Hi Everyone!
The 2006-2007 Season that just ended in June has again been our most successful one ever. IGDA Finland has seen some serious growth in several areas.
In this post, we will focus on some of IGDA Finland's biggest achievements of 2006-2007 Season, as judged by the coordinators. Later post will look at all the Gatherings as well as give you some very impressive statistics about our growth. Don't want to hit you with too much information all at once :P.
But now, on to the achievements
1) International Prestige & Recognition
The IGDA Finland has been receiving great recognition for it's work this year and we have had some major visibility within IGDA. This year the international IGDA mother organization and the games development scene in large has noticed what a great chapter we have here. At a IGDA VIP luncheon during GDC this year, we were awarded with one of three MVP awards for the year, our Gathering After Action Reports made it to the igda.org front page twice (the other time with the infamous 'Queue of Death' picture) and a picture from our December Gathering was seen by everyone in the IGDA Annual Report for 2006.
2) Re-organization
During 2005-2006 Season, we recruited the original set of volunteers to help the chapter team with the increasing workload of running the rapidly growing chapter. This season our organization took the next step forward, when chapter team was split into an advisory board and group of coordinators. Without this restructuring, we could not have handled the growth and kept things running while preparing new initiatives for the future.
3) Website design, v.3.0
Last summer gave birth to the third iteration of IGDA Finland website and all season long it has been slowly developing into what it is today. We also moved the hosting to a local server here in Finland, which gives us much more flexibility and control over our website. You have already enjoyed some of the benefits of this in form of more and new types of content such as the featured articles. Rest assured, much more is planned for the future.
4) Events in Gatherings
We managed to arrange two great sponsored events this season, together with our sponsors Recoil Games, AMD, AMO/Nintendo Finland and Samsung. Again, a big huge thanks to all or our sponsors for their co-operation and contribution! We also managed to do something I've been dreaming about for a while: have a more joyful little X-mas party event in December. And what a success it was, largely thanks due to the Wii madness :).
We also brought Finnish games more into spotlight as we have hoped to do for a long time. In April attendees saw a sneak-preview video of Flatout Ultimate Carnage, in May we got to play Super Stardust HD prior to it's launch on Playstation Network on June 29th and in June, it was Flatout Ultimate Carnage that peole got to play (prior to launch also).
5) Group of Volunteers
Our group of volunteers, consisting mostly of students, grew from 15 to 21 this year. We also had a chance to reward all their hard work by a behind the scenes visit to one of the powerhouses of Finnish mobile game development - Sumea Studio.
6) Great Year for Finnish Game Industry
Finnish game industry has been doing extremely well during this season and ultimately that's what really counts. Obviously, we can't take credit for that and I in no way intend to. The credit is due to all the hardworking developers behind the games and the companies that develop them. Ultimately the success of the industry in Finland is what we are all after at IGDA Finland and that's why I wanted mention it here. Hopefully our activities have helped the industry succeed - even if just a little bit.
It's been a very eventful and rich year in the Finnish games industry. From the avalanche of awards at IGN Best of 2006 awards to the multitude of titles either launched (Super Stardust HD on PS3, Flatout Ultimate Carnage on X360, etc.) or announced (Earth No More, Shadowgrounds Survivor, etc.) to the fact that a new next-gen studio, Recoil Games, was founded or how Universomo was bought by THQ, making THQ the first big publisher to become part of the Finnish game development community.
That's it for now, stay tuned for part 2 of the season report...
Jay - Lead Chapter Coordinator
You can read the second part of this three-part report here and the third part is here.
Teemu Haila is a finnish student soon starting his second year in TPU (Tampere Polytechnic University). Teemu's major is interactive design, which basically includes a little bit of every aspect of creating interactive media, from graphics to script writing. Aside from his studies he likes the occasional doze of drawing, playing drums, taking pictures of the life around, bicycling, chilling out with friends and doing purely nerdy stuff. He is also propably listening to (DRM-less) music while doing any of the previous.
Sonja (Kangas) is working at the EGET as a game designer. She also does research and process development at her own company SoupLaLa in cooperation with game developers, console manufacturers and media houses. Sonja was asked to join IGDA Finland crew to organize IGDA Finland Presentations because she is one of the most acknowledged game researchers in Finland. She was an editor of first book about digital games written in Finnish (Mariosofia - Elektronisten pelien kulttuuri). She also did an extensive benchmarking study on mobile entertainment comparing Europe with North America and APAC in 2003. IGDA is about having fun and networking but it can also be an opportunity to learn from other professionals of the industry. Sonja sees IGDA as an excellent forum to reinforce the creative power of game developers and improve the industry.
