A small Swedish city with a population of around 58,000 has drawn global attention due to its close ties to the video game industry. The city, Skovde, has emerged as a notable hub for game development.

Skovde is the birthplace of the unconventional game Goat Simulator, which allows players to control a goat. In its trailer, the game features a goat lying on the ground with its tongue hanging out and its eyes wide open.

The trailer also shows a man on fire running backward toward a house, followed by scenes of a goat moving in reverse while flying through a window, fixing broken glass, and then crashing through another window toward a gas station that explodes.

Beyond Goat Simulator, Skovde has also produced other well-known game titles such as V Rising, Valheim, and RV There Yet.

The local gaming ecosystem is substantial, with nearly 1,000 people—out of the city’s 58,000 residents—either studying or working in the video game sector.

The development of this ecosystem began within the education system. In the late 1990s, a lecturer named Ulf Wilhelmson aspired to pursue a PhD in video game studies in Sweden.

He later enrolled at the University of Copenhagen, supported financially by the University of Skovde, where he was employed.

In 2001, Wilhelmson proposed the establishment of a video game development program, as few students were enrolling in traditional IT studies. However, the proposal was initially rejected by senior faculty members due to the absence of game companies in Skovde at the time.

A year later, the program was launched and became one of the earliest of its kind, despite the challenge of having no existing guidelines or models to follow.

Sanny Syberfeldt, Director of the Design Program, explained that the curriculum had to be developed gradually due to the lack of prior references.

Wilhelmson emphasized that the program’s objective was not merely to address the immediate needs of the gaming industry, but to reshape the industry as a whole.

He stated that their ambition has always been to transform the industry and create innovations that had never existed before.

In addition to academic initiatives, Skovde also offers dedicated facilities for game developers. Science Park serves as a hub for mentoring and incubation through a program called Sweden Game Start-Up, which runs for three years.

Jennifer Granath from Science Park explained that the goal of the program is to help participants build sustainable game companies that can continue operating independently after completing the incubation process.