Leadership Day: Call for Speakers

Save the date for Leadership Day by IGDA Finland: September 30, 2024! This international event explores the company structures, team dynamics, and working cultures that make the best games, offering insights to vital but often overlook aspects of game development.

The call for speakers is open. Share your expertise on leadership topics such as team building, change management, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), accessibility, corporate culture, mentoring, CSR (corporate social responsibility), stakeholder management, remote team/company management, community management, conflict resolution, investor/publisher relations, outsourcing, or any leadership topic that you are passionate about. The deadline for applications is June 7, 2024.

Got an idea for a talk, a series of lightning talks, or a panel discussion that needs some fleshing out? Contact us at leadership (at) igda (dot) fi for support.

For more information visit: https://www.igda.fi/leadership-day

IGDA Finland Hub Highlight: Kajaani

Burning straw goats and the booming games industry are some of the things Kajaani is known for, but how did this seemingly middle-of-nowhere hub become what it is today? Let’s find out!

In this first part of our hub highlight we dive into IGDA Kajaani, to find out who are they and why you should definitely visit their hub. We asked Kajaanis hub lead Tuomas Vartiainen to tell us a bit about their hub.

How did your hub get started and how old is it?
The IGDA Kajaani hub was founded in 2015, and it originally replaced an event called Industry Beer, where locals from the gamedev community gathered in Rock House Kulma, but now has grown into a much larger portion of the Kajaani gamedev culture.

What makes your hub special?
Our location comes with a fairly unique ecosystem with game companies and study opportunities. Kajaani is also just located very out of the way, despite that numerous people gather here to develop games within a healthy and good community. We always come up with new things to make our events more interesting and allow everyone to get involved.

What are some of the events, achievements, or other causes your hub is proud of?
For one of our more recent game jams, we collaborated with our local library to hold a game jam where children can take part in the development process by drawing in-game characters for the jammers to use. Yle News also ended up writing a couple of articles about the game jam.

What have been some of the struggles your hub has faced? Or anything you would wish to have?
Covid was the toughest struggle. Our hub was among the first to move online only, and we offered online seminars and meet-ups but of course people missed face-to-face meet-ups.
Our team of volunteers started out very small (3-4 people), so when people could not volunteer it had a large impact. Thankfully our volunteer team has grown a lot after Covid.

It has also been difficult to create a permanent feeling culture as students often have to move away after graduation due to the limited work market.

Where can people follow or find your hub?
You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Discord, they are all updated actively with our upcoming events!

Currently, Kajaani has 19 volunteers, and game companies such as  Critical Force & Black Smoke Studios are located in Kajaani.

Join the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG's European Conference

The IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group volunteers have worked since 2003 to aid the game industry in making games accessible for all, regardless of impairments or other limitations. The European conference is a hybrid event taking place in London and online April 22-23. Tickets for the streamed content and networking in Discord are free, but you must register in order to get the link for the remote networking.

For more information visit the IGDA Game Accessibility SIG webpage or the conference registration page.

Stay Ahead of the Curve with Games Job Fair Spring 2024 LITE

Games Job Fair Spring 2024 LITE is arriving on April 18-19, with a free entrance, great talks and challenges, new opportunities, and your chance to have your CV and portfolio reviewed by top Finnish games studio, and careers industry recruiters!

Event Highlights:
🎮 Top online presentations
💬 Networking with games studios
💼 New job opportunities
💻 Visibility-boosting Challenges
📔 Onsite CV/Portfolio Reviews by studio recruiters

Join the team in Kamppi, Helsinki for CV and portfolio reviews

Onsite participants joining the day in Helsinki on the 19th of April need only to register on Eventbrite and show up nice and early to have their CVs reviewed by recruiters from Noice, Housemarque, Nitro Games, Varjo, Redhill Games, Games Jobs Finland, and more.

The art portfolio reviews will be done by Ivan Lugovoy, Senior Game Artist at Rovio and Juho Salila, Art Manager at Redhill Games.

As the queue for this onsite career-boosting day will work on a first come, first served basis, please ensure you arrive at the venue on time.

Unity and Sloyd Challenges
The Unity Programming Challenge and Code Review are back! Thomas Winkley will once again be joining the event. After the success of their Sloyd-in-a-Ball snow globe challenge at Games Job Fair Autumn 2023, Sloyd are also joining with a brand new Sloyd challenge and prizes. Be sure to keep an eye on the GFT website and socials for more information.

LinkedIn Live + Discord Combo
The online LinkedIn Live broadcast on the Games Factory Talents LinkedIn page will include a chat with studio representatives and speakers on the GFT Discord server, so join up and get your bearings. Be sure to also hit Attend on the LinkedIn event page and add the event to your calendars so you don’t miss out.

For more on the event, check out GamesJobFair.com.

IGDA Finland Grant is here! 🎉

We’ve been cooking this for a good while but it’s time to take it out and serve it while it’s hot! 🔥🔥
By starting smaller but offering a well rounded opportunity for small and fresh dev teams we think we can help lessen the threshold for people to get that game of theirs out.

This is the first iteration which we hope will become an annual event and can grow with your feedback.

Yet by focusing on a proper package of feedback from industry experts, visibility, a chance to take your game on our stages as well as marketing help from us, it’s more than just about money.

It’s the whole deal and we’re sure you’ll like it!

Yeah, we want to help you to release that game of yours! 🚀
So what are you waiting for? Check out: www.igda.fi/grant