IGDA Finland & Press Start!

Press Start is the official kickoff to the Slush Week for game developers on Nov 19th - 1,000 developers, studio founders and investors gather at the Helsinki Cable Factory to compare notes and celebrate games. No service providers, no middleware - just games. The event is free with or without a Slush Pass and attendance is by application only.

Joining us on stage and in mentoring sessions are names like Supercell Game Designer Camilla Avellar, Small Giant Games Co-founder & CTO Markus Halttunen, former Epic Games UX Director Celia Hodent, Jam City VP of Consumer Insights Lisa Spano, and Riot Games Senior Producer Maxwell Zierath.

The Slush Matchmaking Tool is in use for scheduling meetings and investor matchmaking. Studios will also have a chance to apply for our hour-long demo showcase with their unreleased projects. The evening itself concludes with an afterparty!

Apply at slush.org/press-start

IGDA Finland November Gathering with Omniata, Redlynx and Slush: The Aftermath

For November's gathering IGDA Finland hooked up with customer data platform specialist Omniata and Redlynx, one of the oldest and finest Finnish game companies, not to mention that the entire event was held at Slush in Messukeskus in Helsinki as one of the official after parties. In the Slush setting with dimmed lights, fog and lasers piercing the ceiling we enjoyed futuristic music, entertaining presentations and hot food! The evening started with delicious Korean food from Kimchi Wagon: sesame hot pot or the veggie with root vegetables, ricenoodles and mushrooms. The event continued with opening words from IGDA Finland Chairman Jyri Partanen, followed by Omniata's presentation on their company. The most memorable message from Omniata's Alex was that the Finnish sauna is the best. In other words, it tells that companies or employees coming from abroad face cultural integration at work and outside the office. One solution or at least a factor in integration is having fun while creating. This viewpoint was highlighted in the RedLynx presentation. Various RedLynx founders gave speeches, but the final words from Antti Ilvessuo summarized their working culture: fun to the extreme.

The event continued with music from Flashback Future DJs and a gig by the dark and futuristic electronic music producing Finnish duo Blastromen.

A perfect way to end day one of this year's Slush and kick off the second!

Photos by Sasha Paleeva.

IGDA Finland November Gathering with Omniata, Redlynx and Slush

IMPORTANT: Slush passes are NOT valid for entry, nor is one required to register to this party. To ensure a faster sign-in at the door, please either print your ticket or have it ready on your mobile device.

One of the biggest events of the year is approaching fast: Slush 2015 is almost here. For those not in the loop, Slush is a 2-day conference bringing together tech startups, investors and media. Last year there were over 14 000 attendees so you can expect quite a crowd!

IGDA Finland will be organizing the official game industry party – which doubles as our November gathering – on Wednesday, November 11, sponsored by Omniata and RedLynx. You can expect food, drinks and live music as well as something special on the side…

Note that registration is required for this event, so head on over to the event sign-up and secure your access right away to our biggest event yet!

IGDA Finland November Gathering with Omniata, Redlynx and Slush
Time: 11.11.2015 at 19:00
Place: Messukeskus, Messuaukio 1, 00521 Helsinki (Yellow Area in Slush)

Please note that you need to be at least 18 years old to attend. The cloakroom service is offered free of charge.

Slush and IGDA gaming event in November

In November we had the biggest IGDA event ever in Helsinki when IGDA Finland and Slush combined their event organization powers. This time the event sponsor was a well-known publisher company Tencent all the way from China.

Tencent gave a short presentation on stage to introduce their company and to show some of the most recent information about the game market in China and their share in it.

IGDA Finland’s chairman Jyri Partanen gave a short speech as well and announced a Lifetime Achievement Award for Sonja Ängeslevä for her amazing work for IGDA Finland since 2007.

There was a dedicated area for demos upstairs where developers were able to show their most recent game projects to many enthusiastic testers.

Later in the evening there was live music. First Pasi “The Epic Sax Guy” Ketola performed on stage as well as on the dance floor. Later the event participants were able to enjoy biomechanic pop music by Unzyme.

As usual, the evening continued with mingling, snacks and drinks. Thank you Slush and Tencent for partnering with us to make this awesome night happen!

Games track on Nov 13th, Slush

Slush Games track will occupy the Black Stage on November 13th. Check out the Games track program.

At 11:30am 10 mobile game startups will hit the stage. Each one will have one lesson to share with the crowd from the first leg of their journey. After the learnings we'll involve Kristian Segerståle and Aki Järvilehto into the discussion. What will these two experienced game developers / business leaders have to say to the startups?

The startups: Gajatri Studios (Tiina), Headnought Games (Pauli), PlayRaven (Lasse), Fat Lemon Games (Jani), Rival Games (Jukka), Boomlagoon (Antti), Small Giant Games (Markus), Nonstop Games (Juha), Tuliotus (Sami) and SongHi (Daniel).

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Other gaming related events during Slush:

- Facebook's "Getting started with Parse ­- the new way to build" workshop at the Slush Basement on November 13th - 11:00am - 1.45pm. Facebook will organise four 20 minute sessions in a row. No pre-registration needed.

The workshop will focus on: - User acquisition using Facebook's Mobile App Ads - Growing your game using Facebook's social channels - Cross platform social integration with Unity

- Neogames & IGDA Finland game industry mingle at 5pm White Stage - meet other investors, publishers and developers. Snacks and drinks available.

- Official Slush party on November 13th from 9pm onwards

- Women in Games networking event on November 14th, at 5pm (Teatterimuseo)