Swedish Game Awards
Swedish Game Awards is Sweden's largest video game development competition. It has been held annually since 2002 and is organized by the student-driven, non-profit entrepreneurship association at the Royal Institute of Technology, Excitera. The competition's audience is students at Swedish universities and high schools, particularly those studying game development and software engineering. Funding is handled through partnerships with various software and game development companies, e.g. Digital Illusions CE and Sun Microsystems. History. Swedish Game Awards started in 2002 as a PC-only game competition under the name KTH Game Awards, and was targeted  mainly at students in the Stockholm area. KTH Game Awards was founded by the KTH students Yashar Moradbakhti, Bartek Gudowski, Mikael Pommert and Andreas Harju. In 2004, KTH Game Awards was merged with another competition organized by Excitera, called the Excitera Mobile Award. This led to the creation of special class for mobile phone games. After its first iteration, the name was changed to Swedish Game Awards to reflect the increase in scope from local to national competition, as well as the fact that the competition had grown to be the largest of its kind in Sweden. In 2014 the  competitions hosts changed from students of Royal Institute of Technology to students of Södertörn University (while still maintaining its cooperation with Excitera). In 2015 the competition added the category Best Diversity Effort as a result of their co-operation with Diversi to reflect the games industry's increasing interest in variation of its developers and consumers. The final day of the competition also had its first livestream on YouTube by cooperating with students of Medieinstitutet to make the announcement of the winners available directly to the public. It also broke the previous record of submitted games in 2014 (which was  98) with 104 games. The competition has gradually gained recognition from Swedish game development companies and universities as a way for students to show their game development capabilities and thus increase their chances of getting employment within the video game industry. Current Competition. The 2014-2015 competition is organized by a team of Stockholm-based university students in various fields related to game design. In its 13th year, the Swedish Game Awards continues annually to draw greater numbers of entries from student-development teams across Sweden. Rules. The parameters to the competition have remained relatively stable over the years, aimed  toward providing a launching pad for talented, independent, student game developers to develop new and marketable games. The official rules are available at http://gameawards.se/competition/rules. Event Timeline. The process of the Swedish Game Awards spans the majority of each academic year. Beginning in October with the SGA Kickoff, previous winners, current jury members, and corporate sponsors are invited to present their perspectives of the game industry and the Swedish Game Awards in particular to the upcoming year's participants. Also at this time, the various award categories are announced. The competition submissions are developed by independent teams during the year, culminating  in a Jury Weekend and Grand Finale party in late May. In the early months of the competition, the SGA Tour also occurs. During the tour, representatives from the Swedish Game Awards visit universities and technical schools across the country to engage with competition participants. Partners. Main Partners. King (company), DICE, Arrowhead Game Studios, Sweden Game Arena Autodesk Gold Partners. MAG Interactive Silver Partners. Paradox Interactive, Epic Games Bronze Partners. Rovio Entertainment, Avalanche Studios Previous Competition. Previous Partners. Here is a list of previous partners that have sponsored the Swedish Game Awards in some way in the past. Previous Main  Partners. HP, Intel, ARM, Epic Games, King (company) Previous Gold Partners. DICE, Arrowhead Game Studios, Rovio Entertainment, Mali DEVELOPER CENTER Previous Silver Partners. Paradox Interactive, DICE, Wooga, Stardoll, Fondia, Grand Cru Games Previous Bronze Partners. Autodesk, Easy Studios, Junebud, Gamers Gate, Swedish National Defence College, Avalanche Studios, Bitsquid, Hansoft Previous Event Partners. EasyTryck.se Previous Media Partners. The Square (publication)