A Recap of For Devs 2025
What an incredible day and evening! First of all, thank you all for attending and contributing to the wonderful atmosphere. This conference is dedicated to the game devs – both on stage and in the audience!
Big thanks to our sponsors Arrowhead Game Studios, Hazelight Studios, DICE, NMBRS Studio, Game Town, and Starbreeze! 💛
A huge thank you to all of our wonderful, sharp, and amazing speakers; without you, there wouldn’t be a conference. 👏
The day began with gentle vibes as harpist Pauline Burke Clason enchanted the breakfast area with some lovely soothing melodies.
At 09:30 sharp, we all gathered at the Main Stage for the opening of For Devs 2025, where Per Strömbäck, CEO of the Swedish Games Industry, welcomed the attendees. On stage, he was joined by Johanna Nylander, Head of analytics and deputy CEO, and Marléne Tamlin, Head of Sustainability at the Swedish Games Industry. Together they discussed the milestone of 2025, celebrating 20 years of industry data for the annual Game Developer Index report, highlighted the sustainability focus within the games Industry, and briefed the audience on what to expect throughout the day!
The first talk of the day was the keynote held by Joni Lappalainen, CEO of Dreamloop Games Oy, chairperson of the Finnish Game Developers Association, and Showrunner of the Finnish Game Incubator. In his talk, ‘STOP WITH THE HERO COMPLEX: Shipping is mandatory. Suffering is optional’ he shared hard-earned insight into sustainable production and personal stories to challenge burnout culture and help teams ship smarter.
This set the tone for the rest of the day, which included a variety of talks, panels, and interviews on skill sets, technology, design, and more.
Before heading into the first breakout sessions of the day, it was time for a break. Guests could grab their coffees and fika with a sound backdrop of sweet harp tunes all day long.
The first breakout session featured game industry veteran Jens Andersson, Design Director at Collecting Smiles, who shared in his talk, ‘7 Kinds of Playtests in Indiana Jones & The Great Circle’, how the team at MachineGames applied, skipped, or even overlooked different playtesting approaches during the development of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and explained how the resulting insights were key to making it their most polished and accessible game yet.
Fawzi Mesmar, Creative Director at Ubisoft, discussed in his talk ‘Creative Sobriety in the Age of AI’ that even as AI becomes a constant collaborator, true creative authenticity remains a uniquely human quality achieved by cutting through noise, embracing vulnerability, and staying true to one’s vision.
Pernilla Alexandersson, CEO of Add Gender, led the panel ‘Designing Without Fear: Tackling ‘Anti-Woke’ Pushback in Game Development’ with Anna Högberg Jenelius, Indie Game Developer at Valiant Game Studio, to discuss the challenges developers face in maintaining creativity and community amid ‘anti-woke’ backlash, and offered practical strategies for fostering inclusion, resilience, and courage in game development.
Martin Singh-Blom, ML Lead at Embark Studios, shared how the team uses a wide range of machine learning and AI tools, outlined their current approach, and discussed the opportunities these technologies offer for them, as well as their aspirations for the future, in his talk ‘Machine Learning in ARC Raiders’.
Before we knew it, lunchtime had arrived. During the lunch break, guests had the opportunity to mingle in the Women in Games room, where they could enjoy their meal and connect with one another.
After lunch, we had four breakout sessions happening simultaneously:
DICE organised a talk titled ‘The Sonic Identity of Battlefield 6’ with Mari Saastamoinen Minto, Senior Audio Director at DICE, and David Jegutidse, Audio Director at DICE. The talk focused on developing Battlefield 6's audio identity with international teams, crafting an immersive soundscape, refining audio direction, and demonstrating how to produce a raw, gritty, and realistic war soundscape in a modern, competitive shooter.
We also got to hear from Fernando Forero Pinilla, UI Artist Senior II at Blizzard Entertainment, whom explored how custom fonts and glyphs were designed to reflect Diablo IV’s dark atmosphere, using typography and visual design to enhance the game’s world and immerse players beyond visuals through evocative, crafted language, in his talk ‘Behind the Letters of Hell: Designing Fonts and Glyphs for Diablo IV’.
Jiwon Jang, Sustainability Project Manager at Microsoft Gaming, joined us for an insightful talk about how to create games that are both cutting-edge and energy-efficient. In her talk ‘Building Greener Games: Inside the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit’, Jiwon showcased the practical techniques, best practices and real-world examples of the toolkit, designed to help developers reduce energy consumption in their games without compromising performance or player experience.
A duo from Starbreeze, Otto Wretling, IT Systems Engineer, and Daniel Perez, Studio Art Director, talked about ‘Practical AI: Empowering the Developer’.
Then it was time for some more coffee and harp tunes before we started the next batch of breakout sessions:
On the main stage, we got to hear the talk ‘Designing Games With Music’ by Elvira Björkman, Music Composer in the duo Two Feathers Studio. Elvira’s session gave the audience a better understanding of how music is just as powerful a tool in game design as it is in affecting our emotions. She shared the hidden secrets on how to think about design and tech before composing, in order to elevate the experience of the game, and impact players to act as you intended. The talk included inspiring examples from the duo's 12+ years in game music!
Jakub Galanciak, Technical UX/UI Designer at 11bit Studios, joined us on stage to deep dive in all the things that the team had to cover whilst developing the FrostKit – modkit for Frostpunk 2. In his talk ‘Modkit Development and Mod Community Support – Learnings from Frostpunk 2’, Jakub shared the technical issues, deployment on different markets with different laws regarding UGC, community management, among loads of other interesting encounters on the journey. What if we told you that games can connect, include, empower, and help them build real-world skills for the future?
In the session ‘Designing for Play and Well-Being: Game Devs as Game Changers’, Lulu Li, Child Rights and Sustainability Advisor at UNICEF Sweden and Mariam Tabatadze, Innovation Consultant at UNICEF, discussed the opportunity for game developers and designers to make an impact on the youth, together with panellists:
Pussel Widegren, Game designer at Hazelight Studios
Aksel Englund, UX & Accessibility Designer at Mojang Studios
Petter Karlsson, Design Director at Toca Boca
In the session, the audience gained insights from the RITEC Design Toolbox, along with examples of how studios actively put some of these ideas into practice.
In the talk ‘How to build a hit on Roblox!’, Brian Span, Game Designer at The Gang Studio broke down the creative and design process behind Prison Pump – a top-performing Roblox experience built around player humour, satisfying progression, and one simple goal: become the baddest, most feared prisoner on the block!
We were also joined by Jakob Ericsson, Design Director at MachineGames! In the session ‘Becoming Indiana Jones, Making an Adventure Game in First Person’, Jakob shared a few of the player-systems behind the success: "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle".
During the on-stage interview titled ‘To Hell and Back – Fire Side Chat with Arrowhead-Founder Johan Pilestedt’, Johan Pilestedt, CCO of Arrowhead Game Studios, opened up about creative doubt, the emptiness that comes from fulfilling a life-long dream and how a game can take seven years, 11 months and 26 days to make.
In his session, Ahmed Salama, Founder & Game UX Consultant at Ludo Hobo let the audience in on a deep dive of the different user interfaces we see in 3D games. With the help of a case study covering a fictional abstract AAA open world game, the talk ‘Presence in Practice: Affinity vs. Contrast in Video Game UX’, not only showed the different types of user interfaces, but actually explained what they are, and how to best select which type of interface should be presented to the players depending on the player's level of 'presence' while playing your game.
Do you find a lack of meaning in your life? According to the Producer, Dennis Greger, that might be exactly what your game is missing too. In their session ‘Be Gay, Do Crime – Your game needs more Love, Death and Sex’ (as the title suggests), Dennis discussed how integrating Death, Love and Sex into your game can provide the depth that it might be lacking.
Shortly after, Mathieu Castelli, Chief Creative Officer at Resolution Games, took the stage to showcase the new AR glasses they’ve been developing games for over the past six months. In his session ‘Back to the Couch – Hand Tracking in AR Design’, Mathieu discussed the surprisingly big differences between working on AR glasses and VR, a field they’ve been involved in for the last six years. Curious attendees even got the chance to try out the Snap Specs dev kit in person!
The talk ‘App not Responding – Porting to Mobile’ by Ali Farah, Senior Producer at Star Stable Entertainment, brought the audience along the journey of porting Star Stable’s 12+ years of code and content to iOS and Android, without losing its soul. Besides the technical challenge, Ali gave insights on how the process was also a lesson in balancing legacy systems, performance limits, and player expectations.
All the way from the UK, Louisa Keight, Project Lead for the Green Game Jam at Playing for the Planet, entered the stage to share fascinating insights on how studios are boosting their engagement metrics up to 30% with design tactics that can turn ordinary players into climate superheroes. In her talk ‘Tap to Save the World: Insights from the Green Game Jam’, Louisa discussed the behavioural science secrets behind excellent green storytelling that can deepen knowledge, raise vital funds, or even shift attitudes.
Simon Stålenhag, the internationally acclaimed author and illustrator of Science fiction-themed narrative art books, such as The Electric State, Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, and The Labyrinth, entered the stage. In his interactive session, ‘Using Game Art Tools for Books – Practical Examples by Simon Stålenhag’, he shared how his game dev background is always present in his everyday work as an author and illustrator. Plus opened up about his messy folder structure.
Caroline Björn, Lead Game QA Specialist at Star Stable Entertainment, shared how the team overcame their fear of tools, mastered their database systems, and developed applications that automated the repetitive, time-consuming tasks. In the session ‘Powering QA Without the Pain: Removing Barriers & Boosting Efficiency with Internal Apps’, Caroline explained how this shift enabled more time for the team to focus on their creative process!
Simon Post, Creative Director at Perfect Random, took the stage for a short talk! In his session ‘Deadly Fidgetry’, Simon went into detail about “how to make guns good and perhaps not try too hard but still try pretty hard”.
Right after Simon Post’s session, the audience welcomed yet another Simon on stage. This time:
Simon Lindberg Amanou, Senior Environment Artist at Hazelight Studios. In a short, but inspiring interview held by Daniel Torbjörnsson at Dataspelsbranschen, Simon let the crowd in on the fascinating process behind the making of the successful games by Hazelight. In the interview ‘More is more, the art behind Hazelight’, he gave the audience insight on how creative freedom can take games to new heights, while showcasing examples from the games It Takes Two and Split Fiction.
Last but not least, we gathered everyone on the main stage one last time to wrap up For Devs 2025!
When For Devs ended, Södra Teatern was transformed into Night of the Devs – the official afterparty. In the various rooms, old friends and new connections could compete in Mario Kart, sing karaoke together or play table tennis. Did you take the opportunity to get a tarot card reading? Did you visit the fluffy candy corner?
We hope you enjoyed For Devs 2025 and were inspired, energised, and full of ideas for making even better games! We had a great time with you and look forward to seeing you again at the next For Devs.
Photos by Alexander Milton
