As of today, Norway has a brand new games publisher called Snow Cannon Games, aiming to show the world how great Norwegian games are!
Launching today, Snow Cannon Games is a brand new publisher for the Norwegian (and international) games industry, and if you are quick, you can follow the launch live, as it is streamed on Youtube.
Snow Cannon Games COO, Linn Søvig
“Norway just needs to get better at making the world aware, and we see the launch of Snow Cannon Games as an important step in this direction. We want to let the game developers continue to invent and create – while we provide the services to polish, market and sell.”, Snow Cannon Games COO Linn Søvig says to Nordic Game Bits.
“Norway has enjoyed the support of the funds for the arts. And we’re experiencing one launch after the other of unique and powerful new voices within game development.”, she adds.
The all-star team behind Snow Cannon Games consists of Espen Askvik (CEO), Linn Sovig (COO) and Emmy Jonassen (CMO), Geoffrey Zatkin (Executive Producer), Demetri Detsaridis (Executive Producer), and James Portnow (Interim Design Director).
And according to the team at Snow Cannon Games, Norway has been lacking a publisher that can help indie studios with especially marketing and sales for a long time now.
Snow Cannon Games is a new Norwegian Publisher
“Our experience from Norway is that it is an underserved game developing market. So much exciting game development is going on in Norway and it is very new, raw and original. Which we think is an awesome thing, but which can also be a hindrance when it comes to sales. There isn’t a support-industry that helps with marketing, sales and data analysis. There is also a lack of experienced producers to help guide the studios through launch.”, Søvig explains.
While the publisher will look at the Norwegian games industry first, the Snow Cannon Games is inevitably a global publisher, and will look towards other under-served markets soon.
Many indie developers often consider self-publishing instead of having to take a publisher on board that will eventually take away part of their freedom – not to talk about the steep revenue cut aggressive publisher sometimes take.
But Snow Cannon Games wants to fight that view of publishers, and instead focus on helping independent developers reach an international audience while ensuring that they can keep their “artistic integrity intact”, as Søvig puts it:
“We’ve gathered the talent, experience and professionalism that is need to boost communities, like the game developing community in Norway, up to a commercially successful level – while keeping developers’ artistic integrity intact.”
Snow Cannon Games is looking to publish a wide variety of games that are in their final stages of development. These are the games and studios that the publisher can help the most, offering help with final polishing, as well as planning a marketing and distribution strategy with a global focus.
The games and developers don’t necessarily have to be from Norway, however, so if any non-Norwegian developer is interested, they should simply reach out to Snow Cannon Games.
“We’re looking for uniqueness, not copies of a proven blueprint. We want diversity both in platform and genre.”, Søvig says, and concludes:
“The future looks bright for the Nordics! There’s so much innovation and inspiration within game design here! We most definitely want to be a part of that and already feel that we are.”