Futuregames
Futuregames is a successful private game development school in Stockholm, Sweden.
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With schools in Sweden in Stockholm, Boden, Skellefteå and Karlstad; in Norway in Nordreisa; and soon in New Zealand in Dunedin, Futuregames offers a whole range of different types of education and at many different levels, from short courses for experienced professionals to full time programs for future game developers just getting started in the industry. With almost 20 years of experience Futuregames has consistently ranked as one of the best game educations in the world and our former students make up over 11% of the Swedish games industry working across game art, game design, programming, game marketing and more.
Our vision: ”To provide each individual the competence and the context to be able to contribute to sustainable change, for themselves and for the society.”
Our mission: ”To be a school that provides innovative educations that give people updated skills and tools to solve today´s and tomorrow´s challenges.”
ACTIONABILITY; The ability to go from thought to action. To dare. To do things right and to make mistakes. To test and redo. Until it sits. With us, you are welcome to make mistakes. It takes both curiosity and courage to take new paths and open new doors. That's what Futuregames does.
WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN; Our best case scenario is when we create a four-stage rocket where everyone wins; You win, school wins, the co-creator wins and society wins. We do not always succeed, but very often. And then we create sustainable change and a better world for many.
CO-CREATE; You are our co-creator and you are invited to participate in creative projects and processes from the start. Competence and commitment go hand in hand. And then our co-creators must be given the opportunity to act and participate. To be involved and set goals. Don’t just move towards already finished goals that someone else has already decided. Alone is often strong, but together we do it even better and take it even further towards sustainable growth.
PLAYFULNESS; Playfulness is one of our main values. Brilliace takes shape in something filled with play, joy and constructive dialogue. A playful and permissive climate is the basis for us to feel good and dare to test our thoughts and ideas.
LEARNING FIRST; Technique, software, models, methods, experiences and clear processes are tools for our creation. The needs of the student, the customer and the user are the goal of our creation. Hand in hand with your goals and needs. We need to learn first and then test and implement in different ways.
We pride ourselves on making our educations as close to the professional industry as we possibly can and we work with some of the best games companies like Avalanche Studios, Star Stable, Coldwood Interactive, Zordix, Paradox Arctic, Turborilla, Level Eight, North Kingdom, King, Ubisoft, EA DICE, Fatshark Games, Starbreeze Studios, Glorious Games Group, NEAT Corporation, Epic Games etc etc… we add to the list every year!
General Info
Facilities
Söderhallarna
920 m2 on the 11th floor. The premises consist of a reception, a small IT room, teacher's room, 8 classrooms, toilets and an open kitchen for students in the middle of location. The classrooms were built in the summer of 2019 A total of 250 workstations
Åsögatan
880 m2 on three floors. The premises consist of a reception, an IT room, teacher's rooms 7 classrooms, recording studio, toilets and an open kitchen for students A total of 187 workstations
Boden 1022 m2 , The campus is located in a Business Park dedicated to Game Development, IT and Creative media. That means daily potential contact with Game development companies. But in addition to that they also have access to a Restaurant and fully featured gym facility, both with student pricing. additional facilities include a film-recording studio, Movie screening theatre, Sound recording studio, Meeting rooms and conference halls. All students for our Boden Campus are guaranteed student housing. All student housing Is near Campus. Our housing modules are small 1 room apartments on campus just 2 minutes from the educational facility. The Shared student housing/corridor option has 2 different options full apartments or student rooms with shared kitchen. Both of these are a short 15-minute walk from the educational facilities. All housing options have shared washing rooms.
Skellefteå 687 m2 Futuregames Skellefteå has its own floor on Campus with 9 classrooms, a restaurant and recreational facilities. There is a joint Open Box room, where students from all schools can meet and play games. Campus Skellefteå provides a great opportunity for networking with both Game Companies, and other schools in games education. (two university, and one Vocational College education) There is a University Library, a gym and meeting facilities for big audiences. There are two Motion Capture studios that Futuregames can use. All students are guaranteed student housing at a low cost.
Staff
95% of all our teachers are industry professionals and work across all aspects of game development and therefore bring updated knowledge immediately into the classroom. We employ over 300 external teachers each year, and they change and are added to each semester.
The schools operate with required advisory boards made up of leading industry professionals who evaluate and approve the education and course contents and provide updated industry insight. We organize a bi-annual Futuregames think-tank with our advisory boards, students and special guests. These focus on specific themes such as ‘metaverse futures’, ‘industry diversity’ ‘gamification’ etc
We are certified school for Unreal and have senior figures from Epic on our advisory boards
We work closely with Swedish Games Industry (Dataspelbranschen) and with many Games conferences where we take an active role as presenters these include the Nordic Games Awards, Beyond Games, Pocket Gamer Connect, GDC, etc. We also work closely with industry organizations such as IGDA and Grads in Games.
Our full-time staff are offered upskill training as part of their contracts reviewed annually
Employment Rates
2020 96% of our students found relevant employment within 3 months of graduation. n.b. The requirement from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Vocational Education is that 80% of students find relevant employment within 6 months – In our entire history we have always exceeded this requirement.
Technology
Software
Game engines: Unity and Unreal engine 4. We use Unity because it’s a great starting point for learning game engines and it’s also the one most used by companies. It’s also very multi-platform friendly. We use Unreal because it’s the second most used game engine and geared heavily towards high-end graphics. many AAA proprietary engines use a similar architecture/layout, making it a must know. Blender 3D, Maya, Substance Painter, Z-Brush, Houdini, Adobe Creative cloud, Miro, Perforce, Trello, Premiere pro, Aftereffects, XD and Audition
Hardware
On Campus each student will have a plethora of equipment at their disposal! The most important is an individual personal 2 screen workstation with high-speed internet enabling them work as much as they want without having to worry about specific schedules. But in addition to that they will have access to VR/AR development hardware, Console Devkits and Motion capture equipment etc.
Student Showcase
Take a look at some of the traditional and digital artwork Futuregames students produce during their education.
•Henrik Lindfors - Lead Designer at Wanderword
Going into the 2 year education, I was able to take what little previous knowledge I had of analogue audio processing and apply it to game development. With the support of the teachers and organization, I was able to further myself in the field of audio design and implementation. Through internship at the newly set up studio Wanderword, I was able to join as intern where - through the skills acquired - I rose from Intern to Audio Designer and later Lead Designer, all within the span of a year.
Networking & Careers
Students
Students have 24-hour access to all our schools and each one has a dedicated individual work-station. Lectures are conducted on site, on-line and asynchronously as necessary. The Swedish Higher Vocational Education Authority requires no less than 18 hours/week of teacher contact hours. Beyond this, students are engaged in other events such as mentoring, project stand ups, retrospectives, guest lectures, game events, game jams, networking events and industry meet ups etc. For all our full-time programs 30 weeks of the education is an internship with a company, supervised by company mentors and check-ups. Students have dedicated discord channels, a Canvass schedule and other direct communication channels including Trello, Miro. Perforce etc. All students participate in 3 or 4 major cross-program game projects of up to 7 weeks in duration. At the end of each education students are required to produce an examination project in the form of work demonstrating specialization in a given field.
Studios Hiring
Following studios hire our graduates: Avalanche Studios, Star Stable, Coldwood Interactive, Zordix, Paradox Arctic, Turborilla, Raw Fury, Level Eight, North Kingdom, Midjiwan, King, Ubisoft, EA DICE, Fatshark Games, Starbreeze Studios, Glorious Games Group, NEAT Corporation, Epic Games, Wanderword, StarStable, Mojang, Hazelight
Courses
The main focus for our education are the 4 game projects that students work on. They work in groups with students from Game Art, Game Design and Game Programming working together using both Unity and Unreal. Each project is mentored by industry professionals and uses agile (scrum/kanban) project management with industry standard pipeline methods. The internship of 30 weeks is the final course for students and the majority are hired directly on the completion of their internship by the company involved
Course Advanced Game Art (3 weeks)
Purpose and goal: The purpose of this course is to immerse yourself in an advanced area of game graphics and practice iterating this at high speed.
Knowledge: In-depth knowledge in an advanced area of game graphics for modern game development.
- Understand how to create high-quality graphics in an efficient and correct way under time pressure.
Skills:
- Ability to analyze, create and critically choose the right methods and relevant graphics for a game production under time pressure.
Competencies: The student has the competence to understand and be able to quickly produce advanced and adapted game graphics at a high level under time pressure.
COURSE Animation (3 weeks)
Purpose and goal:The purpose is to teach the students animation intended for game production. The goal is for the students to animate a number of different game objects.
Knowledge: The understanding of how a typical animation pipeline in game production is implemented. Understanding of how to handle motion capture. Understand which tools can influence and optimize animation for a game. Understand the principles of good animation.
Skills: Ability to animate objects in a modern graphics tool such as Maya and Motionbuilder. Implement animations in a modern game engine. Be able to handle MOCAP technology suitable for game production.
Competencies: Students gain the skills to create animations with tools such as Maya and Motionbuilder, as well as in modern game engines such as Unreal Engine 4 and Unity.
COURSE Character Art (4 weeks)
Purpose and goal:Students should understand the professionally relevant pipeline and standard in the creation of characters and creatures. The goal is to use sculpting tools to create an optional well-executed character in 3D.
Knowledge: - Understand sculpting pipeline in a game production - Understand how to produce characters through sculpting tools such as Zbrush - Understand anatomy and shape
- Understand animation-friendly topology
Skills:- Produce high quality characters in 3D - Optimize 3D sculptures from sculpting tools with relevant modeling tools such as Maya and a modern game engine such as Unreal Enging or Unity.
Competencies:Students gain the skills to produce and virtually sculpt a character for use in game production.
COURSE Concept Art (2 weeks)
Purpose and goal:The purpose of this course is to gain understanding and practice conceptualization of different parts of a game production. The goal is to create a basis for various processes and elements that can be used as a template for in-depth production.
Knowledge:- Understand how to conceptualize for different components and phases of a game production - Understand how to optimize different work processes within game development - Understand the work needs of different game developers - Understand matrices and graphical tools to support game developers
Skills: - Conceptualize in game development - Time-efficiently visualize ideas, thoughts and visions for a game production - Create matrices and graphical tools to support game developers
Competencies: The students gain the skills to understand different game developers work needs and how to streamline a game development team through visual communication and concept development.
COURSE Enviroment Art (4 weeks)
Purpose and goal: The purpose is to give students an understanding of creating optimized environments and understanding a larger game production. The goal is to create an optimized, well-thought-out and playable environment.
Knowledge: - Advanced knowledge of how a game engine works - Knowledge of how to illuminate a specific environment - Knowledge of how the technical side of environmental creation works e.g. gravity, collisions, simple visual scripting etc.
Skills: - Ability to work with modular methods to be able to divide a large environment into smaller pieces of the puzzle - Ability to work with material editor in Unreal Engine and Unity
- Ability to create a complete environment with relevant tools such as Maya
Competencies: The student must have the competence to in an optimized way develop and produce a playable environment for a modern game engine.
COURSE Degree project Game development (1o weeks)
Purpose and goal: The degree project gives the students an in-depth study of a self-chosen area in game development and game programming, with the guidance of a subject expert from the game industry. The goal is, with the support of course leaders, to design a problem definition in the form of a simulated assignment in a self-chosen specialization area, or together with a company to identify a sharp assignment that leads to the same specialization.
Knowledge:- Relate their knowledge and skills to a current area of specilaization - Understand a specialized area in game development and game programming - Understand a specialized role as a game developer within the computer game industry
Skills: - Select, plan and structure an in-depth work on assignments in game development - Produce an advanced self-selected part of modern game development
- To report in an occupationally relevant way in-depth work in an area within game development and graphics.
Competencies: The students are given the competence to independently choose, plan and immerse themselves in an area specialized for the gaming industry. They gain the competence to structure their own project and learn from experts to produce an advanced part of game development.
COURSE FX for games (2 weeks)
Purpose and goal:The purpose of this course is to create an understanding of a pre-production of game graphics with particles and effects in game production. The goal is to create a number of effects.
Knowledge: - Understand how FX and particles work in game engines such as Unreal Engine 4 or Unity - Understand how to work effectively with materials for effects to game
- Understand how to optimize particles and effects - Gain insight into simulation of effects in modern VFX tools
Skills: - Be able to create and manage VFX work in modern graphics and game tools. - Develop effective effects for a game production
Competencies: The students are given the skills to create optimized effects relevant in game productions in game teams.
COURSE Game Art (7 weeks)
Purpose and goal: The purpose of this course is to teach students how to handle modern graphics tools and produce good game graphics. Part of the purpose of this course is to teach students to create 3D graphics for real-time rendering and implement this in a game engine. The goal is to create a number of models in a modern graphics tool to gain a good understanding and skill in producing graphics in a game production. An additional goal is for the students to get an overview of the entire process of creating game graphics for a game production.
Knowledge: - Understand how to create 2D and 3D models - Understand restrictions with real-time graphics - Gain insight into today's game development in a gaming company
- Get an overview of different methods of producing graphic content
Skills: - Produce 3D graphics for a game production - Be able to reflect on different working methods regarding production 2D and 3D graphics - Create optimized graphics and implement this in a game engine
Competencies: The students gain competence in understanding different gaming companies needs and working methods, as well as skills to produce game graphics effectively.
For full list of courses, please visit website.
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