I’m extatically happy that we’ve received funding from The Norwegian Arts Council and Hordaland County Council for a pre-project that will be working towards building a

center for computer game development in Norway. I’ll be working on this full-time for the next months and I’m hoping to have a financial and business plan ready by summer.

This is gold for me! Getting paid to do something that I’m very passionate about – is just so wonderful.

So! Why a center for game development in Norway?

1) The game developing community is rather fragmented and with several rather small companies in Norway. We have about 70 companies working on game development in Norway, but most of them are rather small, consisting of one or three people full-time and probably even more part-time or down right volunteers. We in The Game Developers Guild of Norway want to build a network of all proffessionals working with game development so that we can learn from and help each other grow as an industry. If you are in crunch mode and need an extra programmer, illustrator, sound guy or similar, our network should be able to provide you with the connections needed.

2) When I tell people who aren’t working within the game developing community that Norway has over 70 companies working on computer games I’m faced with shock and bewilderment. Our center for game development will also function as an information office looking to promote and create awareness about what’s going on in Norway. There’s a lot of beautiful games coming out of Norway these days – and we want to make sure that everyone in Norway knows how awesome they are, and as many as possible abroad.

3) Because most of our companies are rather small, most also only have a very tiny marketing budget. Our center will be supplying game developers with our network of journalists, publishers, distributors a.s.o. When a Norwegian game developer is going to GDC, for example, then we will do our best to arrange meetings with relevant companies for them.

4) I forget

5) Workshops. We want to provide game developers with workshops within their field. So giving them advanced skills within their field. We also want to work closely with the education institutions and increase the game development courses in Norway. We also want to work closely with diverse research institutes.

Picture on my iPhone at l33t by Gunvor Rasmussen: http://www.gunvor.no/. Caption in Norwegian says “Let’s go build a rocket” – given to me by Ina Remme, my favourite film producer.as “game developer” to a professional and serious level. We see our skills needed in lots of innovative fields and we want to make sure that there’s a guarantee of excellence.

6) Build strong bridges between the game developing community and other industries. Our goal is to advance the occupation of “game developer” – making sure that all who “dabble” in game development use professionals to ensure a quality of excellence.

All of this may change in the course of the next few months however. ;)

Firstly I’m focused on getting representatives from all the game development districts in Norway together so we can look at our challenges and needs on a national level. At the same time – I’m looking for organisations that would be interested in collaboration – if you know of any – don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Actually – dear blog reader – I’m looking for similar centers around the world. Do you know of any? Please let me know! Either send me an e-mail at

linnsovig (a) spillmakerlauget.no or please comment on this post.

I’m really enjoying this work – I may actually be approaching so-called “happiness”! ;)