Helsinki Hub: 2019 Post Play Party

Text by Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo, photo by Jesse Eloranta

The February IGDA gathering at the Helsinki Hub was a non-commercial Post Play Party devoted to games and experiences created during the 2019 Global Game Jam. Four speakers of different professional backgrounds in the industry, united in their their passion for jamming, informed and amused the audience by sharing their knowledge and their personal stories.

The first to take the stage was Annakaisa Kultima, president of Finnish Game Jam and game studies scholar at Aalto University, shared her insight about game jamming or as she defined it: Improvisation of Game Development. According to Kultima’s seminar, Crazy Stunts and Awesome Numbers, Finland contributed to the global scene by producing 218 games in 26 locations by a total of 884 jammers in 2019. Unlike many other countries, a respectable amount of jammers are already working in the game industry while Finland also maintains one the highest ratios of games made to game jam participants.

Annakaisa Kultama addressing the audience

Minna Eloranta, a game artist at Secret Exit, spoke about her Game Jam experience in Haifa, Israel. Expecting more of a culture shock, Eloranta found jamming in Haifa far less different than anticipated. Tools and terminology remain largely same. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there were no differences: politics heavily affect the game development in Israel, preventing creation of larger networks and developer communities with nearby countries. On a lighter note, Israel actually is the first country to start the Global Game Jam due to Sabbat.

Superjammer Samuli Jääskeläinen told about his experiences jamming at a mall in Shenzhen, China. Jääskeläinen is a jamming veteran who for many years now has travelled to different countries to experience the Global Game Jam in a different environment each year. Jamming or not, Jääskeläinen has a goal of making a game every month, a streak currently on its seventh year. He manages this by strict prioritization: by day he works as a software engineer at Varjo Technologies, while at night he’s a superjammer, who keeps game development strictly as a hobby.

Speaking of prolific, the last seminar of the night was held by composer and sound designer Elie Abraham, probably better known among the regular jammers as “That Guy with the ‘I WANT 2 MAKE MUSIC 4 UR GAME’ Sign”. Abraham tries to partake in as many game jams as possible, and usually contributes music to over ten games per jam. During the 2019 Global Game Jam he participated in creation of 30 games! In addition to serial jamming, Abraham has held talks, key notes, and workshops at several other jams.

The Demo Corner showcased the fruits of the 2019 Global Game Jam. The full spectrum of interpretations on the theme ‘What Home Means to You’ was on display: many of the games focused on activities that you do at home:

A Vacuum-Cleaning Game and Meanwhile at Home simulate house cleaning; Dumpling Family was developed by the team of Samuli Jääskeläinen in Shenzhen, China and focuses on cooking; Party Pooper is a point-and-click game about navigating a house party.

Meanwhile other titles used ‘home’ in more abstract ways: Laika’s Super Sober Adventure in Space features the titular cosmonaut dog traversing space, waiting to return home; while in Human Rescue dogs try to find homes for stray humans.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Finnish Game Jam should visit their site: http://www.finnishgamejam.com

See you next month!

Helsinki Hub: An Epic Evening

Text by Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo, photos by Casimir Kuusela & Epic Games / Dana Cowley

The IGDA gatherings of 2019 started off with a bang with a great event sponsored by Epic Games. The seminar featured a talk by Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, at the Aalto School of Business campus in Helsinki, that attracted a capacity audience of 600 attendees.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. Photo © Epic Games / Dana Cowley

The first part of the seminar revolved around Fortnite, an online multiplayer battle royale game that has enjoyed massive success since its release in 2017,  with an active user base of roughly 200 million players. Sweeney went through the whole history of the title, from its inception as a game jam project to its current status, and shared his insight about what made the title successful.

According to Sweeney, one of the defining factors was changing the monetization model to Free-to-Play without forcing the players into pay-to-win mechanics. A decision that not only changed the fate of the game, but  transformed the fate of the company. The game’s cross-platform availability was also an important reason for the constantly growing user base. However, it came with the cost of a very demanding process of optimization and maintenance, since the updates are always released simultaneously for all seven supported platforms.

Finally, Sweeney talked about the social aspect of the game by sharing some impressive statistics about players’ interactions and preferences. According to the research, the majority of Fortnite players spend time with their real life friends in the game which leads to even higher engagement, asserting the game was more like a social media app than a hardcore gaming title.

For the next topic, Sweeney talked about the launch of the Epic Game Store and explained how the technology that Epic Games offers expands beyond the game industry. Epic Games Store is a new digital distribution platform in the vein of Steam, the creation of which was brought on by a need of more competition in the field. Besides the storefront, the Epic Games platform aims to be an “opposite of a walled garden”. They have an emphasis on cross-platform, cross-service cooperation, sharing technology and assets between developers, with transparency being their key philosophy. A prominent part of this platform revolves around Epic’s Unreal engine, which makes real time graphics for all kinds of industries, ranging from sports cars to architecture in addition to video games.

Sweeney answering questions from the audience. Photo by Casimir Kuusela

The last part of the seminar was devoted to a Q&A session in which Sweeney answered, as he promised, any questions that were directed to him. In some of the most interesting answers Sweeney shared his insight about blockchain in game development.

“It’s a great tool for tech and research, but a long way from becoming a game development tool,” he said, adding “Due to the propensity of fraud it would be inadvisable to use blockchain in mainstream game development”.

When asked about the future plans for the Epic Games Store, he answered that the emphasis is on quality over quantity and the system of paying Unreal Engine royalties will remain as it is. That is, taking 5% of the game’s revenue in royalties, regardless of the success of the title. “It is the most equal approach and provides a more even playing field for smaller developers,” he said.

Before the seminar reached its conclusion, Sweeney gave a shout out to Epic Games Helsinki, a recent addition to the Epic family. It started as a collaboration with Kamu, a local anti-cheat development company that Epic acquired last year. “While it’s not a huge operation, it will grow steadily over the next few years,” he said.

The gathering was scheduled right after the seminar in the familiar location of Maxine where developers networked and socialize, while playing two games that were in the demo corner.

Demo corner. Photo by Casimir Kuusela

Chain Lightning is a fast-paced mobile game developed by Origame Studios using Unity. The three-piece team (coder, artist and a marketer) have been working at the game on-and-off since September, and plan to release it for mobile devices in a few months. A demo version is already available at Google Play.

Oceanhorn 2 is an action RPG game inspired by the classics of the same genre and it has been in development for by Cornfox Bros for the past five years. The game is a good example of what the Unreal engine is capable of when it comes to mobile gaming, since it will be released on iOS. The official release date of the game has yet to be announced.

Helsinki Hub: Xmas with Veikkaus

Text by Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo, photos by Casimir Kuusela

It’s that time of the year again, when developers congregate to bid their farewells to the departing year in good old IGDA fashion. The final Helsinki Gathering of 2018 was sponsored by Veikkaus and in addition to the usual free drinks this event included physical loot boxes and a fun non-traditional Christmas feast where the main ingredient was hot dogs. Their new, pirate-themed game Kultaranta occupied the demo corner, and featured as the common center point for the presentations.

The seminars were opened by Veikkaus studio head and a game development veteran Henri Lindgren, whose presentation Veikkaus Game Studio in a Nutshell went into detail about their development cycles, team structures and company philosophy. The focal point of the presentation was the shift from slot machines towards the mobile-first game design Veikkaus has been doing for the past year.

Lindgren’s previous experience in mobile F2P games has proven to be a powerful tool in leading his current studio to success. When asked to share a few hints on how to inspire teams instead of simply managing them, Lindgren used safety, freedom and responsibility as the key to success.

Following Lindgren was Sakari Tiikkaja, lead game artist at Veikkaus. In his presentation, Our Approach to Game Design and Creative Design, he went through the journey of a Veikkaus game, from raw concept to finalized, concrete assets. A key component on this journey is a 5-Step Design process influenced by Tim Brown and Roger Martin and further based on the work of designer Feng Zhu.

Tiikkaja believes that the aforementioned process could definitely be applied to games outside the field of gambling as well. When asked to name the biggest benefit of their workflow, Tiikkaja answered: “It is important to crystallize the concepts and find the boundaries of an IP early on in the development. This way, the developers don’t need to blindly grasp in the darkness.”

After Tiikkaja the stage was given to lead game artist Senja Heikkinen and senior game artist Henrik Hackenberg, whose presentation Case Study: Kultaranta delved into various trials and tribulations the game had during its development. While primarily a recitation of the art design for Kultaranta, going from early sketches and mood boards to the finished product, the presentation also explored topics such as designing a game simultaneously for three different types of slot machines and working with the ever-changing, yet endlessly strict Finnish gambling laws. However, at least when it comes to the latter, Hackenberg thinks that the situation has improved. “Instead of handing each gambling company an unique monopoly, the Finnish law has recently been unified so that there’s less fear of stepping on one another’s toes”, he says.

Happy holidays and joyous new year. See you in 2019!

Helsinki Hub: November Gathering

Text by Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo, photo by Casimir Kuusela

The November IGDA gathering at the Helsinki Hub was a non-commercial celebration. There wasn’t a specific agenda for the evening so developers had time to meet with friends and relax while discussing their plans for the year that is rapidly reaching its conclusion.

With no sponsors or presenters, the most visible banner of the night belonged to the documentary The Name of the Game. The film tells the story of Nex Machina, the collaboration between the legendary arcade game designer Eugene Jarvis, and the Finnish game developer Housemarque. The movie was shot over the course of three years in five different countries, resulting in 200 hours of footage detailing the creation process of the game. “However, it is more about the characters and their journey than a straight up documentary about the game’s development,” emphasized Heikki Kareranta, co-writer and producer of the film. “We wanted to make a good story rather than just a documentary.”

When asked about how much the subject will resonate with general audiences, Kareranta replied, “People in Finland are especially interested in video games on a large scale, but the average Joe has little idea about their creation process. This gives them a sort of a peek behind the curtain.”

The first press screening was arranged earlier in the day prior to the IGDA Gathering.

The Name of the Game premiered on November 23.

In addition to the Hollywood bigwigs, a wig of another kind also graced the event with their presence: IGDA Women In Gaming (WIG) was among the attendees joining the gathering, as they have done many times in the past. Its main goal is to build a support network for women in the industry and the group recently reached the milestone of 1000 members in Finland.

Two developers presented their games in this month’s demo corner:

Stone is a story driven ‘stoner noir’ game developed by Convict Games. The player assumes the role of a hungover koala detective in a colourful society of anthropomorphic Australian fauna. The game draws inspiration from pieces of media of the same genre such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Big Lebowski.

The game was in development for about a year and is now available for purchase on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/907770/

Chopball is a competitive multiplayer party sports game, currently in development by a studio that is tentatively calling itself Kanto Games. The gameplay combines elements of soccer and pinball while introducing a few interesting twists, such as breakable defenses in front of the goals. The game has been in development for a couple of months and aims for release in late 2019 as the studio’s first title.

See you in December!

Helsinki Hub: May Gathering with PlayFab

By Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo

The May gathering was sponsored by PlayFab, a complete backend platform built exclusively for live games.

Brendan Vanous, head of developer success at PlayFab/Microsoft was really impressed with how inclusive the game development community is in Finland. As he said, in many other communities competitiveness make developers grow isolated and he is really happy to see that this is not the case.

In his brief talk, Vanous spoke about live game operations and how they can shape the future of the gaming industry. Live operations, or LiveOps, help games to grow according to the needs of the users, so that they can be evolve and therefore, live longer.

Vanous described how the growth of mobile games has changed the scene since the early 2000s and how LiveOps services have played their part in driving the mobile industry to the top. The said services allow developers to either complement their existing infrastructure or adopt the LiveOps platform in its entirety.

Probably the most interesting part of the presentation was the comparison between two teams of developers that followed different approaches on how to engage their audience. One of the said teams kept collecting data and tried to stay aligned with what the audience needed, in contrast to the other one that stopped their support after some early updates. The results indicate that the old way of supporting games as in the previous decades is not anymore viable in the live games market.

“The developers should always listen to their community’s feedback and build on it”, Vanous said. “That’s the way to do things nowadays, and unfortunately many people don’t understand that,” he added.

This time the Demo Corner was divided into two distinct categories: projects by Aalto University students, and independent game projects that both happened to make their second appearance in the IGDA Demo Corner.

It was the first time that Aalto students had the opportunity to gather valuable feedback outside their university. The games were developed as part of a course and is a collaboration effort between different Master’s programs of Aalto’s Media Lab. The 3 featured projects have been in development for roughly five months by teams of five to six students.

PlusMinus is a third person puzzle game in which the main character uses magnetism to fight enemies and solve puzzles. The story of the game finds the main character trying to escape from the system in futuristic dystopian world.

Metsä is an atmospheric hybrid installation game that is played while sitting in a dark tent. The player controls the footsteps of their avatar by pressing two individual buttons situated on a blanket, attempting to make their way through a dark woodland avoiding obstacles by jumping and sneaking.

Hidden Wish is an asymmetrical co-op adventure game with a combination of different mechanics. The stylized game mixes 3D segments with literally hand drawn levels where first player makes their way through a 2D platformer, meanwhile the second player uses a more cursor-oriented UI to create a path for the other player by moving around different parts of the levels.

In addition, two games made their second appearance in IGDA.

Exploding Babies was developed by Nut Farm during the Global Game Jam and is a hectic 4-player battle arena game where the players try to win by detonating the babies of other players using sound waves. The developers’ return to the demo corner of IGDA after March is part of their focus on live events where they can get people to try it in teams of 4 and test its full potential.

Another team that returned to the demo corner was LunarByte, with their first title Trail of Relics, a puzzle game where the player draws a path for their avatar through increasingly difficult mazes. The game has been in development for about half a year and it is currently on beta. As the developers said, the feedback that they receive at IGDA gatherings is a lot better than average which helps them focus on the areas that they should during the development.

See you in August!