| Gotland Game Awards | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Best student game / Computer animation |
| Presented by | Gotland University |
| Location | Visby |
| Country | Sweden |
| First awarded | 6 Juni 2006 |
| Official website | www.gotlandgameawards.com |
Gotland Game Awards is a Swedish game development competition for students. The event is held each year at the start of June and acts as a graduation ceremony of sorts for the students of Gotland University. Here they can showcase everything that they have learned during the year, to a jury consisting of professionals[1][2] from the game development industry, including game design guru Ernest W. Adams[3] and the father of MUDs Richard Bartle. The awards are not just for show either as the students have a chance to win prices worth tens of thousands of Euro. This all takes place on the island of Gotland, situated off the eastern shores of Sweden's main land, in the cultural heritage city of Visby.
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With the support of event producer Don Geyer[4], Gotland Game Awards opened its doors for the first time in 2006[5] with nothing more than a few arcade machines, a Nintendo DS game and some titles for the PC. Since then it's grown[6] into the grand event that it is today with an estimate of 40+ projects for 2010 all competing against one and other over the fabulous prices that can be won!
When the Gotland Game Awards first started the awards were mostly for fun, however prizes now include trips to the biggest[7] game development conference in the world, Game Developers Conference in Cologne, since 2008 there has also been special awards given out to students who create computer animated movies, and now in 2010 there will be 17 different awards given out, with prices ranging from t-shirts and software, to journeys past multiple boarders.
The event is easily categorised into four distinct parts (spanning over multiple days);
Thanks to GGA, many students get recruited before they even have a chance to apply for a job. This is made possible only be the students themselves, but the way that GGA manages to inspire them to work as hard as they possibly can on their projects, makes it a truly unique event. With students giving their all, a lot of games and movies of high quality are produced, and that alone is often enough to land them their dream jobs.