JU students contribute to new LAN festival
President Måns Svensson hands out the prize to the team Kamen Rider consisting of: Nuo Chen, Jiahe Cheng and Shuwen Chen. On the far right is judge Allan Petersson.
In 2025, a new LAN festival, Glitched, will be launched as a modern meeting place for gamers. The Esports Management & Marketing course, held during the autumn at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) at Jönköping University (JU) under the guidance of Brian McCauley, has given students the opportunity to create new products for the festival.
The students have participated in a competition organized by the digital coworking hub GRO36, a centre of companies in Jönköping involved in the new festival. The students competed for four prizes and on Friday they pitched their ideas to a jury of industry members.Glitched will be organized in June 2025 by Martin Öjes, one of Dreamhack's original founders, Tomas Lykedal, former Head of Strategy for Dreamhack and Chris Melin, former DreamHack Festival Manager.
“Our focus will be on the LAN participants. We want to get back to the passion. The collaboration with the students at JIBS has been exciting and we already see that several of the proposals will be realized,” says Martin Öjes.
Brian McCauley, Assistant Professor in Marketing, is the founding Vice Chair of the Esports Research Network on behalf of the MMTC research centre at JIBS. Having published research on topics such as LANS, e-sports marketing and the (former) City of DreamHack, he has a lot of experience in the area. He worked closely with his students to develop product idea designed to engage LAN attendees and festival visitors next summer. Students were encouraged to work closely with the brand values of glitched that aim to bring back a sense of community to the esports and gaming communities. Through tapping into a sense of nostalgia for the original LAN parties, students pitched a host of new ideas that tapped into both the analogue and digital world. During the course students got to pick the brains of industry practitioners from Riot Games, Ninjas in Pajamas and MetaGame through online guest talks.
Lea Steenberg and Selene Majed.
“I think it has been great fun! Working on this is a chance to influence the actual design of Glitched. We are one of their main target groups and see that it could be a really good event,” says Lea Steenberg, who studies Marketing Management.
The four categories of the competition were: Best Pitch, Innovation Creativity, Spirit of Glitched and Grand Champion. The winner in the Grand Champion category was the team Kamen Rider, consisting of Jiahe Cheng, Nuo Chen and Shuwen Chen.
“I see great opportunities for the Glitched festival in Jönköping. Jönköping should continue to be a node for gaming in Sweden. I have listened to some of the ideas and there have been very good and elaborate proposals,” says Sven Rydell, Business Manager at Jönköping Municipality. All students who took part in the courses will get free passes to attend the first ever Glitched festival this June and of course maybe see their ideas come to life!
