Video games in Switzerland

At the end of the 1970s, students of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies created video games.

The games provide both motivation to create challenging programs and present a number of truly difficult problems to solve.

"[3] During the 1980s, a few Swiss games were created for C64 (e.g. Robox[4][5]), Atari ST (e.g. War Heli, Clown-o-Mania) and Amiga (e.g. Insanity Fight, Ball Raider, Dugger) computers.

Alain Berset, ex-member of the Swiss Federal Council in charge of culture, was developing video games in his youth and saving them on cassettes.

At EPFL and then on external servers, a group of students created and maintained a multi-user dungeon game situated in the Middle Earth, MUME [fr].

Most of the games created by Daniel Roux for Epsitec, a Swiss company producing the Smaky computers, were released between 1988 and 2003.

In 1997, a Tennis game was played remotely between EPFL and UNIGE with virtual reality devices and movement recognition, using telecommunications.

[8] In 2001, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health released Catch the Sperm, a video game aimed at promoting prevention against HIV.

In a report published in 2018, the Swiss Federal Council explained that Video games are digital cultural objects, vectors of new forms of creativity and technological development.

In the future, it aims to strengthen the skills of creators and their integration into the industry, as well as to promote and publicise the specific features of cross-sectoral support.In 2019, the Canton of Vaud launched funding to support game developers (50.000 CHF of financial help in total).