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. 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. 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 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 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.
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.
