Webteam update

Greetings from the freshly updated IGDA Finland webteam! Miikka Luotio has now become the editor-in-chief, and simultaneously our former webmaster Teemu Haila is promoted to Miikka's place as a web coordinator. We are therefore pleased to announce that we have gained a new webmaster in our posse: Juho Hartikainen!

Juho is a Finnish dude living in Tampere and finishing up his second year of interaction design studies, which consist of designing varying fields of interactive media such as the web, games and interfaces. He has provided some background support for IGDA Finland in the past (logo design, website graphics, meeting doorshifts), and is now carrying out his school traineeship. Alongside his webmaster supervisor Teemu Haila, Juho is one of the co-founders of Score, the Finnish student game development club. Aside from his studies and projects, Juho either consumes movies, games, music, books and other forms of art, or goes creative by photographing, writing, playing piano, making music, drawing, coding or dancing. And yes, you guessed it - he would love to be a game designer some day.

June gathering - Tuesday 10th

Hello people! As the summer holiday season approaches fast and the temperature is on the rise, we offer you the last IGDA Finland Gathering before the holiday breaks!

Escape the hot summer sun at System Rock. Welcome drinks and conversation topics by Everyplay!

*IGDA FINLAND JUNE GATHERING* Place: System Rock, Keskuskatu 4, 00100 Helsinki (map: http://igda.fi/?page_id=5) Time: Tuesday 10th June, doors open at 19.00

So come and party with us!

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!