Five Nordic video game companies can now look forward to a share of a funding pool worth DKK 2 million in 2006 alone. The Nordic Game Program has just allocated the first millions towards development of Nordic video games, choosing five companies out of 58 applicants seeking seed capital. A panel of experts spent two days choosing the recipients.

"The applicants were all of a very high creative standard, so it has been far from easy to whittle them down, especially since we only have a pool of DKK 2 million in the first year," said Erik Robertson, the director of the Nordic Game Program.

"We agreed on five games in the end because we felt they fulfilled all the stipulations and promise to be extremely good and entertaining," he said.

The five companies are:

• Guppyworks ApS (DK): DKK 600,000 for the game "The Snow Queen and the Magic Mirror",
• Underholdningsbranchen (DK): DKK 300,000 for the game "Limbo",
• Skalden Studio AS (NO): DKK 400,000 for the game "Blåblobben Doddo og det grønne monsteret" (Doddo the Blue Blob and the Green Monster),
  
• Sub-level X Entertainment (SE): DKK 500,000 for the game "Nord" (North),
  
• Upside Studios AB (SE): DKK 200,000 for the game "Alfabetsmonster" (Alphabet Monster).

The Norwegian Minister of Culture, Trond Giske, will present the five projects at an official ceremony during the Nordic Game 2006 conference in Malmö, 19-20 September. For further information see www.nordicgame.com.

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for all the interest shown in the programme," Robertson added. "It is great that so many Nordic developers put in applications. It shows that the industry is developing at a rapid pace and that there is a great willingness to develop games based on a set of Nordic values."

The scheme aims to bring games with a distinctly Nordic quality to the market for children and young people. Applicants have to fulfil a number of criteria e.g. they have to be independent companies in Nordic ownership and the games have to be issued in at least one of the Nordic languages.

Nordic Game Program was launched 1 January 2006, the first year of a planned six-year project to make Nordic games more readily available to consumers. The pool is an important part of the programme and will rise from DKK 2 million this year to DKK 10 million in 2011 www.nordicgameprogram.org.