The Swedish games industry is renowned worldwide, with Swedish games having an estimated reach of over one billion players globally. While many industries have experienced difficult times as a result of the corona pandemic, the games industry continues to grow steadily.
To keep up with the global competition, Swedish games studios are in need of more marketing and communications talent to continue to secure market shares and attract players from around the world. This fall, we are proud to present our new remote short diploma course, Futuregames Games Marketer.
“The global video game market is trending to a $160 Billion industry over the next year with Sweden having more than 300 game development studios that create content for global audiences. Building a larger, more experienced gaming marketing talent eco-system in Sweden is a great opportunity for the industry,” says Tabitha Hayes, Chief Marketing Officer, Star Stable Entertainment.
Futuregames Games Marketer is a remote 15 week diploma course that has been put together with leading marketing professionals from gaming studios such as Star Stable Entertainment, Avalanche Studios Group, Paradox Interactive, Fast Travel Games and Raw Fury. The course is designed for anyone working within communications or marketing today, looking to enter the gaming industry and related fields.
The Swedish Games Industry (Dataspelsbranschen) identifies access to skills as one of the biggest challenges for the Swedish games industry. It is important to attract more people, as well as to hire more diverse talent. In 2018, jobs within the gaming sector increased by 48 percent and the market is projected to keep on growing. Swedish gaming studios are in need of more games marketing talent to keep competing globally, but are currently having a hard time finding the right skill set in Sweden.
“We’ve grown our marketing investments significantly over the past few years and we’ve no intention to slow down. Over the past 12 months we’ve hired from France, Poland, the US, the UK, Germany, China and many other countries for a wide variety of marketing roles. A larger pool of talent locally would allow us to source more candidates closer to home,” says Daniel Goldberg, Chief Marketing Officer Paradox Interactive.
”The Swedish video game industry is vibrant, diverse, and growing, and Swedish gaming companies need more diverse marketing talent to support local and international growth. Today, there are not enough marketers with gaming industry experience in Sweden, which means that for Star Stable, we frequently fill our marketing team with experienced talent from abroad”, says Tabitha Hayes, Chief Marketing Officer, Star Stable Entertainment.
Futuregames Games Marketer will be lead hands-on by industry professionals, to teach communications and marketing professionals about the methods of games marketing. The course covers Brand and Product marketing within the gaming industry, the importance of User Acquisition strategies and consumer insight methodologies, as well as App Store Search Optimization (ASO) to grow a gaming app’s success on mobile app stores. At the end of the course, students will work on putting together a marketing plan for a real game, and will get coaching and feedback directly from the gaming studios.
“The Swedish video gaming industry continues to rise as a dominant player globally, with marketing being accelerated as a critical area needed. Not unlike many parts of the gaming industry, the AAA business is changing, and looking more to self-publish and service-led models, which requires marketing expertise onsite and working closely with well-established game development studios. This level of marketing expertise, and collaboration is critical to success. I have spent the last few years, witnessing this trend and being part of the growth, having hired six marketing professionals previously in the industry and will continue, as I am planning to hire 5-7 marketing professionals in the next six months as we look to build a global, cross-discipline marketing team”, says Michael Stout, Head of Marketing, Avalanche Studios Group.
Over half of the European population aged 6 – 64 play video games, according to OSFE, Interactive Software Federation of Europe. Smart phones have taken gaming to a broader market than ever before, while online games cater vibrant online communities and social happenings for people of all ages. The games industry spans from consoles and PC:s to smartphones, tablets and VR headsets. As new technologies continue to flourish, the gaming scene is in constant movement. Communications and marketing professionals are needed to help communicate new fields of gaming, while also educating the market on new technological advancements.
“Fast Travel Games is one of the world’s leading VR game developers with three award-winning titles on the market and a fourth currently in production. The VR gaming industry has been around for just over 4 years, recently boosted by launches of new and consumer friendly headsets as well as AAA blockbuster titles like VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx. Most VR game developers are still relatively small-sized however, with little to no internal marketing resources or expertise. Combined with the lack of real consumer insights due to the young and constantly changing nature of the VR games market, and it’s clear why studios face a massive challenge when deciding on their go to market plans. At the same time, VR gaming is growing rapidly with some truly exciting years ahead – experts estimate we will see a total of 10 million VR gaming headsets sold life to date in fall 2020 – so the need for VR games marketing specialists is bound to be really big going forward as the industry, and the studios themselves, keep growing”, says Andreas Juliusson, Chief Marketing Officer, Fast Travel Games
The amount of successful games companies in Sweden means a growing race for talent, often resulting in international recruitment. Just the last two years the number of employees have grown from 3750 to 5300 at Swedish games studios. With a stronger education in games marketing, more marketing and communications talent could be hired and consulted within the country.
“Sweden has traditionally been very focused on development, but with digital distribution the ability to reach the end consumer on the market is closer and more companies are opting for self-publishing to have a higher control of their creation, and from a business perspective to maintain a higher amount of the revenue without using agencies or additional partners in the value-chain. This required additional skill sets are in sales, marketing, and communication. Some of this is overlapping with traditional business and marketing educations, but there’s a lot of specific skill sets required for games that comes with the understanding of the market dynamics and connection with the games development. With a greater talent pool in Sweden we [Raw Fury] would with any doubt have been able to recruit faster without losing momentum”, says Martin Lindell, Senior Advisor Embracer Group, earlier CMO at Raw Fury.
Futuregames has been named the second best school in the world within game development two years straight by The Rookies. Now we are expanding our focus to cover more key roles within the gaming industry. The need of more games marketing professionals has been attested by marketing professionals at leading gaming studios. Apply by August 24th and start your new exciting journey into the world of Games Marketing on August 31st.
Applications for International Students are open until May 16.
Antonio Obeid is a Lebanese student attending Futuregames Warsaw remotely, due to difficult times.
Meet Fredrik Borg, to learn more about the Game & UX Design education and what it's like to study in Skellefteå.
