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https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/skovde-sweden-video-games-goat-simulator-valheim-v-rising>
"On 26 March 2014, a trailer for a video game appeared on YouTube. The first
thing the viewer sees is a closeup of a goat lying on the ground, its tongue
out, its eyes open. Behind it is a man on fire, running backwards in slow
motion towards a house. Interspersed with these images is footage of the goat
being repeatedly run over by a car. In the main shot, the goat, now appearing
backwards as well, flies up into the first-floor window of a house, repairing
the glass it smashed on its way down. It hurtles through another window and
back to an exploding petrol station, where we assume its journey must have
started.
This wordless, strangely moving video – a knowing parody of the trailer for a
zombie survival game called
Dead Island – was for a curious game called
Goat
Simulator. The game was, unsurprisingly, the first to ever put the player into
the hooves of a goat, who must enact as much wanton destruction as possible. It
was also the first massive hit to come out of a small city in Sweden by the
name of Skövde.
There’s a good chance you have never heard of Skövde. There’s an even better
chance you don’t know how to pronounce it (“hwevde”). Historically, [the town]
which is nestled between the two largest lakes in the country, Vänern and
Vättern, has relied on Volvo for much of its employment. But, for the last 25
years, there has been a shift. Skövde has managed to produce some of the
biggest and most talked-about video games on the planet – not just
Goat
Simulator but titles like
V Rising,
Valheim, and
RV There Yet?.
In a city of 58,000, there are almost 1,000 people studying or making a living
from video games there – by comparison the entire gaming sector in the UK
amounts to 28,500 people. How can Skövde punch so far above its weight?"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
