A tale of two very empty game studios

Content warning: This video contains discussions about mental health and suicide. Jace Varlet is a popular community manager at Coffee Stain Studios, reaching thousands each week in his streams. But once the camera is off, another reality awaits. Jace suffers from bipolar II disorder, a chronic mental illness, characterized by periods of severe depression and hypomania.

Once again we sent game historian Martin Lindell into the secret vault, where Embracer Group’s growing game collection is stored. This time he found something really rare – a tabletop arcade machine called Adventure Vision, from 1982.

Deep down in a secret vault, Embracer Group’s growing game collection is stored at the moment. But we have early access, and game historian Martin Lindell has picked out a selection of classics from the archive, to show us. We’ll soon be back with more stories from the collection.

Koch Media became part of Embracer Group in 2018, and everything has been grand. There’s just one tiny problem that seems hard to resolve. How do you pronounce Koch? CEO Klemens Kundratitz knows all the ways to say it, and what not to say.

”It’s a mixture of excitement and horror”, says Lisa Kolfjord. Late last year she was hired as a 3D artist and community manager by a small indie studio, developing their first game. The game was called Valheim. When it was released in February, Valheim became a huge hit, with millions of players. As the person in charge of such a big player community, Lisa Kolfjord’s working life has changed. A lot.

What do you do when you are a brilliant game developer who just wants to make the games of your dreams, but really don’t want to have to deal with the business side of things? Well, you could do what Mattias Kylén did.

Developing a game is hard under the best of circumstances, but how do you cope when a pandemic strikes unexpectedly? Producer Michele Caletti knows all about it.

Nathalie, Hannah and Anna grew up as nerdy girls, not really finding their place in the world. Not until they realized that making games was actually a job. And that they were good at it.

Include, share and encourage. It’s not that complicated to be a middle aged senior game developer and still be a nice person online. Henrik Jonsson even received an award for his demeanor, and he has some simple advice.

Per-Arne Lundberg wanted to help students start their own game studios. The idea was to take care of all the boring stuff for them, and let them focus on the creative part. It started small, but today it has blossomed into Amplifier Game Invest.