November Gathering - After Action Report

Again the attendance amount beat the odds of the yet again rainy weather. We had a stunning number of 210 people who attended the November gathering! That’s 31 people more than the previous record! There was also a large amount of new faces around. The Gathering started with a hefty boom, a huge line formed rapidly of people rushing to get the free drinks and food and as a first there was also a line forming on the bar area!

For photos CLICK HERE

Food was complimented many times by everyone and it started to disappear quickly as the night drew its curtains. People were constantly crowding around our sponsors, Recoil Games people.

It seemed that from the first minutes to the end of the night System Rock was packed full and people were simply having a blast. The private function part of the IGDA event always ends at midnight, and only handful of people usually linger on after that. This time there were plenty of IGDA attendees hanging out until the 3.30AM closing time.

October Gathering - After Action Report

On the day of the October Gathering, it was raining heavily. This gave us some cause for concern. Would that affect the attendance negatively? Apparently not. At 7p.m. sharp, there was already a queue at the door. If this was because of the rain, then we like rain! All in all, the final attendance figure for the gathering was 100 people in total.

For photos CLICK HERE

For a superb panorama shot by Mikko Lehtonen CLICK HERE For more photos by Mikko CLICK HERE Thank you Mikko for sending these in!

Again we had a good steady number in new visitors with 20 more people joining the mailing list. Amongst these there were people from ELVI project all the way from Oulu.

100 attendees was well in-line with the season average of 104 attendees per Gathering. During the same period last year, we averaged 74 attendees per Gathering. Time will tell if this autumn has been exceptionally active or if this is just natural effect caused by the steady growth in Finnish Game Industry jobs.

As all those that were present probably noticed, System Club has changed its face. System Club is now System Rock with new interiors and new music style. The pirate flags near the entrance were superb!

There was an unfortunate mix-up and the cloak room didn't open until 11.30p.n. this time, which caused a hefty pile of jackets near the entrance. We will try to prevent this of happening again in the future. Another nice detail was that there were many people that had brought their own cameras. If you think you have any good photos send them to our photography master Tommi Hartikainen

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!