On an initiative by the Swedish Embassy in Pretoria, Daniel Matros Swedish Game Producer at DICE has been invited as a speaker at Rage Expo in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mr. Matros will also be holding a seminar at WITS University, the Digital Arts Department.
Daniel Matros is one of the producers at DICE working specifically on competitive aspects of the Battlefield franchise. Previously Daniel worked as a Community Manager embedded with the development team, as well as one of DICE’s spokespersons. Matros joined the studio in 2010 and his first project was Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam. After Battlefield 3 shipped, DICE took a new look at what multiplayer had to offer a new set of competitive players and after creating a concept and a design, Daniel became the producer for this initiative.
The success of the Swedish gaming industry
Swedish games companies are grounded in solid technical expertise which gives them a competitive edge. There is also a correlation between the country’s success in game development and its research community. Add to that that the art of gaming was introduced early as a university subject, which makes gaming studies, research facilities and institutes both accessible and acceptable.
The Embassy regards this as a good opportunity to discuss the differences between South Africa and Sweden concerning IT-infrastructure and how the outcome can differ due to having a solid IT-infrastructure. Because of the early implementation and developments of the Swedish IT related infrastructure companies such as DICE have had the platform they needed in order to develop. Job creation and skills development might also be seen as a result of a developed and widespread IT-infrastructure.
Facts about the Swedish Gaming Industry:
The Swedish Games Industry is once again reporting boom figures. Be it games for consoles or smart phones, Swedish productions such as Candy Crush and Minecraft are reaping record profits, and the industry as a whole is now worth almost ZAR 5.6 billion annually. According to Per Strömbäck, spokesperson for Swedish Games Industry a partnership organization that represents both developers and distributors, Gaming is the biggest Swedish cultural export since ABBA.
By inviting Mr. Matros the Embassy´s ambition is to cover topics such as game developing, IT-infrastructure but also to promote Swedish companies such as DICE and Avalanche Studios that have a prominent position on the international gaming development scene.
