Illusion + IGDA Finland Hubs

During the past year new IGDA Finland Hubs have been popping up all around Finland. Thus, we felt it was a good time for the Hub volunteers to meet, discuss and have fun during Illusion 2014, held in Joensuu Science Park on July 10 through July 12. In the midst of the buzz of Ilosaarirock right next door, Illusion emphasized in game music but introduced interesting talks in all areas of game development. Right from the start everyone was eager to share their experiences and bounce around ideas for the future of regional hubs. The relaxed atmosphere of the event itself was genuinely inspiring for gathering new ideas and getting to know new people – in other words, a perfect event to brainstorm! For the hub volunteers the event culminated on Friday evening at the IGDA Finland Round Table, curated by Suvi Latva from Neogames. Every hub area except Rovaniemi was attending the event. From the left: Tommi Virolainen (Joensuu/East), Tatu Laine (Turku), Mikko Kähärä (Kotka), Jonne Harja (Jyväskylä), Minna Eloranta (Tampere), Anna Salomaa (Oulu), Vesa Raudasoja (Helsinki) and Suvi Latva (Neogames)

When Illusion was over, the rest of the games industry folks drifted to Ilosaarirock right next to the event venue. Our hub volunteers, however, continued their gathering to share ideas about the future, tackle common matters in hub volunteering as well as celebrate the success of the active volunteering all over Finland. With all the new ideas and energy we are ready for another great year of hub activity!

IGDA Finland East Hub sharing the love.

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Pictures: Anu Malm

IGDA Finland June Gathering with Rovio

The final IGDA Finland Gathering for the spring period of 2014 was hosted by Rovio and a bunch of their Angry Birds Star Wars plushies. Loads of you showed up and Adams was packed by the end of the evening. We also had a special guest from the IGDA Japan chapter attend the Gathering this time!

During the evening the guests had the opportunity to see a presentation from Rovio's Executive Vice President Jami Laes who talked about Rovio's operations and future plans. Jami also revealed that Rovio would have some new releases and news in the next few weeks and in the coming summer months so keep a lookout for information on their website.

Thank you to all of you who came to Club Adams to say hi and wish happy summer holidays to your friends and colleagues. Thank you also to everyone who attended the spring Gatherings in 2014. You, sirs and madams are awesome! Now it is time for IGDA Finland to go on vacation and prepare for the autumn season of IGDA Gatherings. Welcome to the next IGDA Finland Gathering in September!

Tekes Skene Roadshow & EXPA May Gathering with JES

The Tekes Skene Roadshow visited Jyväskylä just one day before our monthly meeting. It ended up being a very personal visit, with Kari Korhonen talking about how the Skene program works and answering questions from game developers from Jyväskylä.

We were happy to arrange our May Gathering with our good friends, Jyväskylä Entrepreneurship society. The Gathering was at the Jyväskylä Train Depot, a great space all kinds of cultural events at Jyväskylä.

We had two great guests, with Kati Heljakka and Samuli Syvähuoko, who also visited us this time last year.

Kati Heljakka is a toy and games researcher, with a PhD from the university of Turku. She is also a creative director at the Finnish board game company, Tactic. Tactic was a very exciting example of a Finnish games company, since it does something most of us are not that familiar: board games. It also manages to be international and still make the games in Pori, Finland, when most board game companies have outsourced the production into Asia. Very inspirational to hear someone with both the theoretical training and practical experience about making physical games.

Samuli Syvähuoko is veteran of the Finnish game studies, having been involved with starting such game companies as Remedy. He’s been touring Finland, talking about the Game Brewery, a project for “refining the Finnish games industry.” On top of that, they managed to make actual beer for the games industry! He also argued at length that Finland is the best place to be making games. The numbers he showed us of Finnish games industry’s growth seemed pretty convincing.

The evening came to a great end at the Bar Paja, with the games industry’s own beer. This was also the last gathering this spring, with the next one waiting us in September.

Thank you JES, Kati and Samuli and see you all in September!

IGDA Finland Turku Hub, the year 2014 so far

Wow, the year 2014 started out in a hurry! We've already had 4 gatherings in the IGDA Finland Turku Hub! 2014 Started out with a stroke of bad luck with our gathering venue as we lost our dear old Ravintola Bryssel to Sedu in January! 1½ years worth of gatherings flew past in that venue so fast. We were left with some dear memories of the great atmosphere and the lively discussions from the venue sauna... So we found a new venue and the January Gathering was held in The Castle, which attracted almost 100 visitors since it was arranged with the Microsoft LevelUp -tour. Iraklis Grous from LudiCreations was over at the gathering the show off the Kickstarted board game Gear & Piston. It was mighty interesting to hear how they arranged a successful kickstarter campaign on a game that was actually developed in Finland.

The Castle was also a great place for an IGDA Finland gathering, but on the same evening we found out that The Castle was closing down! Talk about bad karma losing 2 venues in a row... So we were off again to find a new venue! Luckily it didn’t take long to find the next suitable venue: Hunter’s Inn! We had a “test run” gathering there in February and by looks of it all, we found a new great venue. In March we combined the evening with the Turku Game Day with Mikael Haveri from Housemarque also visiting us at the gathering. We had Resogun running on the bar's big screen and the people were really impressed with the game! (Luckily we had a 1080p projector...)

Come April and because of the need for more space, we arranged the gathering this time in our old (where it all began in 2011) venue Panimoravintola Koulu since we had a big guest for the evening, Wargaming.net! We had the biggest hall for us and free drinks for the evening and Alexander Shilyaev, the Director of Global Operations at Wargaming.net gave an insightful presentation about the growth of the company and other fun details along the journey. Suffice to say, it was a great evening for game developers and alike.

See you again in May! - Tatu & Turku Hub Volunteers

EXPA & IGDA Finland Jyväskylä Hub April Gathering

This month Expa put local game companies on the stage to show their talent, projects and games. We got four great guests making games in Jyväskylä. First on the stage was Patty Toledo from FanART Games. Their game Mega FAN! is a combination of music and games, giving fans new way to interact with their favorite bands and giving bands a chance to connect with their fans. They already have an impressive roster of bands and first game features on the way.

Next, we heard from Juuso Hietalahti, the designer of The Infected: 28 Cards Later. The Infected is a card game in the vein of Werewolf or Mafia, with survivors trying to survive in a world of zombies with a traitor in their midst. He was also in the middle of converting The Infected to a digital card game.

We also had the pleasure of seeing what the brand new Zaibatsu Interactive had made in just a few short weeks. They recently moved to new offices and have worked furiously making a new prototype that was for now called simply Game#1. Game#1 was a co-operative game of moving small slime-balls around on a tablet device.

Our last invited guest was Olli Rundgren from Pisamala, working on bringing games to education. They were just a couple of short months away from publishing their game. Olli has experience from being software developer and shared stories and experiences of what is it like to run a business.

We also got to try out a soon-to-be-published Windows Phone game Goldfish in the Sewer, from our good friend Tuomas from Add Inspiration.

Next month we’ll join the Tekes Skene Roadshow. See you there!

- EXPA & IGDA Finland Jyväskylä Hub