Season Start Picnic & September Gathering Invitation

IGDA Finland pub nights start rolling from 8th of September. Before that we'll arrange a picnic at the Sinebrychoff park. See you there on Thursday! To catch the waning summer warmth, join us at the IGDA Finland picnic on Thursday the 27th of August. Spawn point at Sinebrychoff Park will trigger around 18:00. Bring your own drinks, snacks and friends who haven’t been introduced to IGDA yet.

IGDA Finland will provide some blankets and we’ll have an IGDA flag on location to help you to find us. Check the blog and Facebook group for weather updates. You can still RSVP on Facebook.

After the picnic, the first IGDA Finland pub night will be on September the 8th at Cuba. The evening is sponsored by Everyplay. Everyplay will present Kamu World and provide drinks! IGDA Finland Game League will also start running from September. Join us at Cuba on 8th of September to learn more about gaming in social networks and IGDA Finland Game League!

IGDA FINLAND SEASON START PICNIC Place: Sinebrychoff Park, Bulevardi 40, Helsinki Time: Thursday, 27th of August, starts around 18:00

IGDA FINLAND SEPTEMBER GATHERING Place: Cuba Bar, Erottajankatu 4, 00120 Helsinki (map: http://igda.fi/?page_id=5) Time: Tuesday, 8th of September, doors open at 19:00

June Gathering: Goodbye Jyri, Hello Sonja!

Even though the heat wave is not exactly here yet, Finnish game developers are preparing for summer holidays and IGDA Finland will quiet down for a couple of months. At the June Gathering invitation we promised that Remedy will give a presentation. That started the rumor mill and draw people 45 minutes too early to the bar! Around 7PM there was already a queue forming at the door and total number of visitors climbed up to 147 (12 new). Thanks to the (wrong) rumors people were expecting to see Alan Wake demo but had to satisfy with a trailer video and photo travelogue from E3. The demo was not shown because Cuba Café have limited audiovisual devices but Remedy promised to show the Alan Wake demo in a more proper place in fall. Patience!

After the presentation Jyri gave a talk and told that he will have less time for IGDA Finland chapter due to the fact that Alan Wake will be released on spring 2010. He will anyhow follow the IGDA Finland chapter activities from the Advisory Board. From now on the Lead Coordinator will be Sonja Kangas who has been organizing IGDA Finland events for the last couple of years. Besides changing the Lead Coordinator there will also be some additions to IGDA Coordinators gang. New IGDA Finland Coordinators group and Volunteers will be introduced in fall.

IGDA Coordinators, Volunteers and Advisory Board wanted to thank Jyri for his efforts in supporting IGDA Finland chapter to become one of the most active IGDA chapters in the world. One outcome of the work is MVP Award which IGDA Finland Chapter got at GDC07.

After the speeches it was time for relaxation and chatting as usual. Even if Finnish game developers are starting their summer holidays soon, there was a lot of networking and discussions on the fact that K30 is currently the address for many Finnish game companies and that several interesting Finnish game productions will come out during the summer and fall 2009.

In fall we’ll give you more insights on what people can expect from IGDA Finland during the season 2009-2010 as well as how upcoming Finnish game releases will be shown at the pub nights. Until then, have a nice and relaxing summer! Game on!

June Gathering: Tuesday 9th

It's time for IGDA Finland season 08-09 finale with a presentation from Remedy! Join us on June 9th and enjoy a fun evening with fellow developers. We would like to thank the Finnish game developer community for being so active. It has truly been a pleasure to organize the events for you! Also special thanks to Remedy for supporting IGDA Finland presentations session and Cuba Bar for the nice venue. After the June IGDA Gathering it's time for summer holidays. See you again in fall '09!

IGDA FINLAND JUNE GATHERING Place: Cuba Bar, Erottajankatu 4, 00120 Helsinki (map) Time: Tuesday, 9th of June, doors open at 19:00

IGDA Finland May Gathering

The winter's last cold breath was still to be felt lingering in the air as last May's Gathering took place at Cuba Café as usual, with a delightful 157 visitors present! We've seem to have attracted a nice number of new people to the event this time around, taking into account that a whopping 37 visitors were there for the very first time. Who knows, perhaps the wild rumours about free drink coupons sponsored by Digital Chocolate might have had something to do with that. [singlepic=455,320,240,,center]

Apart from the usual mingling and such, we had the good guys from Digital Chocolate present and they showed us a few of their brand new games, including Tower Bloxx Deluxe for the XBox Live Arcade and California Gold Rush for the iPhone. The 4 player Tower Bloxx setup seemed to be in a specially heavy use all night long, with hardly a moment without anyone eagerly on the controls.

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You can find the rest of the photos in the gallery by clicking here or via Flickr. And don't forget that the next Gathering is taking place at Cuba Café on the 9th of June, from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Be there or be square!

NOTE: The June Gathering starts at 7:00 PM, instead of the 6:00 PM stated in this post earlier.

April Gathering - Midspring Meeting

The cold winter had passed but left the midspring weather a bit chilly. However, the people in game industry showed what they're made of and joined the Monthly Gathering on April 7th. It was a good evening for IGDA as Cuba Café saw a total of 97 visitors out of which 7 were new.

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One of the main topics of discussion was of course the Game Developers Conference 2009 and the good vibes it left on people. There were other major topics in addition, including the prospering of Finnish titles in App Store and our new industry partner, Walkthru, a Finnish company concentrating on translating games from English to Finnish.

People also talked about the Special Interest Group, Women in Games or "WIG SIG" which got a new advisory board. Sonja Kangas is now a board member in WIG SIG as well as Nordic Game Program and IGDA Finland. You can find more details from Sonja's article about WIG SIG.

The game development club Score is exclusively representing Finland in Microsoft Imagine Cup semi-finals with two titles: Villa Penguila and Unity. Both games can be downloaded from Nordic Game Portal.

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You can check out the rest of the snaps at the gallery or alternatively at Flickr.

Don't forget to add the next Gathering Event on your calendars! It'll be held on May 5th, same place, same time. See you there!