Nordic Game Conference: Finland scored well!

/

Nordic Game conference was held on 14.-15. May in Malmö, Sweden. This was the fifth anniversary with a renewed focus on professional content and an emphasis on the Nordic region’s role as a global innovator, and forth Nordic Game conference for me. All in all IGDA Finland chapter had a strong presence at the conference with two advisory board members: Aki and Lasse, Sonja (coordinator), Teemu (webmaster) as well as our top class volunteers Vesa-Matti and Jenni. The conference has grown strongly from year to year from a small event with only a few hundred participants (it was called Nordic Game Potential back then) to this year's full scale conference together with large career expo, attracting over 1200 attendees. Fifth anniversary was momentous for Finnish game scene because there was record number of visitors from Finland including high number of students. On top of that Finnish developers really scored well at the latest round of Nordic Game Development Program. There were 75 development support applications out of which 19 were from Finland. At the end four out of eight funded projects were Finnish! Congratulations to Frozenbyte (Splot), Housemarque (Rope), Everyplay (Groove) and Kloonigames (Crayon Physics Deluxe)! The next funding round will be in fall 2008, be prepared!

Other possibility to shine in front of a big audience would be to put out an outstanding game during this year and get nominated for the Nordic Game Awards! Last Wednesday the Nordic Game awards were handed out for the second time. Best Nordic game of the year was World in Conflict by Massive Entertainment. Massive defeated Housemarque's Super Stardust HD just slightly, where as Massive got the fortune and the fame, Housemarque got a special mention :).

Nordic Game conference provided quality keynotes focusing on developing software and hardware in parallel for the Rock Band game (congrats to Olli-Matti Rautiainen from Outokumpu Pelitalo who was the lucky winner of a Rock Band set!). The other keynote focused on Lego Star Wars and Indiana Jones titles and dealt with challenges when working with license owners such as Lego and Lucas Arts. Lego Star Wars series has achieved sales of 18 million units to date. Besides big development processes also casual games were well in the view. Panel discussions focused around Freerice type of serious games, poking at the Facebook, Wikipedia as MMO etc. One thing evident though is that non-gamers are here to stay and Nintendo Wii is just the start.

May Gathering - an insight into board games

/

Last IGDA gathering held on 6th May had extra board gaming flavor thanks to Tactic. Kati Heljakka and Petter Ilander from Tactic's Product Development unit were visiting us. That time 85 game enthusiasts joined the party chatting about game development and board games in particular. For those who do not know, Tactic (Nelostuote Oy) got started in 1967 when they launched Kimble in Finland. Their current goal is to be the market leader in board games in Europe and they are evidently doing very well. Tactic is trying to expand board games into digital and mobile. Currently they have some board games with DVD additions available but they are also looking for new opportunities on mobile.

Kati and Petter gave a short presentation of Tactic and their future plans. Tactic is currently developing mobile version of word explaining game Alias. They are also very interested of transforming their other games into mobile and are currently looking for partners(!). If your company is interested in finding out more about their plans, please get in touch with Kati and Petter (firstname.surname@tactic.fi) .

Besides board gaming, the chat rolled around similarities and differences between board game and digital game development, GTA IV and the report Neogames put out in April. Neogames highlighted that Finnish game industry is lacking of around 200 techsavvy people. Recruitment definitely is a shared challenge for many!

With some drinks and a lot of talk, it was another fun night at System Rock! Next time (10th of June) will be the last gathering before the summer break. We hope to hear the latest news from Nordic Game Conference as well as see you all there!

May gathering - Tuesday 6th

/

Greetings people! Spring is finally here, birds are returning and sun is becoming a regular fella in our skies. What better way to celebrate spring but to come with your colleagues in System Rock. Bring in your handheld gaming devices for some spring WiFi gaming bonanza!

*IGDA FINLAND MAY GATHERING* Place: System Rock, Keskuskatu 4, 00100 Helsinki (map: http://igda.fi/?page_id=5) Time: Tuesday 6th May, doors open at 19.00

See you there!

Meeting survey results!

/

Hey All! The results for the survey on System Rock  are finally in.    First of all, I wanted to say thank you to all the people who took the time to give feedback.  Your views are very important to us and we definitely appreciate you taking the time to fill out the survey!

System Rock appears to still be the preferred venue primarily because of its excellent location.    Many also felt that the size, the fact that it is private, and the bar selection are quite good.

There were a few repeated concerns raised about System Rock such as the noise/music volume and chair availability that we hope to remedy in the near future.

We are also keeping an open mind to the possibility of a new venue. There were some really great suggestions for things to look for in a new venue such as: more comfortability, a terrace for the summer, more tables and the possibility of ordering food. If you have any further suggestions for a venue please feel free to write me at: liz.lehtonen (at) gmail.com

Thank you,

Elizabeth Lehtonen