Culture Night 2025

12-10-25 11:45

Games and Unions

I'm part of what is known as the Game Workers Guild. We don't have a website (yet) but the initiative that we are part of can be found here. The short version is that we work together with the Danish unions PROSA, HK, FAF and DM to better the game's industry and further unionisation in that sector. Today, PROSA was putting on an event for the Cuture Night 2025 and let Game Workers Guild have a space all about the Game Making Process.

The five volunteers for Game Workers Guild that worked that worked the event today. From left to right is Andreas, who was participating extraordinarily today but is otherwise not involved, Allan, Lani who was the organiser of todays event, Kristian and myself, Mads. We are all wearing the Game Workers Guild tshirt which consists of yellow, red and blue abstractions of people putting their hands in the air. — The Game Workers Guild people who made this event possible today. From left to right: Andreas, Allan, Lani (who organised the event), Kristian and myself, Mads

If you live in Denmark and wish to be informed of our events and support the unionisation of the games industry or maybe even get involved join our Discord Server or follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Behind the Scenes

Various companies had graciously decided to show a part of making games that you don't normally get to see. There are many facets to making games from ideation, through design, funding, pre-production, production and finally release and maintenance as well as further development. It's an incredible amalgamation of passionate work from designers, artists, programmers, producers, project leads and more coming from all walks of life.

A room full of people in PROSA's canteen checking out the various exhibits, playing games and asking questions or talking to organisers and developers. In the left part of the background is an exhibit by the company Those Eyes and in the right side of the background is a big projector screen running various trailers from all the game companies we showcased material from today. — As the night went on we started to get quite a lot of visitors

Bolverk Games

The VR focused company Bolverk Games had provided us with a lot of material that showed the process almost from start to finish. Starting with ideation and concepts on the left, going more and more towrads what we got in production to the right from their game Genotype which you can get for Meta Quest headsets and PSVR2.

A big collage of various pictures and descriptions showing the development process of Genotype. — We had a big collage with the whole process on display!

FlatPonies

The world of games has kind of gone away from game Mascots like Rachet from Rachet and Clank, Daxter from Jak and Daxter and Crash from Crash Bandicoot but the Danish company FlatPonies is bringing it back with their character Scratch in their currently work in progress title Scratch the Cat. A charming and cool cat DJ who is out to save the world from bad vibes. They brought with them various images of what their level prototyping used to look like so they could point to those parts in their game and talk about what was removed or added since those prototypes as a lot of things get cut or changed during development of games.

FlatPonies have also made other titles such as ReBots and #AkiRobots.

A blonde kid is sitting in a chair playing Scratch the Cat on a screen as his guardian sits to his right. Behind the screen is a big collage of all the level prototyping that FlatPonies have done and on the right is a big blue promotional poster with their Scratch character. — We saw many kids dart straight for this game as soon as they entered the room!

Those Eyes

With games like Real Vampires, Cosmic Top Secret and Mouse & Crane it was quite something to see what the company Those Eyes would bring. They brought a massive 4 metres long museum piece for Cosmic Top Secret which showcased their recognisable art style in real life! All of their characters and art look like newspaper clippings that were glued together and animated which they brought to life here at PROSA. The game itself is an autobiographical telling from Trine Laier's perspective about her parents as they used to be secret agents in the Danish government and she had no idea as a child and decided to make a game about it as an adult.

An open box display full of little figures cut from paper, black surfaces for flooring, long strips of paper with holes in produced by an old Danish government computer called DASK as well as paper walls with writings on them. — The exhibit was full of characters, books, tidbits, speech bubbles and old code strips from the Danish DASK computer

Ghost Ship Games

One of the most successful Danish game developers, Ghost Ship Games, had sent over early concept art, sketches and design documents for the development of their hit game Deep Rock Galactic a game about dwarves digging for minerals in deep space while having to contend with the local wildlife (read: angry alien bugs). One of the fun quirks we learned about their game is that during development they were experimenting with certain artstyles to get the right look for their game but couldn't quite get it right and one day by accident they made a very sharp looking artstyle which they decided to just completely lean into and refine. This kind of "discovery" or "accident" is something that happens in game development more often than you'd think as the process have a lot of experimentation, intentional or not, to get a desired outcome. But some times you get something you didn't expect and that might actually be better than what you were aiming for anyway.

Ghost Ship Games also published a Vampire Survivors inspired game called Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor made by Funday Games where you must keep digging through ever increasingly harder levels and fight off monsters to get minerals before you reach a boss level very similar to Vampire Survivors. It's surprisingly addictive!

Lately Ghost Ship Games are working on Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core which is currently in alpha.

What happens when Kristian is left to his own devices

Out of Bounds Games

This is a company I have written about multiple times before and they also had a presence at today's culture event! Their game, Sea of Rifts, is close to getting a demo out and release hopefully follows soon after. You get to sail the endlessly procedurally generated oceans as you decide what the goals are. Do you wanna be a pirate? Deliver goods? Be a monster hunter? Find hidden treasure? All of the above? It's up to you! Out of Bounds brought us some concept art showcasing some currently unused floral enemies, many different iterations for nordic inspired key locations, what the game has looked like over the years from 2020 to 2025 and of course they let people set sails and play around with their immersive ship sailing.

A bunch of wood and paint has been used to make a kraken stand with the sign 'Sea of Rifts' haning from one of the tentacles. Underneath the sign is a laptop with the game of the same name running. To the right of the station is part of a board showing the games evolution over time. — Sea of Rifts has gone through many changes big and small, but this Kraken Station is a nice anchor they always bring

All About the Process

Games are hard to make and today we illustrated to a lot of inquisitive kids and adults that there are many facets to the process. Many considerations, variables, stakeholders and of course; people. Because at the end of the day, games are hard labours of love from people to people. Games take many shapes and they all differ in their jouney from idea to finished game that you get to play and experience while you craft unique experiences by yourself and with loved ones.

If you came by, I hope you enjoyed the exhibit. If you didn't get the chance I still hope you got some appreciation for the process!