“Ray Tracing is commonly used for indirect lighting,” Kasparas Eidukonis, Senior Audio Programmer, says. “Like when you shine a light into a room – maybe it bleeds out through the door and highlights the areas outside, maybe it bounces on walls and creates different colors of light based on the materials it hits.”

“For audio, it’s essentially the same. Light can be described as a wave, just like sound, it just behaves differently when it hits a surface. We shoot out rays that bounce around and propagate sound. And the more rays we shoot out, the clearer an idea of what it should sound like we get.”

Light can be described as a wave, just like sound, it just behaves differently when it hits a surface.

Let’s imagine you sit opposite another person at a table. If you talk, you can clearly hear each other. The sound waves don’t have an obstacle that separates the two of you. Place a lamp on the table, the sound changes slightly. Flip the table over and suddenly you have something between you and the person on the other side, muffling sounds. Is there a door? Is it open? You can keep building on the scenario, and everything you add will bounce waves – or rays, in the case of Ray Tracing – back to your ears, all in different ways. That’s sound propagation.

Now teleport yourself to the middle of the Kinglor Forest. Consider all the trees, plants, rocks, animals, flowing water, birds, enemy bases, and machinery. Imagine what they do to the thousands of rays the game sends out every frame and what it means for the audio experience.

“It’s super important for immersion to get the sound propagation right,” Simon Stevnhoved, Senior Sound Designer, says. “We are evolutionarily trained to be aware of our surroundings, and our ears can pick up on the slightest changes in our environment. When sound propagation works well, you might not pick up on it consciously, but when something is off, it quickly becomes noticeable. You know instinctively that if you make a loud sound – like firing a gun next to a canyon – the sound will reflect a certain way.

We are evolutionarily trained to be aware of our surroundings.

The team started out by using propagation tech adapted from Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, such as the Slapback, Bubblespace, and Obstruction systems. But, as work on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora progressed, they realized that they needed to both improve what they already had and build completely new tech for the game. While looking for ways to improve sound obstruction, GPU Ray Tracing was integrated into Snowdrop, and the audio team saw their opportunity to jump on board.

“The Division 2’s solution wasn’t built for a jungle environment,” Kasparas says. “It was designed for a city environment, with blocky buildings and props. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the geometry is much more varied, with trees and leaves and bushes.”

So, the team got to work on building a small prototype for raytraced sound obstruction, which worked well for walking around the Kinglor Forest, hiding behind trees and tree trunks, and listening to water sounds. They were happy with what they had but knew there were a lot of improvements that could be made. Some environments worked better than others, for example. The team ended up with a hybrid system, mainly relying on the Ray Tracing solution, but still utilizing hand placed data which was already available, such as volumes for inside spaces and doors.

“In the old system, we would have a custom-built solution for each type of environment, for each type of plant, rock, cliff, terrain,” Kasparas says. “The advantage we were seeing with the Ray Tracing solution is that we could do much more with the rays. We wouldn’t need to build those custom systems, instead it would see all those things naturally. We didn’t need to edit a rock and say, ‘this rock is solid’ or ‘this bush is semitransparent’ every time – naturally the bush will have gaps and the rays can pass through it better than the rock.”

Another bonus of utilizing Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing system as a basis was that the team could move the process from the processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU), allowing them to create and sample a lot more rays, faster. Moving parts of the process to a separate piece of hardware also frees up the CPU to do other things. And being released exclusively on the current generation of consoles – and PC – helped, as there’s suddenly a lot more memory and power to take advantage of.

For an early prototype of the system, the audio team tried a very realistic approach to sound propagation – trying to mimic how sound propagation works in the real world as closely as possible. While it created an impressive soundscape, it also became too overbearing to be useable in a game.

You still need to tell a story; you still need to understand gameplay. It needs to be approachable.

“You would end up with sensory overload,” Alex Riviere, Audio Director, says. “It’s a lot of sounds: from insects to birds, foliage rustling with the wind, cues for gameplay and navigation, to name a few. It became too much to take in and understand.  It sounded great, but any new player would be overwhelmed in that situation. So, we had to take a step back and iterate on the sound mix to make it less overbearing. You still need to tell a story; you still need to understand gameplay. It needs to be approachable.”

There’s still a lot of exploration left in the audio field. But now, we have the opportunity to enter the various vast (and virtual) environments and landscapes of Pandora and immerse ourselves in the diverse sounds of the flora and fauna you can only find there.

More from Snowdrop

• Shining a Light on Pandora, Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

One of the first things that Oleksandr Koshlo, Rendering Architect and Quentin Kuenlin, Senior Rendering Programmer on Snowdrop, mention when we sit down to talk lighting and Ray Tracing in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, is the scale of the project compared to other projects that Snowdrop has been used for previously. And it’s not just about the map of the game, but also how far away the horizon is for the players.

“It’s a huge world, which means that you can see far, especially from high vertical positions. This means that we need to support very distant rendering and we need to give it a lot of care,” explains Quentin.

Compared to The Division 2, which was also built on Snowdrop but before current gen enabled Ray Tracing, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora saw a lot of work going into supporting different lighting effects from a high distance, which presents light sources that allows distance processing volumetric lighting.

We have been able to drastically improve some of the techniques that we had to forgo in previous productions.

“With Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora being a current gen title, we have been able to drastically improve some of the techniques that we had to forgo in previous productions. Now, we could implement Ray Tracing for both lighting and reflections, and that’s a huge change.”

According to both Oleksandr and Quentin, the change in lighting quality is drastic compared to previous titles built on the Snowdrop engine, making things in the world much better connected, and as different materials and objects have different reactions to lighting, they look more realistic than before.

With the previous probe-based global illumination, small objects and details didn’t have any effect on the global illumination. However, thanks to the new system which works on a per pixel basis, all the objects in the world and every small detail can have an influence on the lighting.

Quentin points at a controller on the table we are sitting at.

“For example, if you take the controller here as an example, when we had probe-based illumination, you wouldn’t be able to cast those small, detailed shadows. But now, we can catch these small indirect shadows on their surroundings – the controller casting a shadow on the table, with the TV screen shining a light on the scene for example. It’s much more precise, and much more realistic – and more physically accurate as well since it reflects rays of light in real life.”

It’s much more precise, and much more realistic.

This also connects to the weather system on Pandora. For example, when it’s foggy, some light will be obscured, and the fog itself uses Ray Tracing to indirect light, creating a systemic interaction.

“The systems kind of feedback on themselves. If the sky is completely clouded, you get less direct light from the sun, making the environment darker. It’s all connected,” says Oleksandr, and adds that one of the challenges they have faced in the past is light shining into interiors, which has been a difficult problem to solve.

“We have worked a lot on this and been pushing the boundaries of the tech to make it work – which it now does,” he says with a smile. “And what’s even nicer is that since we don’t rely on baked data, we can actually support opening doors into dark interiors which will become bright due to the light shining in from the outside. It sounds like a basic thing, but it’s something we’ve worked on quite a while, and it’s nice to finally achieve it.”

Speaking of bake times, Ray Tracing has been pivotal in shorten iteration time for the artists working on the game, as it eliminates long bake times and gives artists instant feedback and removes some of the problems with baking. For example, to get the impression that you would get in the full game, the team had to bake things on a build machine, which would take a lot of time.

“With Ray Tracing, if an artist moves an object, it will instantly update the lighting. This means that artists can create windows and objects and instantly see what it will look like in-game for the players,” explains Quentin.

By working closely with the artists on the project, the Snowdrop team has been able to make the tech better and better with direct feedback, considering how artists work with Ray Tracing.

“It’s really a collaborative effort,” says Oleksandr. “When we started the processes in the development of the tech, it showed promise quickly. But once we committed to it and started using it to produce Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, we had to tackle a lot of challenges, and that’s where our collaboration with the artists really started.”

We had to tackle a lot of challenges, and that’s where our collaboration with the artists really started.

By working together, the artists worked to understand how to implement Ray Tracing in their work, and the Snowdrop developers figured out the best ways to optimize the tech. The collaboration has yielded great results, and the instant feedback from artists to the Snowdrop team has proven invaluable.

“When we work on the tech side, we work with simple scenes with a red cube that you can see the light bounce off from,” explains Oleksandr. “However, once you go to a real level, you can see a lot more, and realize that the artists see issues that we don’t necessarily see since it’s so much more complex.”

Quentin adds:

“The feedback has been great. For us in the Snowdrop team, what we do is physically based, and sometimes you try to be as realistic as possible, but it can actually be too realistic for artists, since it hampers the player’s experience,” says Quentin.

As an example, Quentin brings up light during nighttime in the game. During the night, it will (quite obviously) not be much light in the environment, but for the player, it’s too dark and takes away from the gameplay.

“If the player can’t see anything, it will take away from the experience, so sometimes it might be that they need to boost light in a certain area to make the player experience as good as possible. It might not be the most realistic lighting, but it’s necessary to make the game fun.”

Moving forward, both Oleksandr and Quentin see many opportunities with Ray Tracing and how it can be further evolved.

“What we are doing right now is basically tracing rays from the surface of objects into random directions. If we hit something, we hit something. But in that sense, it’s limited since the light won’t bounce indefinitely. What I think will be our next technological step for our future titles is “Path Tracing”: shooting rays which bounce and bounce and bounce. At the moment we are still working on solving some challenges, but it looks promising and it’s definitely something that we want to keep pushing,” says Quentin.

Right now, we are at the tip of the iceberg.

The Snowdrop team’s goal is to make all new technologies developed on Snowdrop available for any team at Ubisoft that is using the engine to develop their games. Ray Tracing is no different and is now available for anyone to leverage.

“There are things we are working on to get better precision and quality,” says Oleksandr. “Right now, we are at the tip of the iceberg, and there are a lot of exciting and interesting things that we want – and hope – to do in the future when it comes to Ray Tracing and lighting in games.”

More from Snowdrop

• An Evolving Pandora, Snowdrop’s dynamic world
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

“In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the player can directly do things that affect the state of Pandora,” Kunal Luthra, Lead Technical Artist, says. “You defeat a big facility belonging to the RDA, the main bad guys of the game, that’s polluting the world around it, it will become abandoned and overgrown – nature will be reclaiming the area. The forest will recover from the pollution, animals will return. And as you push back the RDA across Pandora, you will see it directly reflected in the world around you.”

“The player can tell straight away when they are approaching a Resources Development Administration – the RDA – facility,” Kunal says. “The plants are dying around you; the wildlife is dying around you. Harvest materials are destroyed, and suddenly you can’t harvest anything. The pollution takes away gameplay opportunities, and the only way to get them back is to destroy the facility. And as soon as you’ve done that, you can see the pollution start to disappear in front of your eyes.”

The system was originally built for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, where civilian settlements get upgrades as the player helps them recover. It has then been expanded and built upon for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

We can change almost anything. We can change the geometry of the level area, we can load and unload entities we no longer want.”

“We can change almost anything. We can change the geometry of the level area, we can load and unload entities we no longer want,” Daniel Edenbrandt, Senior Gameplay Programmer, says. “We can have new geometry for the animals and NPCs to traverse. It also affects the shaders, that decide how objects and environment look, so even when we don’t change anything gameplay-wise or geometry-wise in a wider area, we can change how we render the plants and environment using what’s called vertex shaders and pixel shaders.”

The system is also built this way to empower the game’s level designers, as it gives them the opportunity to create bases with engaging gameplay together with detailed environment.

“We have scripts in the Snowdrop editor to help the designers generate a variety of foliage depending on what area of the map you end up placing your base,” Kunal says. “You can design it once, and then the system spawns the correct plants automatically based on that. This means that we can create the most immersive world for our players, where the lush and vibrant vegetation populates the entirety of the vast landscapes of the Western Frontiers of Pandora.

We show and hide whatever is appropriate, with bespoke geometry. It’s like layers in Photoshop, essentially.”

“When you design a facility, you place the props and everything that should always exist, then you place the props that should only exist when it’s operational and then props for when it’s abandoned,” Daniel says. “Then we show and hide whatever is appropriate, with bespoke geometry. It’s like layers in Photoshop, essentially.”

Pollution is a whole system in itself, that directly interacts with the dynamic world system.

“The way it’s set up, any gameplay system can access the pollution, and it is also available to graphics shaders running on the graphics card using a pollution texture,” Daniel says. “We can have any range of pollution and if we wanted to, we could define the amount of deterioration on any material or gameplay object – like a harvestable, for example – using these shaders, instead of having multiple versions of the same object just to showcase the amount of pollution.”

The goal of the dynamic world system was to tie everything together and to make every landmark unique. It’s meant to give the player an incentive to go back to previous areas to reexplore places they’ve already visited and to create a sense of the passage of time. But it’s also a part of the game’s message.

“The basic purpose of the dynamic world is to show how bad human actions can be for the environment, but that we can take it back and help it recover,” Kunal says. “The facilities will still be there, but as you progress, they will be taken back by nature.”

More from Snowdrop

• Shining a Light on Pandora, Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Since 2019, Massive has collaborated with Skåne Stadsmission to support them in their vital work. It’s been a heartwarming collaboration, and has involved financial donations, annual clothing donations, a Christmas gift collection, Massive employees volunteering during the pandemic – to name only a few of our activities.

Most recently, we had the pleasure of welcoming families from Stadsmissionen’s project Unga Forum, to Massive for an unforgettable Holiday event. In their everyday work, Unga Forum is focused on supporting children and teenagers living in social exposure, providing them with a safe space when the world they exist in feels uncertain and harsh.

The event was enabled by the generosity of our co-workers, who could choose to donate their annual holiday gift to charity. Thanks to the donations and with the help from Massive volunteers, who helped during the day, we could open our doors to 41 children and their families during a cold and rainy December afternoon last year.

With the ambition to give the children and their parents a memorable experience, we prepared several activities, food and fika in our Forum, the common area at Massive.

If we can give these children and their parents something to look back on with joy, while giving them a safe space, even just for one day, then we have succeeded.

Upon arrival, the children were welcomed by Santa Claus, who treated them with a sweet and a warm hug, and after enjoying a warm and filling meal from our friends at Yalla Trappan, the children were eager to engage in the different activities. Some got colorful face paintings drawn by our creative volunteers, some decorated gingerbread, made Christmas ornaments, played table tennis, pool, or danced to Just Dance 2023.

To refill energy levels, a well-deserved fika break was needed in between the different adventures. Luckily, there were plenty of delicious lussekatter and gingerbread cookies to indulge in. And if that was not enough, there was a huge basket of fruit, filled with apples, bananas, and pears for the children to enjoy.

Time flies when you are having fun, and eventually it was time to say goodbye. But before our guests left, each family received a gift card for the supermarket Willys, and the children were given a goodie bag filled with toys and filling snacks.

“Engaging in activities like these is a way for us to take responsibility for our local community.” says Camilla Carsten, Event Manager at Massive Entertainment. “We work with Stadsmissionen since we know what a huge difference their work makes to the everyday lives of people”.

During our holiday event, eleven of Santa’s Massive helpers helped make the afternoon a success, assisting in everything from serving food, acting as Santa, drawing face paintings, leading the way in Just Dance, and much more.

“One of the core pillars in our CSR work is ‘involve to impact’. By providing ways for our co-workers to get involved, we want to create meaningful interactions and social exchanges, which we hope are valuable to everyone involved”, Karolina Lundin CSR & Communication Manager at Massive Entertainment says.

“If we can give these children and their parents something to look back on with joy, while giving them a safe space, even just for one day, then we have succeeded. We hope we can inspire others to do the same”.

Later this spring, we will once again open our doors for a similar event. We cannot wait.

Due to GDPR and to respect the integrity of our guests, we cannot share any photos from the actual event.

In 2021, Jonathan Rozmarin left the United States for a new life in Sweden. He relocated together with his wife, two children, two dogs and two cats. Together, they headed to Malmö, where a job at Massive Entertainment as a Senior Project Coordinator was waiting for him.  

But what is it like for a family to leave their old life behind? How do you adapt to a completely new culture, language, and work-life balance, and how did the family experience their first months in Sweden? And why do you decide to pack up all your belongings and move to the other side of the globe?

To find out, we visited Jonathan and his family in their home, located in a small, idyllic village about an hour by train from Malmö.

Why MOVE TO Sweden?

“First and foremost, I was interested in Massive as a company,” Jonathan says about the decision to move all the way to Sweden. “But the thought of an opportunity to work overseas was enticing.”

“It really felt like Sweden would be able to provide our family with the lifestyle changes and needs we were looking for,” he says, and explains further what Sweden offered them:

“We fell in love with what the country and the studio offered regarding work-life balance, cultural exposure and the general ease of life that California was not providing.”

relocating FROM THE UNITED STATES TO SWEDEN – RELOCATION ALLOWANCE, CORPORATE HOUSING AND CHECKLISTS

Once the contract with Massive was signed, the family had six weeks to complete the move from USA to Sweden. It was a tight schedule, but the move was made possible thanks to Massive’s relocation allowance.

“Massive was very generous with their relocation allowance,” Jonathan says. “We just put our belongings on a boat, which six months later arrived in Sweden.”

That said, the family still had a lot of bags to carry with them on their journey across the globe. Luckily, while they buckled under the weight, their first meeting in Sweden turned out to be both nice and helpful, as Jonathan and Lisa tells us.

Meanwhile, the lengthy transport time had the family reconsider their need for certain items they had held on to for a long time.

“If we can live without it for six months, do we really need it?” Lisa asks.

“That really made us think, so we cleansed out, brought some of the children’s toys due to their sentimental value, but all in all, it was like starting over,” Jonathan adds.  

If we can live without it for six months, do we really need it?’

Once they arrived in Sweden, the relocation team at Massive had prepared a corporate apartment in Malmö for the family to stay in during their first months in Sweden. They also received a “checklist” of things to follow up on immediately, so they could easily adapt and enjoy their new life as Swedish residents with as little confusion as possible.

“First of all, it was very helpful not having to find an apartment in Sweden,” Jonathan says. “The relocation team was very supportive in arranging where to stay and told us what we had to do upon our arrival. Go to the migration office, arrange for a digital Bank ID, etcetera. We didn’t have to think of anything other than just completing the checklist.”

making NEW SWEDISH friends – DIFFICULT?

With the practicalities in order, it was time for the family to get to know their new city, it’s culture and of course, the Swedish people. Are the Swedes as cold as they are told to be? Lisa would say “no”:

Jonathan had a warm and genuine first encounter with his neighbors and new colleagues at work.  

“Everyone was very open and welcoming,” he says. “During my first day at work, everyone came right over to introduce themselves. We have fikas regularly and our kids are friends today. I have not experienced any coldness from the Swedish people. In general, I find them very welcoming and friendly.”

It feels like once you become their friend, you are friends for life”

Jonathan says he thinks the stigma comes from the idea that Swedes generally don’t care for small talk. Something which he personally dismisses as incorrect.

“Everyone I have engaged with has reciprocated small talk, so I haven’t felt that at all,” he says.

FINDING A JOB IN SWEDEN

Before the family decided to move to Sweden, Lisa was the owner of her own hair salon in California. When the opportunity to move came up, she decided to sell the studio without hesitation.   

“I have been a hairdresser for 25 years and I had worked hard to start my own studio, and I loved being my own boss!” she says. “But I was excited to move to Sweden and was willing to give it all up to try something new, so I did.”

Once in her new country, she realized the process of getting a job in Sweden was quite different compared to back home. Acquiring a similar job in the states could be as easy as just walking into a salon asking if they needed a stylist or scrolling through Craigslist to find a job nearby.  

“That did not work at all here, so I started looking online for eco-friendly salons and eventually found one in central Malmö,” she says. “I shared my resumé with them, they e-mailed me right back, and the next day I found myself at an interview there and got the job!”

I feel less stressed here at work.”

Her work-life balance has improved significantly since she arrived in Sweden.

“In the states, hairdressers do not enjoy a lot of benefits, but risk to burnout in order to make their ends meet. No paid vacation or paid days off. Here, in Sweden on the other hand, there is a healthy work-life balance.”

Working full time in the salon grants Lisa 28 paid days off, every year. 

“Back home, owning my own place was the only way for me to balance my time, which I don’t feel to be the case at all in Sweden. Generally, I feel a lot less stressed about work here,” she says.

WORK LIFE BALANCE IN SWEDEN

Jonathan agrees. “The motto all my team members gave me when I arrived was ‘family first’. To me, this was really refreshing. Working outside of your normal workday seems like a huge ask of someone in Sweden, while in America it’s almost expected of you,” he says.

The motto all my team members gave me when I arrived was ‘family first‘”

“I’d say Jon almost never had dinner with us back in the States, he was usually working,” Lisa says.

Jonathan mentions the healthy work life balance as an important component to feeling less stressed about work in Sweden. The concern that you would be let go at any moment in the States for prioritizing your family or not working late is not something he experiences in Sweden.

“I can tell my colleagues that I need to see the doctor or visit the bank and get a ‘great, see you when you are back’ instead of a ‘can you find a way of not doing that and keep working’ sort of answer, which I would get back in the states.” 

Of course, the kids’ wellbeing was of the highest priority for Jonathan and Lisa. Luckily, they have adapted quickly to life in Sweden, and the school they are attending is making sure that they are enjoying themselves and help them learn Swedish.

Malmö – a big little city

After a few months living in central Malmö, the family decided to move out of the city, to a house in the countryside, where they could nurture their dream of becoming self-sufficient. 

With 28 minutes on train to Malmö, the nature around the corner and a great school for the children to attend, they had found a home providing them with everything they had been looking for.

“Out here, we can be a lot more self-sufficient and live more sustainable, while having a normal working life in the city, which feels close thanks to the extremely robust public transportation system in Sweden, and the green surroundings we enjoy now,” Lisa says. “With all the people and traffic in California, this is something we could never have dreamt of there.”

“Malmö is an amazing big little city with endless opportunities.”

Jonathan’s and lisa’s 5 tips for people who are about to make the journey of relocating to Sweden

1. Documentation
   “Have all your passports and all these things in order. Do you have animals, kids?
   
   Make sure all your papers are up to date. Once the offer came through, we had 6 weeks to pull off the move and we didn’t almost pull it off. When Jonathan / I had the first interview we immediately started making sure that the dogs and the cats had what they need. Don’t procrastinate on finding out exactly what you need to do, because there are a lot of time specific events that need to happen before you can actually get on that plane.”
   
   
2. Don’t stress about stuff
   “We kind of brought things that we didn’t need to bring and now that we are here, and I look back I’m like ‘Why did I bring this thing?’. If I can live without this for 6 months, why am I bringing it? And definitely don’t bring any electronic, ditch your electronics. Because I brought a bunch. ‘I couldn’t live without my kitchen aid mixer’, I said. And then I plugged it in with a converter and it blew up. Bring very personal things but everything else you can get here. Don’t bring more than you think you need, purge as much as possible.”
   
   
3. Have the mindset of “if it doesn’t work out, home is always there to return to”
   “Its as simple as having a mindset that allowed a trusting approach to leaping into an international position. It gave me the comfort that if the move/position/situation was not in everyone’s best interest in the family, then we can always move back.”
   
   
4. Do research!
   “Research the public transportation system, to get a better idea of what you are getting yourself into in sense of transportation. We also watched a lot of tourist videos of Malmö on YouTube to get an idea of how the city was. We did a lot of reading about the different neighborhoods, go online and look up like ‘different neighborhoods in Malmö’ to read more about the different neighborhoods and what its vibe is. I was like ‘I really want to visit that neighborhood, or I really want to check that one out’!
   
   
5. Reach out to potential colleagues on LinkedIn
   “To actually get some insight from someone that works at the company. I worked with a guy back in California and he moved here before we did and I was able to reach out to him and kind of ask him questions. If you don’t know anyone in the country or at the company, connect with some of the potential colleagues on LinkedIn or something of that nature and ask those questions on a personal level. If that’s something they are willing to do. That gives it a bit more real aspect to it, having someone that has that experience already.”
   

Final words

“It’s gonna be a stressful trip, it’s gonna be a stressful move but the result on the other end is worth that stress. As much as it’s gonna be scary and a big change. All the fears I had, like worrying about where I was gonna be, what the job was gonna be like, am I gonna make friends, are we gonna like it? All those things just completely disappeared within a month or two.

And if it doesn’t work, home is always there. You can always go back.”

Come work for us

Interested in a career at Massive and Sweden? Check out our career page for our open positions!

With another school year coming to an end, kids, and teenagers all over Sweden are leaving for their long-awaited summer holidays. While summer days are the perfect time to spend time in the sun, school break can also be a great opportunity for young people to learn and try something new!

It is always interesting to discover and learn something related to your hobbies and interests. If video games are one of them, why not learn how groundbreaking video games are crafted and explore the magical world of programming?

But how do you introduce kids and teenagers to the video games industry and explain programming in a fun and engaging way? At Massive we came up with the idea of a three-day Coders Camp for young adults.

Future Coders Camp is about creating a fun and safe playground for young people to be themselves and express their creativity.

In July, we launched the Future Coders Camp in collaboration with Spelens Hus and Datatjej. The course was specifically designed for children and young adults aged 9 to 14, helping them learn the basics of coding in a fun and rewarding way.

“Future Coders Camp is about creating a fun and safe playground for young people to be themselves and express their creativity,” David Antell, PR & Communications Manager at Massive Entertainment, says. “We believe that this initiative will inspire the younger generation to discover the magic of coding and help create a more accessible and diverse future for our industry.”

Massive Games Lab is full of energy and inspiration, as the first group of our young guests has just joined our Future Coders Camp. To give every young coder enough time to learn, practice, and explore the creative world behind video games, all students of the Camp were divided into two groups: the first group came to the office in the morning, and the second one in the afternoon.

At the beginning of the Camp, the children had introductory lectures from mentors and our colleagues at Massive to get to know Massive Entertainment and to dive into the endless possibilities of the world of programming.

It was so lovely to see that one kid might be more into the graphics, draw amazing details and really think about how the game looks.

From the basics of coding, to testing game design by creating backgrounds, characters, and different elements, to developing a simple game – the essential part of Future Coders Camp was to give young people hands-on experience and to make the learning process easy and engaging, the creative visual platform Scratch was used. The platform is specifically designed for kids and young adults and has a simple visual interface that makes it easier to grasp basic concepts.

“It was so lovely to see that one kid might be more into the graphics, draw amazing details and really think about how the game looks,” Carolina J. Säll, developer at 46elks and Business Manager at Datatjej, says, “while another kid might be 10 steps ahead in their head, thinking about how level 5 should behave in the game without having even finished level 1 in the code. It reminded me that imagination has no limits – dream big and see what happens!”

Starting from scratch, copying one game in detail, and making it work with their own code, our students quickly became familiar with the principles of programming and began to discover new wonders of code. Inspired by the endless possibilities of programming, our young coders used everything they learned at Future Coders Camp and their boundless imagination to create their own games on the last day of the Camp. Trying, failing, and succeeding in a wonderful creative process – they came up with amazing ideas referencing other games they play themselves.

“One kid shouted at the last session: ‘I love this Camp! When can we take part in it again?’ It felt like the highest praise any coding mentor could ever get, so I would definitely say that many of our students are still deep in code, creating games at home,” Carolina says. “I think that organizing Code Camps like this is crucial for young adults to get inspired, motivated and be able to explore together with other likeminded people, seeing goals that they can aim for and achieve.”

Creating new worlds and gaming experiences is an integral part of Massive, but no less important focus for us is our impact on the world around us. We believe that through initiatives like Future Coders Camp, we can have a positive impact on both the younger generation and the future of the video games industry.

“We are so happy being able to offer this type of activity to children and teenagers in our work to inspire a new generation of developers. If we have encouraged interest and sparked curiosity in one child, we have succeeded.” Karolina Lundin, CSR and Communications Manager at Massive Entertainment, says.

Useful links

• Inspiring a new generation with our Role Model Program.

At the beginning of June, a light breeze and the first summer heat fill every corner of the streets in Malmö. Sunlight is all over the reception at Massive, where the young talents from LBS Kreativa Gymnasiet (LBS Creative High School) are waiting for their first meeting with the video games studio.

Since the beginning of spring, when we launched the Role Model Program, a group of young people from local communities comes to Massive once a month for a guided studio tour and presentation from a Massive Role Model.

“The Role Model program is part of our focus to inspire a new generation of developers and will hopefully have a positive long-term impact on diversity and inclusion in our industry.” Karolina Lundin, CSR and Communications Manager at Massive Entertainment, says.

During the first visit, back in March, young adults from the Save the Children organization came to our office, Eden, to get to know us at Massive Entertainment. As part of the guided studio tour, they visited the Massive Games Labs, our Streaming and Gaming Rooms, and the heart of Eden – the Forum.

“The program inspired our kids. Many of them are interested in video games and they want to become game developers,” Abdulla Taha, Process leader at Save the Children, says.

“I think after the visit our youth will see the video games industry as a place where it’s possible to build a career. A career which is close to their hobbies and interest.”

At Massive we believe in the video games industry as inclusive and open, where everyone who is passionate about video games can find a place to show and develop their talent. As a part of the Role Model Program, we invite our colleagues from different departments and job families at Massive to showcase their profession and the diverse opportunities the industry offers.

“It’s inspiring to have presenters from all disciplines within the studio at Massive present at these events . There are many teams not related to programming or art – which are the most well-known ones – involved in the development of a project. It is great that young adults can see there are so many careers in the industry to choose from!” says Myriam Forbes, Localization Project Manager at Massive Entertainment.

It’s inspiring to have presenters from all disciplines within the studio at Massive present at these events.

In April, when young guests from FC Rosengård came to visit, Myriam shared with them why she loves working in the video games industry, what localization in video games is and how she ended up in the game development company.

The presentation from a Massive Role Model is not only about professional experience. It aims to inspire our visitors, show them how important it is not to be afraid to try different opportunities, not to focus on a single area, and to have many hobbies and interests. While the group of young women from FC Rosengård was surprised to learn that there are specific teams dedicated to the translation and dubbing of a game, they were even more interested in the path Myriam followed to get started in the industry.

“They found it great to meet female role models within this specific industry,” Jessica Stegermaier, Head of the girls’ department at FC Rosengård, says. “The presentation and stories were inspirational and appreciated by everyone. To hear about all the different professions, and the many opportunities no one knew about, even about all the women that hold various positions, helped to catch everyone’s interest.”

We believe that with a program like this, we can give the younger generation a great chance to get to know the video games industry and the people who work to create games we all love playing.

“It changed their perception of the video games industry,” Jenny Sjöstrand, Head of ‘Football for Life’ at FC Rosengård, says. “While most young adults would not have seen themselves in that industry before this program, many of them mentioned afterward that it is an interesting field with a variety of job opportunities worth pursuing. It absolutely opened doors to a field unknown to most visitors and encouraged reflection.”

Useful links

• How our Games Lab helped create the Akribian math app for children.
• A Just Dance off with children and teenagers at Fryshuset.

In this first episode we meet Lead Data Scientist David Renaudie, who will tell us more about how data science can help us understand players and games better, and what it means for the future of game development.

You can find the podcast on all major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. You can also find us on Soundcloud or punch the RSS feed into your favorite podcast app! Your choice!

ABOUT BEHIND MASSIVE SCREENS

Since early 2020, we’ve been doing a video interview series called the Fika Sessions, where we sat down with developers at Massive to discuss their roles and work in detail, in order to educate and inspire people that are interested in working in games – while also having “fika”, the Swedish tradition of drinking coffee and eating tasty pastries together.

But now it’s time for the Fika Sessions to evolve into something new: the podcast Behind Massive Screens. The concept remains the same – you will get in-depth insights into how games are made, from a myriad of different perspectives – but the format has changed from primarily a video project to a dedicated podcast. You will find new episodes every month.

We hope you join us on our new podcast adventure and that you enjoy the show!

”For the past couple of years, I’ve had a strong interest and curiosity when it comes to fashion and games. This thinking has become clearer for me during my time at Massive, especially how it practically and theoretically fits in the context of concept art. But I’ve also learned how to stretch my design thinking for it to make sense in a gaming context,” says Marie Isacsson.

One of her goals during her time here at Massive was to grow into the role of a concept artist, and with the help of her managers and leads, together with her sense of curiosity, she’s has taken both to the role and to the industry.

“If I would describe my first impressions of the game industry, I would say it with one word: ‘exciting'”. I have only touched the surface and I want more. The industry is dynamic and extremely ambitious.”

If I would describe my first impressions of the game industry, I would say it with one word: ‘exciting’.

Coming from a more traditional design industry has meant that the scholarship constantly opened new areas to explore as a concept artist, but also in the games industry.

“One of the greatest insights I’ve gotten here is the knowledge of how games are made”, Marie says.

Over the course of the scholarship, she has had the opportunity to interview her fellow colleagues to learn as much as possible about how the production pipeline of making a game – and vanity items for player characters – work. She has spoken with art directors, tech animators, marketers and more, and all those conversations have helped her understand how everything is connected.

“There’s an even bigger picture that I haven’t yet explored, but it’s something I absolutely want to dig even deeper into, since I think it’s key to understand what keeps the wheel spinning.”

It’s a very generous scholarship that provides you with new contexts, new knowledge, new skills.

When Marie came to Massive, one of the first questions she got was “what challenges do you think you will face?” For Marie, it was to translate her skills and experience with physical clothes and design to the digital realm.
“I believe mastering digital tools are the future within design to make the process not only sustainable but also efficient and communicative,” she says. A statement she still believes in after her six months at the studio.
So why should young designers apply for the Ung Svensk Form Scholarship Program?

“It’s a very generous scholarship that provides you with new contexts, new knowledge, new skills, and the ability to transfer your design knowledge to virtual worlds”, Marie says. “It’s an amazing opportunity for designers in different industries, such as fashion, to try out new exciting industries!”

Want to learn more about the scholarship and how to apply? You can read all about it on Ung Svensk Form’s website.

Useful links

• Learn more about Marie and her approach to fashion in games.
• How we at Massive approach the Concept Artist internship.

In 2019, more than 40 Nordic game companies gathered at the annual Bornholm Game Days, during which they all agreed on making the climate issue one of our industry’s top priorities.

The agreement resulted in PlayCreateGreen, an organization initiated by Nordisk Games and led by Svenska Dataspelsbranschen (Swedish Games Industry). The initiative was made possible thanks to the involvement of several Nordic game companies, including Massive Entertainment.

While still in an early phase, the long-term ambition of PlayCreateGreen is to raise climate awareness in the video games industry, reduce negative impact on the environment and to lower our collective carbon footprint. This ambition is made possible thanks to continuous knowledge sharing of best practices between its members.

“Everyone has something to share and something to learn, and by working together we can make real and vital long-term change. We hope PlayCreateGreen can inspire people in our industry to reflect over what we can do to become more sustainable,” Karolina Lundin, CSR & Communications Manager at Massive Entertainment, says.

We hope PlayCreateGreen can inspire people in our industry to reflect over what we can do to become more sustainable.

As of today, the supporter list includes companies such as Nordisk Games (Egmont), Landfall, Embracer Group and Advenimus, and Massive Entertainment, and the hope is for the community to keep growing, inspiring a broader group of companies to implement new sustainable solutions.

We look forward to updating you on our collective work and efforts for a greener industry and planet!

Useful links

• Green initiatives at Massive in our Earth Day article
• Our move to a more sustainable office