IGDA Finland January Gathering with Applifier

Year 2014 has barely started while we are already looking forward to kick it off with some real treats! Next week our friends at Applifier will be sponsoring this year’s first official gathering which is guaranteed to lighten up your mood in the middle of this winter without winter. Applifier is the company behind Everyplay Replays and Everyplay Game Ads. Everyplay Replays is live in over 230 mobile games, including Bad Piggies, Tiny Troopers 2 and the latest success story in the field of mobile gaming, Beat the Boss 3. At the moment they are working hard on the Android release of Everyplay Replays, so to get a first feel of the Everyplay Android, join us for the first IGDA Finland meeting of 2014!

Additionally, we are organizing a weeklong game development tour LevelUp together with Microsoft and Unity! From the 13th to the 17th of January the tour will be at five different cities, bringing you the opportunity to take your Unity games to Windows platforms with help of the best trainers. Prepare for good time, exciting competitions, great prizes, delicious food and drinks –and of course parties! LevelUp is free and the evening parties are open for everyone. Space for the event itself is limited however, so make sure to reserve your spot in time! Read more of the event on here.

LevelUp arrives in Helsinki and takes over Club Adams on Tuesday, January 14th and after an intensive day of making games it’s time to relax in the official IGDA Finland January Gathering, the generous folks of Applifier making sure your mouth won’t be left dry.

IGDA Finland January Gathering Time: 14.01.2014 at 19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

Supercharge word of mouth by letting players share video replays with Everyplay Replays! Live in over 230 mobile games including Rovio’s Bad Piggies, Dreamwork's Turbo, Chillingo's Tiny Troopers 2, Everyplay Replays enables your fans to spread the word on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube! Get the free service that's delivering up to 7.5% of daily installs to hit games!

Increase your revenues with in-game video ads that reward users with virtual items! Everyplay GameAds are used by top games like Song Pop, Ruzzle, Sonic Dash and Hill Climb Racing to drive industry leading monetization.

December Gathering with Supercell

Things are getting heated in the Finnish game industry and one of the hottest companies in town is throwing Christmas party with us: Supercell!

New console generation is just around the corner and another year is upon us, which makes December Gathering the best place to meet up and reflect on the awesome past year. Supercell will make sure that you won't get thirsty while thinking! So come join us in the Club Adams for the most Super Christmas party this year with IGDA Finland and Supercell and lets ready ourselves for the year 2014. See you there!

IGDA Finland December Gathering & Christmas Party Time: 10.12.2013 at 19.00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

Mobile Mixer event & IGDA Finland Networking event with Facebook

Welcome to IGDA Finland November Gathering with Facebook on November 12th!

IGDA Finland November Gathering will be a double treat. The evening will start with Pocket Gamer & IGDA Finland Mobile Mixer sponsored by Applifier, Rovio and Unity and continue as IGDA Finland Gathering sponsored by Facebook.

Agenda

5:30-7:30pm cocktails, food, networking & Mobile Mixer panel

Featured speakers: Oscar Clark • Evangelist • Applifier Oleg Pridiuk • Technical Evangelist • Unity Jussi Immonen • Senior Publishing Manager • Rovio Tiina Zilliacus • CEO • Gajatri Studios More to be announced soon!

Following the Mobile Mixer, IGDA Finland November Gathering with Facebook will mix the industry influences and mobile game superstars. Facebook will talk about the power of the Facebook Platform and sponsor some drinks!

Welcome to connect, relax and learn!

Pocket Gamer & IGDA Finland Mobile Mixer Time: 12.11.2013 at 17:30 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland Register: EventBrite

IGDA Finland November Gathering with Facebook Time: 12.11.2013 at 19:30 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland October Gathering and Presentation with Unity

Upcoming Unity 2D toolkit, tips&tricks, physics, etc... The list goes on what the awesome IGDA Finland Presentation held for the attending crowd at Club Adams, which peaked at 270 attendees!

Andy Touch from Unity presented us with the upcoming feature to Unity. He showed us a glimpse on how the developers can use Unity more easily to create 2D games with the build-in tools. After Andy, Marco Trivellato took to the stage, also from Unity, and provided some essential tips & trick to help the developer on daily tasks, which ranged from profiling the game to garbage collection. Sampsa Lehtonen (Recoil Games & Draconus Entertainment ltd.) revealed what he had learned in making 2.5D games, such as Rochard which focused on the physics in 2/2.5D games. Brendan Erquiaga from Retora Game Studion wanted us to use our time better and so focused on the essentials of Editor Scripting in Unity. Examples ranged from simple short-keys to changing how Unity pre-/post-processes models. And last but not least, VIOPE launched the Game Development World Championship 2013 in the event, see more info here.

Warm thanks to all presenters and attendees. Stay tuned for updates of the upcoming gathering!

IGDA Finland October Gathering and Presentation with Unity

The weather is getting colder, but our season is just getting warmed up! We have cooked up for you a hot bowl of IGDA Finland Presentation on the topic of Unity to keep you warm, so check out the presentations and speakers below:

Native 2D is coming to Unity! (Andy Touch) Andy will demonstrate the new framework and how to setup your projects to use 2D features such as physics, polygon collider generation, sprite objects and spritesheet animation. He will also talk about how the new features fit into Unity's existing asset-creation workflows and give examples of 2D-related additions to the scripting API.

Unity Tips&Tricks and Good Practices (Marco Trivellato) In this presentation we will talk about different Unity tricks that the audience will be able to take away and use immediately. Topics include profiling and optimisations, memory and garbage collection, editor tricks as well as Unity game development good practices.

Unity Physics Gameplay (Sampsa Lehtonen) In this session we delve into the physics features of Unity and explore how they can be used to implement and enhance gameplay. The focus is on Sampsa's personal experiences and lessons he has learned while working on Unity games with 2D / 2.5D physics gameplay.

Unity Editor: Make it work for you (Brendan Erquiaga) In this presentation we will cover all aspects of Editor Scripting and how everyone should leverage them to improve development. We will talk about scripts to help remove friction from your pipeline, methods to automate tedious tasks, and tricks for improving day-to-day Unity use. Additionally we will explore the strength of giving editor tools to your designers, allowing them to maximize their efficiency. 

Game Development World Championship 2013 (VIOPE) Game Development World Championship 2013 is a sequel of successful Viope Game Programming Contest 2012, which engaged over 500 teams from 70 countries. The GDWC 2013 is open to game developers and enthusiasts all over the world, from students to freelancers and professionals. The competition starts from 8th October 2013 and lasts to 26th January 2014. Especially throughout the competition, participants will be couched by the world's famous companies - Rovio and Microsoft - to name a few. The winning team will get great prizes (to be be announced at the Opening Ceremony), more importantly to showcase your talents and grab future opportunities in the gaming industry.

Presenters:

Andy Touch (Unity) Since he added physics to a cube and watched it bounce, Andy has been interested in experimenting and playing around with gaming technology. Having specialised in Unity at university, and then going on to teach the engine to higher education students, he is now part of the Evangelist team at Unity Technologies and helps to spread the word to new users and to show off what it can do! He loves creating interactive 3D art experiments, taking part in game jams & hack days and helping Unity Developers to get the most out of the game engine.

Marco Trivellato (Unity) Marco is a veteran in the game industry with a strong background in computer science and a passion for programming and video games. He worked for many years in Italy, Canada and now England. In his time in Vancouver he worked for Electronic Arts and Next Level Games as systems and rendering software engineer on triple-A titles like FIFA, Fight Night 3 and Captain America, spending most of his time on game engines, focusing on their performance and architecture. Then he decided to move on and joined Unity for a new career challenge. He now works in UK as Field Engineer helping other game developers to make great games!

Sampsa Lehtonen (Recoil Games & Draconus Entertainment ltd.) Sampsa Lehtonen is a game programmer with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Even with a Master's degree in computer science, he is self-taught what comes to developing games. He has been working on titles ranging from indie (Triplane Turmoil 2 for PC) to mobile (Rock Runners for iOS and Android, Bad Piggies) to "triple A next-gen" console games (Rochard for PS3, PC, Mac and Linux).

Brendan Erquiaga (Retora Game Studios) Brendan is an independent game developer who has been using the Unity Engine to fuel his creations for the past four years. Being a Designer/Programmer, he has always enjoyed the freedom & speed of working in Unity. He started as a self-taught hobbyist, then attended university for game design which helped him work his way up to full-time developer. He has lead large teams, created solo projects, done Unity contract work, developed for Retora Game Studios, and last year he taught teenagers to develop mobile games in Unity. Currently Brendan is the Creative Director at Retora Black, a mobile game studio out of Phoenix, Arizona.

IGDA Finland Gathering start at the same place right after the presentations. Stay tuned for updates!

IGDA Finland Presentations – Unity Time: 8.10.2013 at 17:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland October Gathering Time: 8.10.2013 at 19:15 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland