2007-2008 Season Report, part 1: the Main Accomplishments

Welcome to our newest season report! Like last season, this report will be published in 3 parts throughout the fall. We've been so busy providing you guys with another brilliant season, that it has taken us this long to get to writing this. Our apologies for the delay & I hope you find this interesting. As always, comments & feedback are welcome! Even though the last season wasn't as groundbreakingly successful as our phenomenal '06-'07 season, 2007-2008 season (August 2007 - June 2008) was still a very good year all-around.

This article is divided into three parts, this first one concentrating on the main accomplishments of the season (as judged by the coordinator team). The second being more pleasing for the propellerhead section of our members including an analysis of growth numbers and other "stats stuff". The third part is a short overview look at all the Gatherings that took place during the Season 2007-2008.

These are the main accomplishments of the season:

1) IGDA Finland Growth IGDA Finland has seen some growth in all areas and almost broke the 1,000 names mark on our invitation mailing list, with a growth of about 35% last season. So when we sometimes experience issues with delivering the invitation to all of those inboxes, it's a result of our web team upgrading our mailing system to deal with the increased volumes. We'll talk more about the stats in the second part of the report.

2) Increased Coordinator Team IGDA coordinator team was strengthened with Mats Diktonius from Nokia, who served as the Volunteer Lead for the season and Sonja Kangas who came on board to give wings to our long-time dream of organizing regular presentation events to complement our highly successful gatherings. This brought our coordinator team numbers from 3 to 5, a significant increase of resources.

3) New Studio Affiliate We also received a new affiliate, Chat Republic. It's always a big thing for us to get new members who want to show their support for the work we're doing. That tells us that we're on the right track.

4) IGDA Finland Presentation Series This initiative had been on the table for ages, but gatherings and all the other things we were already doing kept our small coordinator team overworked as it was and the project never materialized. As Sonja joined the coordinator team, we had a coordinator whose sole focus for the season was to get the presentation series started. So give a big hand to Sonja!

Let's quickly look at all the presentation events of the season:

Sep 11, 2007 - The first ever IGDA Finland presentation was focused on money (link)

Erik Robertson from Nordic Game Program gave hints on how to get funds from the Nordic Game Program

Ilari Kuittinen from Housemarque spoke about their experiences and future visions of downloadable console titles

Timo Vuorensola from Iron Sky -crew shared the crew's vision for an Iron Sky game and set out to find possibilities for cooperation

Jan 8, 2008 - The second presentation focused on development tools (link)

Kai Auvinen and Lassi Leppinen from Digital Chocolate (Sumea) and Sami Vanhatalo from Remedy spoke about Tools in mobile and console game development

Apr 8, 2008 - Last presentation event of the season was about education and research (link)

Night was kicked off by Koopee Hiltunen (Neogames) who gave a briefing of a survey on game education (Pelialan koulutusselvitys)

Veikko Miettinen (Pelitalo Outokumpu), Frans Mäyrä (University of Tampere), Petri Lankoski (University of Arts and Design Helsinki), Veli-Pekka Piirainen (Kajaani AMKK) and Juha Vanhanen (Adulta) spoke about ways to utilize the findings of game research and student projects as well as to improve the collaboration between industry and education

5) Website Upgrades Our website saw several improvements during last season. We got a new visual look and new features like the Attendance History on the top of the page. The Newsletter system was upgraded as well.

6) New Logo Along with the visual looks of the website, we designed a new logo for the chapter, to replace our original logo created back in 2005. The logo is based on the IGDA logo, but adds more Finnish touch by including the map of our country. The idea is to communicate our affiliation with IGDA and it's values and our pride of being part of the Finnish game industry. Different color versions include the one with the original IGDA colors and a white & blue version (that are the colors of the Finnish national flag). These color choices further emphasize what the logo is meant to communicate.

7) Public Mission Statement We've come to realize that our mission has always been clear to our coordinator team, but has not been communicated clearly to our potential members. To change this, IGDA Finland made for the first time, it's mission statement public and it was posted in the about us -section of our website.

8 ) SCORE, a New Student Club Score is the first Finnish IGDA Student Club and is also known as TAMK University of Applied Sciences Game Development Club. Several club members are also active IGDA Finland volunteers or coordinators, including our webmaster. Check out their website at http://score.igda.fi/ to find out more on their current game project 'Frayed' and about the club itself!

9) More International Attention An article about IGDA Finland was written in Helio Magazine's Spring 2007 Edition. Read more about the article here: (link).

The MVP Award given to IGDA Finland at GDC 2007 already during the previous season was mentioned in IGDA.org’s 2007 Annual Report that came out during the '07-'08 season. Read more about the MVP award here: (link)

That’s it for the main accomplishments, stay tuned for part 2 of the season report…

The second part of this article can be found here and the third part here.

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This article is the work of 2 of our newest IGDA volunteers, Lari Unkari and Joona Pulliainen, both students of PelKo3 at Adulta. So if you find this article unsatisfactory, you know where to point your finger at ;)

More seriously this is their first assignment as volunteers, in the future you will hopefully see these two gents writings a lot more, as they are the nucleus of our new content team, whose main focus is to provide our website with regular content updates. Welcome to the team Joona & Lari! - Jay, Lead Coordinator

This task seemed a bit challenging for us as newcomers, but thanks to the help of Jay and Miikka, we think we've pulled it through. - Joona

I certainly feel that they didn't expect us to write a full-blown article, or then Miikka is more devious than I had anticipated. Anyhow, reading up on the past events was interesting. So many things and so many events that I would've wanted to be in have taken place during the last season.

- Lari

September Gathering: Farewell System Rock

[singlepic=337,120,90,,right] Media has been full of news about global economical recession. Unfortunately game industry is not free of its impact even though the editor in chief of Pelit-lehti said that the economic slump is always good for the game industry because people tend to stick indoors playing games during the insecure times instead of spending their money elsewhere ;)

[singlepic=338,120,90,,left]

Luckily the worries didn't show in attendance to the September IGDA Gathering which attracted nearly 100 visitors. The casual chat went from challenges in the gaming industry and global economics to funding, networking and interesting game releases. For example Little Big Planet is around the corner. Also Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was one of the releases people were eagerly waiting for. There are number of things happening in Finland as well but we have still some way to go until large domestic productions such a Alan Wake will be finalized.

Thank you all who joined the Gathering in September and be sure to join the party again on 7th October. October Gathering will be the "housewarming party" at Cuba bar sponsored by Lapland Studio.

IGDA together with its partners has also been planning exciting program for November and December Gatherings. Mark the coming Gatherings to your calendar and follow the IGDA forum and web site to keep track with the news.

Finnish Games Association joins ISFE

http://www.figma.fi/

http://www.isfe-eu.org/

Europe's Interactive Software Federation announced that the Finnish Games and Multimedia Association is the 26th member to join the ISFE.

FIGMA counts eleven members in its association, all of them big software companies operating on the Finnish market," said Patrice Chazerand, secretary general of the ISFE.

Its presence in the ISFE strengthens the industry's voice in Europe. It will help us do several things: push on with our mission to secure effective legislation for the protection of intellectual property rights, achieve adequate enforcement of the legislation and win unrestricted market access both on and off line.

I am delighted to announce that with the arrival of the Finns virtually the entire Nordic block is now on board."

ISFE membership will bring my member companies more scope to get their voices heard by the legislators in areas such as intellectual property, e-commerce, the fight against piracy, WTO negotiations, protection of minors and the environment," said FIGMA's Managing Director, Riku Olkkonen.

The members of FIGMA include AMO/Nintendo, Atari, Electronic Arts, K.E. Media, Microsoft/Xbox, Nokia, Nordisk Film/PlayStation, Plan 1, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Toptronics/PAN Vision, and Vivendi Games.

The ISFE was established in 1998 and represents the interests of the interactive software sector throughout the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It has been running the Pan-European Game Information ratings system since 2003.

IGDA Finland gets a new student club - Score

Score is an IGDA student club that goes deep into video gamedev and is also formally known as TAMK University of Applied Sciences Game Development Club. Score aims to be the very first Finnish Student game development club of IGDA.

The idea of Score was founded in the beginning of the year 2007 and the constitutive meeting, also as the first official meeting was held in August 18th.

The head of Score is called ”Scoreboard”, the members of which were voted in the first meeting. Scoreboard consists of four members: president, vice president, board member and secretary. Predictably, Teemu Haila, the founder of Score was voted as the president. Juho Hartikainen was voted as the vice president, Niko Kosonen as board member and Essi Nieminen as Score's secretary. The whole Scoreboard happens to consist of second year Interactive designers.

Score has almost 30 members, 15 of whom can be considered as active. The majority of Score members are from Tampere's universities and the age distribution is from 18 right up to 30. Score membership isn't dependable on being student. The most important thing is desire to work within games and especially gamedev.

Score aims high

Even though Score is brand new as an association and everything had to be started from the scratch, aims the first project reasonably high: 20-minute-lasting FP(S) horrorgame, Frayed. As most of the Score members study in TTVO (The School of Art and Media), setting for the videogame production is fairly decent.

Most of Score members creating Frayed have no formal training on gamedev. One of Score's main goals is to give its members a chance to improve and gather skills to become for example a game developer, game designer, producer or graphic designer for real – Score wants to make an effort to initiate its members into gamedev as a possible and desirable future career.

More information on Score itself and its projects and actions can be found on http://score.igda.fi

Writer: Essi Nieminen / Score secretary

From the web: IGDA proposes game credits standards

Credits Standards Committee chair to speak at GDC 08 The International Game Developers Association is pushing for an industry-wide adoption of professional standards in game credits.

A public "beta" of the proposed IGDA standards was posted online for member feedback in September, but the issue has recently come to the forefront with the news that Rockstar Vienna was snubbed in the credits for Manhunt 2.

"Accurate, complete, and fair credits are essential to ongoing employment, professional development, and artistic fulfillment for all developers," said the IGDA's executive director Jason Della Rocca.

"Further, having accurate credits helps employers make informed hiring decisions."

The IGDA has established a Credit Standards Committee with the goal of establishing generally accepted guidelines that all studios and publishers can use.

John Feil, the chair of this committee, will be hosting a roundtable session during the 2008 Game Developers Conference entitled "The IGDA Credits Movement: The Revolution Is Already Here.

Article from GamesIndustry.Biz