Vesa Raudasoja nominated for IGDA Board of Directors / Vesa Raudasoja ehdolla IGDA:n hallitukseen

A long time active IGDA Finland member and a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Vesa Raudasoja has been nominated for International Game Developer's Association's (IGDA) Board of Directors. Raudasoja has been involved with IGDA Finland since the beginning, and is the first Finnish person nominated for the Board. Previously the Board of Directors has mainly consisted of members from North America.

A game developer himself, and having closely followed the growth of Finnish game industry, Raudasoja finds IGDA's role very important for game developer communities and wants to get European and Scandinavian voices heard more in the community.

"I'm sure that many game studios in Finland and internationally have started because of IGDA's activities. Without an organization like this the game industry in Finland, for example, would probably be much smaller. Game developer communities are very important and IGDA has been creating these for years all around the world.”

All full members of IGDA are eligible to vote on the election until the end of February. There are four candidates in total of which two will be elected.

Raudasoja will be saying a few words on his nomination at the February gathering on 9.2.

More information on the election: http://www.igda.org/?page=elections2016

Vesa's Campaign Page: https://www.facebook.com/voteforvesa

IGDA Finlandin pitkäaikainen aktiivi, Lifetime Achievement Awardilla palkittu Vesa Raudasoja on ehdolla International Game Developer's Association (IGDA):n hallitukseen. Raudasoja on ollut mukana IGDA Finlandin toiminnassa sen perustamisesta lähtien ja on ensimmäisenä suomalaisena ehdolla hallitukseen, jonka paikat ovat aiemmin jakautuneet enimmäkseen pohjois-amerikkalaisten toimijoiden kesken.

Raudasoja on itsekin pelinkehittäjä, ja on ollut seuraamassa Suomen peliteollisuuden kasvua pienistä indie-studioista satojen pelialan yritysten maaksi. Hän pitää IGDA:n roolia erittäin tärkeänä peliteollisuudelle, ja haluaa saada yhteisössä kuuluviin erityisesti pohjoismaista ja eurooppalaista ääntä.

“Olen varma, että monikin pelialan yritys niin Suomessa kuin ulkomaillakin on saanut alkunsa IGDA:n ansiosta. Ilman tällaista toimijaa peliteollisuus etenkin Suomessa olisi varmasti pienempi. Yhteisöt ovat erittäin tärkeitä ja IGDA on luonut näitä vuosien ajan ympäri maailman.”

Kaikki IGDA:n täysivaltaiset jäsenet voivat äänestää vaaleissa aina helmikuun loppuun asti. Neljästä nimetystä ehdokkaasta kaksi valitaan hallitukseen.

Raudasoja on paikalla helmikuun tapaamisessa 9.2. ja pitää puheenvuoron ehdokkuudestaan.

More information on the election: http://www.igda.org/?page=elections2016

Vesa's Campaign Page: https://www.facebook.com/voteforvesa

Northern Game Summit 1.-2.10.

This week we’ll see the return of Northern Game Summit, which is held now for the 4th time already. The action takes place in Bio Rex, Kajaani, on 1.-2.10. – only two days from now! The event will feature speakers from Finland and around the world, representing designers, producers, programmers, artists and more. Some of the speakers, like Colossal Order’s Karoliina Korppoo and Housemarque’s Ilari Kuittinen, definitely need no further introductions, but the foreign talent is not to be dismissed either: Hunter Grant (US) is an industry veteran currently working as Lead Cinematics Animator at Blizzard, Marek Rosa (CZ) and his team at Keen Software House are responsible for the hit sandbox game Space Engineers – and this is just the start of the impressive speaker list.

Besides talks, there will be partying, mingling and a game showcase on Thursday evening: the party, titled Bonus Stage, is hosted by Fingersoft and there will be an opportunity for companies and local students to show their games and meet other people in the industry.

Friday will be concluded in a panel discussion, “Everything there is to come”. The panel is hosted by Ste Curran and the panelists are Antti Seppänen, Mehdi Benkirane, Luke Savage and Tuija Lindén.

What makes this year’s event special is the NGS Mixer on Wednesday which is a chance for people in the games and film industries to get together and find opportunities for co-operation. The makers of Rendel, a Finnish action film to be released next year, will be attending. They will also take part in a panel discussion, “Games & Movies, Brothers & Sisters”, which is hosted by Kimmo Kari and other panelists including KP Hiltunen, Niklas Saari and representatives from Apollo Music.

You can get your tickets to the event from the NGS website.

Housemarque 20th Anniversary Celebration

Even though the IGDA season is over, the game industry keeps on partying. Last Wednesday Housemarque celebrated its 20th anniversary, where more than 400 game developers and their friends gathered to congratulate one of the oldest game companies in Finland!

Housemarque prepared surprises for their guests: Consoles and PCs with studio's games were available for all guests, the various dishes offered were named after studio’s games. The CEO, Ilari Kuittinen welcomed everyone to the anniversary and started a party by showing recap videos of Housemarque games and company history (including the very special, previously unseen ones!). Finnish attendees were excited about the epic appearance of Apulanta (a Finnish rock band which was popular some years ago, as my Finnish friends told me). Marioke was the last surprise Housemarque prepared for the guests: Karaoke as usual, except that all the lyrics had been changed to game-related texts, for example "You are simply Tempest" or "Monkey Target".

If you didn’t get a chance to visit the celebration, you can check out photos and videos in various social media with the hashtag #hmq20. Also, here is a link to Facebook albums from the event: https://www.facebook.com/Housemarque/photos

Thanks Housemarque for a great evening!

Photos by Sami Välikangas.

Pelialan järjestöt tuomitsevat pelikehittäjiin ja pelaajiin kohdistuvan häirinnän

Suomen pelinkehittäjät ry, IGDA Finland ry ja Neogames Finland ry tuomitsevat kaikenlaisen pelinkehittäjiin ja pelaajiin kohdistuvan häirinnän. Järjestöt ovat järkyttyneitä viimeaikaisista tappouhkauksista ja pelinkehittäjiin sekä pelaajiin kohdistuvasta vainoamisesta. Kansallisten viranomaisten on tehtävä kaikkensa puuttuakseen myös verkkoympäristössä kaikkiin rikoksen tunnusmerkit täyttäviin tekoihin. Suomeen on onnistuttu rakentamaan tiivis pelialan yhteisö ja järjestöt jatkavat työtään sen kehittämiseksi entistäkin moninaisemmaksi, jotta Suomen asema maailman parhaana paikkana kehittää pelejä vahvistuu entisestään. Osana tätä työtä järjestöt ovat sitoutuneet tukemaan kaikin käytettävissä olevin voimavaroinensa mahdollisten hyökkäysten kohteeksi joutuvia jäseniään. Järjestöt pyytävätkin jäseniään raportoimaan heille kaikenlaisesta heihin kohdistuvasta häirinnästä ja vainoamisesta mahdollisia jatkotoimenpiteitä varten.

Miikka Lyytikäinen Puheenjohtaja, Suomen pelinkehittäjät ry.

Jyri Partanen Puheenjohtaja, IGDA Finland ry.

Koopee Hiltunen Johtaja, Neogames Finland ry.

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In English:

Finnish games industry associations condemn recent online harassment in global game community

Finnish games industry associations Suomen pelinkehittäjät, IGDA Finland and Neogames Finland, condemn all harassment in the global game community. We are deeply shocked by the recent death threats and harassment towards game developers as well as gamers, and underline that authorities should do all they can to stop this kind of criminal activity in the online environment.

For years we have been building an inclusive industry community in Finland. We continue our work on supporting its growth in an even more plural direction in order to secure that Finland will remain the leading game industry hotspot in the future. Consequently, we are prepared to use all our available resources to support anyone targeted by this kind of attacks in our community. For this reason, we kindly ask all our members to report any kind of harassment to us so that we can provide our help.

Industry Partner Interview with G-Cluster

IGDA Finland has grown its ranks with new industry partners like Lexia and Amazon Web Services. One of the newcomers is also G-Cluster. We wanted to find out a little bit more about this cloud gaming platform provider and ask how they want to be a part of the Finnish game industry growth.

Here is our interview with President & Representative Director of G-Cluster, Erik Piehl.

What are the three most important facts that people should know about G-Cluster? 1. Cloud gaming enables users of virtually any connected screen to experience great games. G-cluster is the leading cloud gaming platform provider. 2. Our platform enables telecom and other service operators to provide a cloud gaming channel to their end users. 3. G-cluster is a turnkey provider of cloud gaming: we have technology, licensed content and operations.

What differentiates your product from competitors’? G-cluster is already deployed globally: in Europe with Orange and SFR, in Japan with NTT Plala and Broadmedia and in the U.S. with a not yet disclosed tier-1 partner.

What are your different target groups and how are they different from each other? Our primary target groups are children, the female audience and people who used to be gamers. Our content catalogue has various games targeting these groups, supported typically by different price points.

About 78 % of the 1.2 billion gamers around the world play mobile games (Applift & Newzoo market research: http://www.applift.com/the-global-mobile-games-market.html). How do you think the mobile games market is different from other games markets? The mobile game market is unique in many ways: through app stores it has democratized the publishing ability of developers and thus challenged the role of traditional publishers. Mobile games market has introduced new low price points (even free) that we did not see in the past. For content developers it present new challenges and opportunities in that the audience is much wider and respectively the expected attention span of a game a lot shorter than in other gaming markets.

The cloud gaming market is expected to reach 8 billion by the year 2017. How does G-Cluster feel about this growth? We are already part of the growth of the cloud gaming market. 8 billion by 2017 is a huge and great goal. We see the market changing and picking up interest currently in an unprecedented way.

What made you decide to become an IGDA Finland Industry Partner? We have deals in place with about 40 game publishers worldwide. Since a lot of our DNA is coming from Finland, we want to have closer relationships with Finnish game companies and G-cluster better known in its birth country.

What is going to be the role of G-Cluster in developing and growing the Finnish games industry? We want to contribute to the boom of Finnish game industry by providing a new global distribution channel for games created in Finland. G-cluster desires to have games specifically created for our platform exploiting its unique features such as the support for multiple screens, and thus we believe there are new exciting opportunities for creative game design with us.

For more information check out G-Cluster’s website www.g-cluster.com

Editor: Tuuli Peltonen