Jackpot for Finnish Developers in IGN Best of 2006 Awards!

This year Finnish developers have really hit a homerun on IGN Best of 2006 Awards. Finnish developed games gathered an impressive 9 wins across all categories on all platforms. In addition, Finnish developed games managed to gather another 8 mentions as Runner-Ups for a total of 17 nominations! Digital Chocolate also won the Best Developer in Wireless - in no small part thanks to Sumea, I'm sure. With the overall category winners still to be announced, I have a feeling there might still be more to come at least on the Wireless platform (Wireless Game of the Year?) ...

Congratulations to all winners: Sumea, Bugbear, Rovio & Universomo!

Here are the stats: (unofficial compilation - my apologies for any possible mistakes!)

* By Game (Nominations : category wins / Runner-Up positions) *

5 : 2 / 3 - Tornado Mania (Sumea) 4 : 2 / 2 - Flatout 2 (Bugbear) 2 : 2 / 0 - Nightclub Empire (Sumea) 2 : 1 / 1 - Mafia Wars Yakuza (Sumea) 1 : 1 / 0 - Mini Golf Magic (Sumea) 1 : 1 / 0 - Rollercoaster Rush (Sumea/Universomo) 1 : 0 / 1 - Beach Ping Pong (Sumea) 1 : 0 / 1 - Darkest Fear (Rovio) 17 : 9 / 8 - TOTAL

* By Company (Nominations : category wins / Runner-Up positions) *

12 : 7 / 5 - Sumea ( + Developer of the Year) 4 : 2 / 2 - Bugbear 1 : 1 / 0 - Universomo 1 : 0 / 1 - Rovio 18 : 10 / 8 - TOTAL (*1)

*1: Rollercoaster Rush has been awarded to both Sumea & Universomo in this one, that's why numbers are bigger when calculated per company. *2: 1 more Digital Chocolate game made it to Runner-Up, but it was not developed in Finland, so I didn't count that in.

- Jyri Ranki, Lead Coordinator

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

G&S lecture Wed 13.12. Beth Kolko: "Playing Off the Beaten Path"

Please notice that we have the next Games and Storytelling lectureexceptionally on Wednesday, December 13th at 5:15-7 pm.

Professor Beth Kolko's lecture is titled 'Playing Off the Beaten Path'.

Venue: Tampere: University of Tampere, lecture hall 1096, PinniB, Kanslerinrinne 1. Videoconference venue in University of Art and Design Helsinki, Media Centre Lume, Sampo auditorium.

As games and gaming systems become increasingly sophisticated, they also grow increasingly pervasive, both in terms of geography and the terrain of everyday life. In many less developed regions that are resource and infrastructure constrained, games have a remarkable presence. In the public access spaces that dominate Internet and computer access in such regions, children fill Internet cafes playing bootlegged games in foreign languages, teenagers cobble together city-wide LANs to play MMOs, and self-taught programmers try their hand at creating local game content. This talk discusses what gaming looks like in places like Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Based on several years of fieldwork about general patterns of technology usage in developing regions, this talk focuses on patterns of gaming, the general ecology of information and communication and information technology, and how individuals interested in games leverage scarce local resources to build local gaming communities.

Beth Kolko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Technical Communication at the University of Washington where she leads the Design for Digital Inclusion group and Digital Games Research group.

She has been studying the intersection of technology and communication since 1990, beginning with work on text-based virtual communities and moving to include visual representations of users in online environments and issues related to community fragmentation online. That work was tied to her long-term interests in how identity and diversity impact people?s use of technology.

Her current research explores how design and culture play a role in people?s adoption and adaptation of technologies. She travels with some regularity, studying diverse populations and how they adopt and adapt information and communications technologies (ICTs). In recent years she has conducted field studies in Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Hong Kong, and she has also done short visits to Greece, India, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and throughout Europe. Her games work is situated under the broader umbrella of her Design for Digital Inclusion project, which applies theory-based analyses of culture and technology in order to examine how technology is used in diverse settings. The goal of this project is to demonstrate how technologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars can collaborate to think more broadly about how to create devices, software, and services to better meet the needs of users. She is the co-editor of Race in Cyberspace, editor of Virtual Publics, and the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Free admittance.

Welcome!

More information:

Web pages: http://www.gamesandstorytelling.net/

IGDA Finland Xmas Party - 12th December 2006

Fellow Finnish Game Developers! IGDA Finland December Gathering - Christmas Party SPONSORED BY AMD, NINTENDO SUOMI / AMO & SAMSUNG Place: System Rock, Keskuskatu 4, 00100 Helsinki (map: http://igda.fi/?page_id=5) Time: Tuesday 12th December, doors open at 19.00

The year is drawing to a close and it is time to gather once more before we all head for well deserved Christmas holidays. After the phenomenal success of our November Gathering it is now time to end the year on an even higher note!

The December Gathering will be our first Christmas Party (or pikkujoulut in Finnish) for IGDA Finland. This means we have something special in store for those who take a break from all the pre-Christmas hassle and joins us at System Rock. Not all the details have been locked yet and we haven't finalized our third sponsor deal, but we can already reveal that we will have: -DRINK TICKETS sponsored by AMD! (* 3 tickets per person, while tickets last. Doors open at 19.00 sharp.)

- 2 x NINTENDO WII provided by Nintendo Suomi / AMO - 2 x 40" LCD TV's provided by Samsung - COMPETITION(s) & etc.

In the spirit of Christmas, AMD (www.amd.fi) will be sponsoring the drink tickets. There will be 2 NINTENDO WII consoles for you to play at the event, courtesy of NINTENDO SUOMI / AMO (www.nintendo.fi), played on beautiful 40" LCD TV's courtesy of SAMSUNG!

But that's not all Nintendo has in store for you. If you bring your Nintendo DS you can download free demos to it. And if you also bring along a copy or Brain Training or Animal Crossing, you'll get a chance to download some new special content for it.

There will also be a competition where you can win great prices, generously donated by AMD and NINTENDO SUOMI / AMO!

So mark it on your calendar and come on, come all!

Ho ho ho, Merry X-mas! Jyri - Santa's Little Helper

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.