IGDA Finland

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

Nordic Game Program

Ilari Kuittinen

Housemarque

Timo Vuorensola

Iron Sky

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

Kai Auvinen

Lassi Leppinen

Digital Chocolate

Sumea

Sami Vanhatalo

Remedy

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

Koopee Hiltunen

Neogames

Veikko Miettinen

Pelitalo Outokumpu

Frans MÃ¤yrÃ¤

University of Tampere

Petri Lankoski

University of Arts and Design Helsinki

Veli-Pekka Piirainen

Kajaani AMKK

Juha Vanhanen

Adulta

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.orgâ€™s 2007 Annual Report that came out during the '07-'08 season. Read more about the MVP award here: (link)

Thatâ€™s it for the main accomplishments, stay tuned for part 2 of the season reportâ€¦

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

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

[singlepic=297,320,240,,center] IGDA Finland Gatherings moved to Cuba cafÃ© and in October it was the time for housewarming party. With 185 visitors out of which 37 were newcomers the house surely was hot â€“ packed full! Cuba staff didnâ€™t quite get the idea of IGDA at first. They were expecting just a couple of geeks playing video games at the back and were surprised when people start floating in. Recoil, Rovio, Sumea, Sulake, Bugbear, Everyplay and Remedy were all present amongst others.

Move from the heavy metal basement of System Rock to more colorful, cheerful and cosy Cuba cafÃ© was apparently well accepted. The housewarming party was sponsored by Lapland Studio which is a post-production house and game company in one. They showed an impressive show reel and talked a bit about their services. In a nutshell Lapland Studio is interested in collaboration with game companies who need high class concept art, 3D animations and motion capture. If you missed the presentation, Lapland Studio has a new web site with lots of examples of their current work.

Besides chatting about Lapland Studio, people were eagerly expecting Max Payne movie to hit the theatres. There were rumors that brand new Alan Wake trailer will be showing before the movie but only during the opening weekend? Check out by yourself if that is true! Good discussion and excellent mojitos kept the house full until the closing signal. Luckily there are several after party places nearby such as Rymy-Eetu, Ahjo or Erottaja. We had a blast! The next gathering is on 11th November â€“ see you then!