September Gathering - After Action Report

September gathering is behind us now and i can conclude that the air getting colder must be a factor in bringing more people in as the fall progresses. The season has started with two very good gatherings now. Evening started pretty slow but later on people rushed in and sometime 22.00 the bar-side was even a bit crowded. A sight for sore eyes indeed! In total there were 107 attendees and 25 new faces.

For photos CLICK HERE

People also seemed to stay on quite late. Last coordinators were seen leaving at 3-am. Again we saw a good representation of Sumea & Mr.Goodliving. From other game companies at least Rovio, Housemarque, Frozenbyte, Ironstar Helsinki, Remedy and Bugbear were all represented.

Some attendees came all the way from Tampere, including people from Nokia and from Aukio Group, which was recently acquired by Universomo. There was also a representative from PhysX Ageia who had come all the way from Sweden and was hanging with Frozenbyte crew. New students from aRTO PELKO 2 (Game development education) were largely present at the gathering. There was also people from old aRTO PELKO class present.

There seemed to be less WiFi action as before, very few people had brought their PSP's or DS's. A rare sight to see was a laptop user trying to convert code to run in a Macintosh machine!

-Miikka

August Gathering - After Action Report

The August Gathering was a nice and mellow 'welcome back' from summer vacation. The evening started slow but later turned into a full house with the party continuing until well after midnight. In the end, there were a total of 105 attendees with 25 new comers and 7 guests. Among the attendees was a good sized group from Nokia and a new volunteer.

For photos CLICK HERE

Most of the evening was spent swapping stories about summer vacations, boggling over the unusual amounts of sunshine and playing DS lite. The games of choice were Mario Kart DS and Tetris DS. A few people took some time away from the chatting to try out their luck at the poker table.

The volunteers at the door had a fun night catching up, welcoming familiar faces and playing Munchkin. We also had the pleasure of greeting quite a few foreign visitors including a native of Japan and a few guests of Remedy from Microsoft Game Studios.

All in all, it was a great night for chatting, gaming and socializing! Thank you all for coming.

-Liz

June Gathering - After Action Report

If I were to describe the IGDA Finland June gathering in as few words as possible, those would have to be "Nintendo DS Lite". Thanks to Oskari Hurme from Amo - Nintendo's Finnish Importer - we had a few DS Lite handheld consoles to play around with. People had plenty wireless multiplaying fun with the DS Lites, using the WiFi connection available in System Club. The demo area was constantly crowded and lines soon started to form. There was a constant multiplayer action going on for hours and everyone had a chance to play. The night was such a success that there might be more cooperation between Amo and IGDA Finland in the future as well. For photos CLICK HERE

People came in pretty early and some seemed to enjoy their stay into the little hours. Subjects of discussions were still heavily fixed on the last E3 and of course DS Lite and Wii consoles. Again there were large groups of people from different game companies present, naturally the major ones and this time also Frozenbyte and Ironstar Helsinki were largely present. From Ironstar Helsinki the whole development team was there, which was probably the related to the fact that Ironstar Helsinki became an IGDA Studio Affiliate recently.

Attendance-wise, it was another successful evening, with total of 96 people showing up.

Thanks for coming everyone and remember to check the photos!

May Gathering - After Action Report

The evening started a bit slower than usually, maybe due a bit ofjetlag from E3? The evening spiced up towards the end and the bar ended up being pretty full.

In the end the total amount of visitors was 97. The talk of the night consisted mainly of E3 experiences, exhibitor and visitor wise.

For photos CLICK HERE

Many Remedy folk, seemed very joyous due the famous contract with Microsoft in E3. This also was a major topic of discussion that night.

Due the strong party athmosphere people also seemed to enjoy their stay a bit longer than usually, some even continued the party upstairs into the little hours of the night.

March Gathering - After Action Report

The March Gathering was a real blast for everyone. Besides the obvious game industry chat, there was now several presentations. As advertised before the theme was Game industry related education in Finland and it showed in a great number of visitors. Throughout the night we had 126 people in all, with many new visitors. Many students and teachers showed up to see the education presentations. The discussion topics after the presentations were heavily fixed on education and people kept flowing in with a steady pace. For photos CLICK HERE

Presentations were opened by Jyri Ranki from IGDA Finland chapter team, followed by Teijo Pellinen from Media Lab. Jyri introduced IGDA and IGDA Finland shortly. Teijo's presentation was focused on games and storytelling lecture series. Mika Tuomola mentioned in the original program couldn't make it, so Teijo was filling in for him.

After Teijo it was time for Juha Vanhanen, the course supervisor from aRTO Game Development class. Juha held a presentation about aRTO and introduced their current game development courses, including the new upcoming "Game Producer" course, which is starting in Fall of 2006.

After aRTO it was time for the Helsinki University to introduce it's new and fresh Gamics game laboratory. The quick introduction to was presented by Tomi Pasanen. After the scheduled presentations, we heard from a surprise visitor from Sweden, Magnus Björkman. He told us about the education opportunities they are organizing in Sweden shortly.

After that in the Q&A section, the audience had an opportunity to ask some hard questions from the gathered speakers, giving a good base of conversation for the rest of the night. After Q&A it was time for Esko Javanainen, a Game Designer from Sumea Studio. He shared his personal experiences of using the services provided by the Finnish Ministry of Labor to get a foot in at a game studio and how he turned that into a permanent job in the industry.