5 stories behind the success of gaming in Sweden

2. Battlefield – new levels of co-op gaming

Since its arrival in 2002, the Battlefield franchise has consistently been taking the co-op gaming scene to new levels.

Combine large-scale maps with an arsenal of weapons and vehicles, then involve hundreds of players, and you’ve got yourself a Battlefield game. Today, the Battlefield franchise comprises 12 games set in past, present and future warfare scenarios.

The story goes back to 1999 in Stockholm, where a small game development team named Refraction Games set out make an all-out war game. Tired of the story-driven narratives that dominated the first-person shooter genre at the time, the developers aimed for way more action.

A year later, Refraction Games were acquired by the rising Swedish studio DICE, and the newly recruited developers were encouraged to continue developing the game of their dreams.

Lars Gustavsson, who served more than 20 years as creative director at DICE, has recalled inviting his brother’s basketball friends for pizza nights with hours and hours of game-testing in his small flat in Stockholm.

Two years later, Battlefield 1942 was released, and the rest is history. To this day, the franchise remains known for the teamwork experience that comes with a huge battlefield where everything can happen.

In 2006, DICE were acquired by American giant Electronic Arts (EA). While the heart of the franchise remains in Stockholm, today’s Battlefield games are made in team efforts with EA sister companies Criterion (UK), Motive (CA) and Ripple Effect Studios (US).

3. Candy Crush Saga – the engaging sweets game

Matching three or more pieces of candy to make them disappear may sound like a very simple concept, but those who have played Candy Crush Saga will attest to how engaging the mobile game is.

Fun trivia: It’s been estimated that players altogether swipe the equivalent distance of three and a half times around the globe on their phones every day. 

Not that many people know that Candy Crush Saga was developed by Swedish company King, who launched it on App Store back in 2012.

Sebastian Knutsson, co-founder of King, has said he was in the bathtub when he came up with the idea to use candies in the game. As chief creative officer, Knutsson had been challenged by fellow co-founder Riccardo Zacconi to come up with ‘the best match-three game ever’.

‘The art team really got into it, and we found that we could make candies look amazing. It somehow resonated with the audience,’ Knutsson says on Apple.com.

And it sure seems like sweets helped level up gaming in Sweden.

In 2016, King was acquired by Activision Blizzard, which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in 2023. King’s original headquarters is in Stockholm, but today they are also headquartered in London. There are game studios in Barcelona, Berlin, Malmö, London and Stockholm, and offices in Dublin, San Francisco, New York and Malta.

4. DreamHack

The LAN parties of DreamHack are known to bring together thousands of gamers at once, at venues in Europe, the United States and Canada.

But DreamHack actually began as small-scale as it gets.

In the early 1990s, a couple of schoolmates and friends in the little village of Malung, at the heart of Swedish province Dalarna, decided to camp together in the basement of a primary school to trade discs and exchange knowledge in programming and graphics.

In 1994, the initiators made it a public event and the gathering was moved into the school cafeteria. This was the very first event to be called DreamHack. DreamHack eventually established itself as Scandinavia’s biggest LAN party before it took off internationally.

In 2013, DreamHack made it into the Guinness Book World of Records as the host of the world’s largest LAN party.

5. The winning recipe?

Here are some keys to the success of the Swedish games industry:

• Sweden's generally high computer literacy. One contributing factor was a government and union initiative back in 1998, that allowed employees to affordably lease personal computers with an option to buy.
• Internet access. Connectivity got an early start in Sweden, with ambitious government goals for broadband access across the country.
• Strong education and collaboration between studios and schools. The result is a steady stream of developers who are technically strong, internationally experienced and quick to adapt to new markets.

In 2024, the total revenue for Swedish companies amounted to around EUR 3.4 billion, according to the Swedish Game Developer Index.

Wanted: global talent

The Swedish games industry is multinational. According to the Swedish Games Industry – Sweden’s trade association for video game companies – there are more employees in Swedish game companies outside of Sweden than in the country.

So... Sweden is looking to attract global talent. Is it you?