creative. Also we had real broadband internet very early for like 99% of the population and also families could buy computers tax free (via state subsidies) via their employer back in the late 90:s.
This impacted generations of IT-people and spawned lots of programmers, gamers and so on and of course a certain amount started creating games. Voila!
I think swedish devs had a big part with battlefield 1 as well
We are tired of our own existence and creating our own little worlds is the only way out