Helsinki Hub: March gathering with Ubisoft RedLynx

Text By Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo

With the winter snow finally starting to melt away, the IGDA Helsinki community came together for the March gathering at Maxine. The March gathering was sponsored by Ubisoft RedLynx, who was celebrating the release of their latest addition to the Trials franchise, Trials Rising. Trials Rising is a physics-based racing platformer with a tongue-in-cheek attitude and over-the-top action. Guests were invited to try out the game in the demo corner and there was a quiz whose winner received a grand prize. When leaving, all of the attendees were treated with a goodie bag.

The gathering was kicked off with a short seminar. Julius Fondem, an Associate Producer at Ubisoft RedLynx, started things off with his presentation Building ‘Trials Rising’ Together with the Community, Julius went through the history of the series, from its browser game roots all the way to the release of Trials Rising, which he describes as a “decided return to the series’ roots.” While the few previous titles had had more fantastical themes that were less grounded in reality, the development team of Trials Rising wanted to focus more on the three pillars at the series’ core: community, competition, and creativity.

Julius Fondem talking about the creation of Trials Rising. Photo by Jesse Eloranta.

Community has always been at the heart of the series. Ubisoft RedLynx has a history of collaborating with the series’ fans, be it through hiring top builders of custom levels, inviting groups of experienced players to the studio for workshops and actively listening to the community’s feedback through a myriad of social media channels. When asked if this kind of collaboration with the community is something any developer could include in their games, Julius’ answered a resounding ‘Yes’. “However, it depends heavily on the type of game being developed,” Julius elaborated. “Each genre and format creates its own type of challenges and limitations.”

The second presentation was hosted by Roland Kindermann, Technical Director, Mobile at Ubisoft RedLynx. His seminar Bringing South Park to the Small Screen delved into the challenges met during development of the mobile collectible card game South Park: Phone Destroyer. This included the process of replicating the world of South Park in a way that that supports the gameplay and works within the limits of a mobile platform, and the processes necessary to produce live content with an incredibly low lead time.