IGDA Finland

The March Gathering was a real blast for everyone. Besides the obvious game industry chat, there was now several presentations. As advertised before the theme was Game industry related education in Finland and it showed in a great number of visitors. Throughout the night we had 126 people in all, with many new visitors. Many students and teachers showed up to see the education presentations. The discussion topics after the presentations were heavily fixed on education and people kept flowing in with a steady pace. For photos CLICK HERE

Presentations were opened by Jyri Ranki from IGDA Finland chapter team, followed by Teijo Pellinen from Media Lab. Jyri introduced IGDA and IGDA Finland shortly. Teijo's presentation was focused on games and storytelling lecture series. Mika Tuomola mentioned in the original program couldn't make it, so Teijo was filling in for him.

After Teijo it was time for Juha Vanhanen, the course supervisor from aRTO Game Development class. Juha held a presentation about aRTO and introduced their current game development courses, including the new upcoming "Game Producer" course, which is starting in Fall of 2006.

After aRTO it was time for the Helsinki University to introduce it's new and fresh Gamics game laboratory. The quick introduction to was presented by Tomi Pasanen. After the scheduled presentations, we heard from a surprise visitor from Sweden, Magnus BjÃ¶rkman. He told us about the education opportunities they are organizing in Sweden shortly.

After that in the Q&A section, the audience had an opportunity to ask some hard questions from the gathered speakers, giving a good base of conversation for the rest of the night. After Q&A it was time for Esko Javanainen, a Game Designer from Sumea Studio. He shared his personal experiences of using the services provided by the Finnish Ministry of Labor to get a foot in at a game studio and how he turned that into a permanent job in the industry.

n this months event we had a good attendance despite it was Valentine's day with, 53 regulars and 5 new members.It is exiting to see that new people keep on flowing in, with a steady pace. We also had a strong USA representation in, since visitors included people from Digital Chocolate (San Mateo) and Game House (Seattle). Other more local visitors included people from a Swedish recruiting firm and of course the finnish Sumea & Mr.Goodliving were represented nicely along with the regular group of aRTO College "Game-Dev class" students.

For photos CLICK HERE

The highlights of the evening and the night included a small indie game development team led by Henri Aalto, showing some engine features and the core for their latest game project called "Future lost" based on a modified Torque engine.

Again, there was a plentiful of Pool games around that even gathered some audience later that night. It seemed that people kept coming in as the time passed, due valentines day evening started slow but accelerated towards the night. Overall, the mood was relaxed and open as always.

There was also a new member joining the IGDA Volunteers, Juho Niittyniemi, whose first task as a volunteer was to work in the reception. Its great to see new volunteers coming in as-well as new visitors.

That's it - See you next time!