Game School

Taking center stage at the Spillexpo

The Games School has once again returned to Spillexpo with their own booth, bigger than ever and showing off everything we have to offer from both students’ work and creating futures within game development. As per usual, we like to bring in some of our best talent to show off, this time around having students from Lakeborn Studio, Dollipop, Silly Beast Studio and of course Rocket Couch.

Spillexpo Oslo is the biggest game and pop culture expo in Norway, and is hosted every year at the NOVA Spektrum in Lillestrøm. It is jam-packed with activities, events and booths that celebrate all things related to gaming, from video games and eSports to tabletop games and technology. The expo typically features various elements such as:

Gaming Exhibitions: Companies showcase their latest games, hardware, and innovations in the gaming industry. Attendees get hands-on experiences with new releases and cutting-edge technology.

eSports Tournaments: Spillexpo often hosts eSports competitions where professional gamers or teams compete against each other in popular games for prizes and recognition.

Panels and Talks: Experts, game developers, and industry insiders often hold panels, discussions, and presentations about the gaming world, sharing insights and knowledge about game development, trends, and the future of gaming.

Cosplay: Cosplayers dress up as their favorite game characters, adding a colorful and creative dimension to the event.

Networking and Community: It’s a great platform for gamers, developers, and enthusiasts to network, share ideas, and connect with others who share their passion for gaming.

The event typically attracts people of all ages, from casual players to hardcore enthusiasts, offering something for everyone within the gaming community. The specific experiences and content can vary from year to year, but the overarching focus remains on celebrating gaming culture and technology. 

This year we have upgraded our booth. It is bigger and can hold multiple game testing stations at once. We had a lot of activity with many people showing interest in both testing our students’ games, as well as the things we do at the Games School. We also had the great opportunity to have Ron from 8z_Cosplay stay with us for a good duration of the expo, cosplaying both as Buster from Oh No! Kobolds!, by Rocket Couch, and also the character Twitch from League of Legends by Riot Games, which the ladder secured them first place in the cosplay competition on the last day.

Ron was super helpful with attracting people to our stand and also helping us promote the Game School in general. Make sure to follow them on their socials!

Amongst the thousands of people attending Spillexpo 2023, we also had the honor of getting a visit from the Mayor of Lillestrøm, Kjartan Berland, who was elected earlier this fall. Kjartan was amazed and impressed with the atmosphere and the environment that Spillexpo had to offer. Kjartal was previously elected as deputy representative to the Parliament of Norway from Akershus for the terms 2013–2017 and 2017–2021 before taking up the position as Mayor this year.

Over the three day event, we had many great conversations and people over at our booth testing the students’ projects. Twitch streamer Knut Spildrejorde, simply known as Knut online, is a video game content creator and IRL streamer with almost 400.000 subscribers on Twitch.tv. We got to spend some time with him as he was trying out two of the student projects and streaming it to his audience.

We are grateful for everyone who came to our stand throughout the weekend, and we are looking forward to next year as we are ambitious to expand what we have to offer when it comes to new games and showcases.

Article written by Jørgen Nilsen
Published November 28, 2023

The amazing Ron over at 8z_Cosplay, dressing up as Buster from Oh No! Kobolds! by Rocket Couch.

Lillestrøm Mayor Kjartan Berland, getting their photo taken with 8z_Cosplay, dressed up as Buster

Twitch streamer Knut testing one of the student projects

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News and Events

Valmuen’s TERA-LAN ups the ante

Valmuen student association continues to push the boundaries at the Games School when it comes to strengthen both the social and subject related engagement and events outside of the university’s lecture hours. Annually, Valmuen LAN event has been their biggest in terms of scale and spectacle. Following the tradition of binary prefixes, TERA-LAN is the fourth installation of the LAN parties held at the game school over the past few years. If you have never attended a LAN party before, A LAN party is a type of gathering where people bring their personal computers or gaming consoles to a specific location, usually a private residence or rented space, in order to play multiplayer video games together over a local area network (LAN). The main focus of a LAN party is on socializing and playing games with friends or other attendees in the same physical space. Being hosted by Valmuen student association for the past few years, with assistance from other Hamar based student associations, have shown great interest among the game school students and even other students from HINN. Last year, GIGA-LAN had over 115 participants in total during their 15 hour LAN run. This year, 109 participants in total attended TERA-LAN, which lasted for 37 hours.

Rocket Couch Wins Gamer’s Choice Award at Norwegian Game Awards 2023!

Norway’s largest game development competition organized by a Non-Profit student organization Start NTNU. Oh No! Kobolds! By Rocket Couch Studio is a third person whimsical adventure game. Where you play as a ruthless yet adorable bunny name Buster. A tinkering bunny equipped with a hand-crafted carrot powered bazooka that you get to wield for your own protection. While exploring the world, fend off hordes of kobolds who show up with the sole purpose of stealing your inventions! Oh No! Kobolds is suitable for children ages 8 and up but is also aimed at all fans of the good old action exploration games. For more information or show support, please visit the Rocket Couch Studio website.

Silje and Ole were in the right place at the right time

The two students were part of the first admitted class to further education in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The study programme provided them with a smooth transition to working life where they created their own workplace.

"There is no doubt that we were in the right place at the right time when we studied at Hamar. Personally, I felt that we were part of one of Norway's leading AR/VR environments. There was a real buzz around the programme in the start-up phase, and we as students were lucky to have a role in kick-starting the initiative. Since then, this academic environment has grown both at INN University and in Hamar year after year. What happens in Hamar is of international quality," say our two former students Ole Midthun and Silje Kroken.

Game Jam 2023 Hamar

On February 3rd - February 5th 2023 we'll gather again for the biggest game making event in the world. During one weekend, over 200 game developers, game students and game/tech enthusiasts will gather to create great game ideas. During the event we will brainstorm and pitch ideas, divide into teams, and create as many games as possible within 48 hours. Everyone is welcome, we need all kinds of skills - from programmers to game designers, artists and musicians. People with no previous experience are also encouraged to join us, share their perspective and learn more about game development. Signup today by following the link bellow.

Reconnect with Global Game Jam!

During the event, there were a number of different talks from people who work in the industry and other game developers. Everything from Unity dev tips and tricks, to Interactive sound design workshop. After 48 hours of hard work, no sleep and too much pizza, The deadline for Global game jam 2023 crept in and it was time to present the games and projects that were made, everyone made their way back to auditorium 1 to present what they had created. Hamar’s Game Jam site this year had 215 registered participants, making it number 9 in Europe, and number 12 globally, which is all thanks to every person and the incredible volunteers who attended Hamar’s global game jam site this year! _Hamar taken by Game Collective of Thomas French. Game director at Krillbite Studio
Spillexpo Logo

Spillexpo returns to form

The annual games-expo known as Spillexpo (Oslo Comic-con) returns to Nova Spectrum in Lillestrøm for another weekend of everything gaming related. Featuring a plethora of tournaments, demos and booths to look at and interact with. Amongst these, the Games School/INN had their own booth, showing off student work and the upcoming student game project ‘’Oh No! Kobolds!’’ by Rocket Couch. Spillexpo 2022 is a return to form for many people. After more than 2 years with social distancing, finally being able to connect in person with the things you find the most interesting can be liberating for a lot of people. For students at the Games School, Spillexpo is a great opportunity to meet and talk to people who work in professional studios or even old students who have went on to make their own studios like Snow Leaf Studios, who had their own booth to let the public test their upcoming single player potion making roguelike game ‘’Brew’’, set to release in the near future on Steam.
VRForum 2022

Nordic VR Forum returns to Hamar

On the 1 and 2 of November, the Nordic VR Forum returned with its anual conference, workshop and award show, celebrating everything VR/AR/XR. The event was hosted once again at Hamars culture-house and displayed a plethora of booths and presentations with different demos and activities surrounding VR/AR/XR. Every year students are offered a two-day ticket for a discounted price so they as well could experience everything the conference had to offer. The Game School sported its own booth as well, showing a reel of current and previous student work, including demoing The HoloLens 2 and the Meta Quest Pro. Naturally there is more to VR and similar tech than just video games. The Nordic VR Forum aims to further develop how we use VR/AR within learning, city planning, web3, healthcare and storytelling. It is an ever expanding franchise that continues to grow as the years go by and the technology keeps evolving. At the Games school, we strive to create virtual worlds and stories through game development, which goes hand in hand with creating other non-videogame VR/AR/XR projects like Fynd Realitys ‘’Fynd Core’’ framework. These huge and important projects for the future need people who understand and work well with the many nuances of 3D, programming, digital art and problem solving. This is perfect for anyone seeking to work within the creative field of solving real life problems. Learn more about Nordic VR Forum at: https://www.vrforum.no/

Hamar named UNESCO Creative City

Hamar has been awarded the status of UNESCO Creative City in Media Arts. This was announced by Minister of Culture Anette Trettebergstuen today at the Nordic VR Forum which is being held in Hamar. The Creative Cities Network was established by UNESCO in 2004 to promote collaboration between cities that have creativity that drives sustainable urban development. Hamar is the first Norwegian city to be named in the Media Arts category Minister of Culture and Gender Equality Anette Trettenbergstuen today presented UNESCO's diploma to Mayor Einar Busterud.
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2020 Online Conference by Sophie Mobbs