Today, STING opens it doors to their game incubator at Embassy House at Medborgaplatsen. The incubator will focus on both entertainment games and professional applications of games, as well as technologies and tools for game development. Jonas Lindqvist and Jana Palm, who led the pre-incubator program STING Test Drive Game last fall, will be the coach and hub manager, respectively.

In the fall of 2016, STING completed a pre-incubator program STING Test Drive Game, where 10 projects and startups participated. Based on the positive experience and feedback, STING will now start a full-scale incubator within the gaming area. The companies accepted will be included in the program STING Incubate.

– Stockholm is one of the world’s leading regions in the gaming industry. There are many important parts of a well-functioning ecosystems, but – it has been missing a game incubator. After our preliminary work with STING Test Drive Game, we are now starting a game incubator midst of all gaming companies in the part of Stockholm callad Söder, and it is our contribution to further strengthen the strong game cluster in Stockholm, says Pär Hedberg, founder and CEO of STING (Stockholm Innovation & Growth).

The incubator will have room for five startups and STING has recruited serial entrepreneur Jonas Lindqvist as coach. Jonas has worked in the gaming industry for many years and has extensive experience working with startups. The companies will have individual coaching sessions each week and access to all of STING’s additional support as well as the strong network within the gaming industry that STING built up with the big Swedish gaming companies in 2016 for STING Test Drive Game; including Goodbye Kansas, Paradox, Future Games, Resolution Games and Avalanche Studios.

– We received very positive feedback from both participants and partners for the STING Test Drive Game program. It was clear that there is a great need for specific coaching for game startups, especially around the actual business development; there we could see that teams made incredible progress during the program. When your job is to manufacture games, you have to early think about the business model, and that’s probably just what Swedish game startups need the most help with, says Jonas Lindqvist, game coach at STING.

In conjunction with the launch of the STING game incubator, STING starts a new collaboration with Embassy Medborgarplatsen, resulting in a common hub for new game startups. At Embassy, game developers, apps and digital services companies will be offered office space in a dynamic environment with many of the largest gaming companies as neighbors. Embassy already has a number of major game companies moving in, making it an interesting place for STING’s game incubator.

As manager for the gaming hub, STING has recruited Jana Palm, who, among other things, runs Stugan, a summer camp for game developers from around the world conducted in Dalarna each summer. Jana has worked in the gaming industry for many years and has an extensive international network of contacts in the industry.

– That we will start a gaming hub right in the middle of Söder is no accident. Södermalm is a hub for video game creation and we will sit near gaming companies like Paradox, Avalanche and DICE. I look forward to helping create a creative and inspiring environment for gaming, and it will be exciting to follow the development of new products and see successful new gaming companies emerge, says Jana Palm, manager of STING’s gameing hub at Embassy House.

> Do you want to apply to STING’s game incubator? Contact Jonas Lindqvist, game coach at STING, 070-350 49 69, jonas.lindqvist@stockholminnovation.com