February Gathering - After Action Report

February gathering was held during the skiing-holidays, which ensured that System Rock was not too crowded this time and free seats were readily available, another factor probably was the cold weather outside (-17C). All in all, we had 86 people in attendance, some of them all the way from Oulu -region and even from Luxembourg.

For more photos click HERE

One of the main topics of the evening was GDC'07. Most were excited about the program this year. The plentitude of Finnish speakers this year was something everybody seemed really happy about (Lasse Seppänen/Remedy, Jeff Valadares/Sumea, Petri Ikonen/Sumea, Jani Kajala/Rovio, ...).

Another happy GDC-related news was that Liz, one of our chapter coordinators, won the IGDA student scholarship, so she'll be able to attend also - congrats to Liz! But the most talked about topic seemed to be the fact that people from at least 6 or 7 game companies flying over on the same flight to GDC'07 - should be an interesting flight. :)

One new volunteer joined the volunteers; Vesa-Matti Raudasoja, who is an ARTO student at Pelikoulutus 2006-2008. Welcome aboard Vesa-Matti!

-Miikka Luotio

January Gathering - After Action Report

The January Gathering was a success keeping in mind we did not have any sponsors this time. We had a nice 107 total attendees. The mood was relaxed and filled with chatter about the coming GDC'07 and FGDA. FGDA being a working name for Finnish Game Developers Association that is being formed as we speak. KP Hiltunen from Neogames was present and spreading flyer's and word about FDGA. For more photos click HERE

There was a lot of younger folk in the Gathering and that kept the evening exceptionally energetic. Some handheld console gaming was present and people kept steadily flowing in. People stayed in pretty late and the lack of sponsors did not dampen the mood at all, neither did the small ongoing snowstorm outside later that evening.

December Gathering - After Action Report

The final IGDA Finland Gathering ended the year with a bang! We once again managed to pull out a sponsored gathering, thanks to Nintendo importer Amo Oy with two playable Nintendo Wii consoles displayed via Samsung 40" LCD's guaranteed that nobody would have a boring night. We had a 209 visitors this time! Thats almost equal to the amount we had last time! Also a thing worth mentioning is that the line spanned out in the streets!

For photos CLICK HERE

The mood was playful and we had 3 separate competitions with the Wii consoles. Shooting, Tennis and finally Boxing. Games featured in Wii Sports and Wii Play. People also got a chance to freely play around with the consoles. Winners from the Wii competitions got some hefty rewards ranging from GameCube games to the latest ATI graphics adapters!

As a nice curiosity there was a DS download station present, where people with DS consoles could download extra content to their games and also try out demos. Thus it seemed this had attracted lots of people with Nintendo DS consoles.

People seemed to stay long into the little hours because of the provided extra entertainment and this time the weather was a bit more pleasant to leave into.

Merry XMAS everyone! Thanks for our sponsors once again for enabling this great event, Amo Oy (Nintendo), ATI and Samsung!

-Miikka Luotio

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