If we decide to scratch the surface of the history of video games, we will discover that the main events in this field mostly transpired in Japan and the United States. In 2022, the video game industry marked five decades of existence – namely, in 1972, the first gaming console Odyssey was released and the first company for the development of video games, Atari, was founded. Video games embarked on a long journey filled with various consoles, disks and microprocessors. Nowadays, the simulations of worlds and lives offered by video games seem almost real, blurring the lines between the real and virtual world.
In his book titled The Total History of Video Games (Totalna istorija video-igara), Prof. Manojlo Maravić stated the following: “Technological achievements of the 90s in terms of the spread of the Internet, the multimedia character of computers, consoles, online gaming, polygonal 3D graphics followed by the invention of smartphones will shape the development of new video games at the beginning of the 21st century.”
We are witnessing the omnipresence of the entertainment provided by video games, which are available to us in several ways – they are in the back pocket of our trousers, on our TVs, computers, consoles, in playrooms, etc. While video games have gained immense popularity in all developed countries in the world among users on the “other side” of the device, the development of the video game industry as a whole was not uniform and linear, but rather depended (and still does) to a large extent on various socio-economic circumstances, as well as investments in new technologies and new skills.
In Serbia, the gaming industry began to flourish at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, and now, only ten years later, the Serbian Games Association (SGA) has over 140 members including indie teams, e-sports companies, VFX studios and globally acclaimed game developers, making the gaming industry one of the fastest growing branches of the Serbian economy. As such, our country is nowadays considered to be one of the most compelling “new” countries involved in the video game development.
Notable teams and video games from Serbia
For now, there are three centers in Serbia with the largest number of gaming studios – Novi Sad, Belgrade and Niš.
The Belgrade-based Nordeus company is best known for Top Eleven, an “evergreen” football manager game which was launched on Facebook in 2010. At that time, the matches in Top Eleven were purely text based. 2D graphics were implemented in 2015 as a natural consequence of technological advancement. Top Eleven’s development peaked with the implementation of 3D graphics, as players started sharing 3D clips of their matches on social media every day.
As a large company, Nordeus impacted the development of many other studios and video games to a certain extent. The Tectonic Games Studio (TGS) from Belgrade was informally formed in 2013, but in 2020 they became more serious about game development and began working on their first commercial title SpellTome as a part of the Nordeus booster program.
The base of this team is comprised of two members, game designer Andria Milivojević and developer Aleksandar Pivin. A total of around 10 people participated in the development of the game, as all team members were replaced several times during the development. SpellTome is a story driven 2D action adventure game for the PC made for gamers interested in a story driven game that isn’t too easy. The basic principle was to develop a game whose main input system would be keyboard and mouse-based, as the TGS team believes that there are not many such games of this genre available on PC compared to controller-based systems.
Two notable interesting mini games were inspired by Nikola Tesla and Mihajlo Pupin, and these were a part of the exhibition titled Development and Application of X-ray Technology Among Serbs – From Tesla and Pupin to Today (Razvoj i primena rendgenske tehnologije kod Srba – od Tesle i Pupina do danas) which was on display at the Museum of Science and Technology in 2021. The games were developed by young people who attended the free Game Design Bootcamp course organized as a part of the Nordeus Foundation by the Nordeus Hub education center which offers training in the field of video game development. From as many as 400 program participants, the two best projects centered around Tesla’s and Pupin’s work on the development of the X-ray were chosen. Two game designers got the chance to continue the development of their ideas – Tatjana Gadža with the game Mysteries of the X-ray (Misterije X-zraka) and Ivan Ljujić with the game The Scientist’s Chambers: The Road to Discovery (Naučnikove odaje: put otkrića).
Alongside Nordeus, Mad Head Games is one of the pioneers when it comes to game development in Serbia. The studio was founded in 2011 and currently has 150 employees in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Sarajevo-based offices. The studio has released 66 games so far, and after becoming a part of the global giant Saber Interactive (a studio that’s a part of the Embracer Group) two years ago, it entirely devoted its attention to the development of action games for PC and consoles. The game Scars Above, a notable Mad Head Games AA project, was shown for the first time on the Prime Matter Twitch channel. It is an adventure game in which the world from Alice in Wonderland collides with the world from Alien.
The Novi Sad-based studio Brave Giant founded by brothers Boris and Bojan Đurović realized their first project in 2012, a game titled Demon Hunter: Chronicles from Beyond. It was a HOPA game based on the horror movie From Beyond. PC gaming was dominant at the time, at least in Serbia, and most new studios looked up to Mad Head Games. Most of the Brave Giant games have been released on all major platforms, including Sony Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Google Play Store.
However, the market for casual PC games slowly began to dwindle with the rise of casual mobile games. Premium mobile games were significantly cheaper than premium PC games, so the majority of casual gamers switched from PC to mobile phones and tablets. The mobile market is very different from the PC market, player preferences in terms of graphics and gameplay itself are different, as are advertisements and monetization. That is one of the challenges numerous game developers still face today.
The Legends of Libra game developed by Sozap, a young team from Niš, also attracted the attention of many users because it is similar to Lego bricks – it can be played by a 3-year-old child, but also by significantly older gamers. The levels of this game were inspired by old Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider movies – “grab the hidden treasure and survive”.
Although also a relatively young studio, founded in 2018 – the Alset team is comprised of gaming industry professionals – concept artists, 3D model artists, illustrators, designers, and developers which managed to develop their first game from scratch in a year and a half.
Artistic 2D adventure Golf Club: Wasteland is an indie mobile game developed by the Belgrade-based team Demagog Studio, which has found its way into digital stores thanks to the collaboration with the independent publisher Untold Tales. With each purchased copy, the gamers also receive the digital soundtrack and a graphic novel, i.e. the art book which further expands the backstory of Charlie, the lonely golfer in the yellow spacesuit. In 2023, Demagog Studio signed a contract with Netflix for the video game Highwater, which is the prequel to their aforementioned critically acclaimed debut game, Golf Club: Wasteland.
Additionally, the Farm it! game developed by Tummy Games from Novi Sad became available on the Apple Arcade platform in 2021, the first game from Serbia to find its way onto this service. Video game enthusiasts will recognize Tummy Games by the titles they developed for some of the most successful global publishers such as Voodoo and Homa Games, as many of these games have reached tens of millions of downloads.
The Niš-based studio Peaksel also published their first notable PC game titled 100 Worlds. It is available on Steam, and 100 Worlds (Android, iOS, Steam) is a room escape game where players have to solve a series of logic puzzles in order to rescue the main heroine from the magic book she is trapped in.
Gaming as a science
After detailed research conducted on the education in the field of digital art and gaming, and two years of design and planning, in 2021 the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts announced the launch of a new study program – “Visual effects, animation and game art”. Thus, it became the second four-year study program in Serbia dedicated to game development, following the program Video game design available at the Novi Sad Academy of Arts.
The Academy of Arts in Novi Sad was the first to introduce the topic of video games to academia in Serbia in 2017, therefore it is not surprising that the Academy was also the main organizer of the first national conference of video games with international participants. The interest in academic study of gaming has only grown since 2017, and soon the first video game master’s programs (Master 4.0) were formed , one semester long courses organized by the Belgrade University of Arts.
The study programs currently available in Serbia primarily focus on video game development, which is the response to the growing gaming industry in our country currently employing over 2,100 people. What is still missing is the introduction of a platform for critical and theoretical study of video games. This is precisely what the Video Games Studies (SVI) conference – a new, interdisciplinary field of study – tried to accomplish. The conference was held in 2021 in Novi Sad with the goal of providing a platform for further academic study of video games.
There is no doubt – the Serbian gaming industry is developing at an incredible speed, and numerous creative teams from various fields – from storytellers to sound designers and developers – have the opportunity to create different virtual worlds for numerous players to enjoy, all while anticipating new releases.
References:
Kristina Janković, SGA
Totalna istorija video igara, Manojlo Maravić
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