Score's 2008 Wrap Up

2008 was a special year for Score, the Finnish game development club heavily associated with IGDA Finland. We decided to provide you with a wrap up of all our coolest activities that took place last year, just to get the feeling that a lot is happening!

Supernova Game Development Lab

Just in the beginning of 2008 Score hit a major milestone and got it's very own game lab inside TAMK School of Art and Media, called Supernova. Our undisclosed budget got us top of the line audio equipment, large screen, four well specsed workstations with all of the important licenses. This really allowed us to have a place to gather in daily and share the newest updates while working out the next grand scheme.

Microsoft Student Partner Programme

Our (ex-)president Teemu Haila got chosen to participate in Microsofts Student Partner Programme and since then Microsoft has been positively active towards our club and it's goals, especially by providing training material for XNA and various other opportunities disclosed later on.

Nordic Game

Neogames and TAMK sponsored our key members for a trip to Nordic Game 2008 in Malmo! You can read our post-mortem from the trip, but in short we got some really valuable contacts and got to see the actual state of Nordic game developer community. The trip was a real source of inspiration and next year we wont be just visitors any more!

Game: Steamsky

A result from our game development course, Steamsky was one of the first “real” playable games from Score. It was an experimental title with XNA in the spirit of Star Control and, sad to say, we had more trouble with production management than actual coding or design skill. Still, it was a two month project and a milestone of it’s own.

Game: Epic Flail

Epic Flail was also made as a part of the previously mentioned course. The reason for making this impish little flash-game was to teach its coder some Actionscript 3 in which he didn't have any previous experience.

At the time, most of the people from Score were somehow psyched about physics engines which lead to Epic Flail having physics in a major part as well. Actually there was only one gameplay feature in EF which utilized the physics engine, only making it more important: a huge stone boulder attached to a rubber line. It was only natural to make the slaughter of infinite amount of zombies using this epic flail as the goal of the game.

As it was paramount to get a grip on AS3 with this project, no existing code could be used. Every technical element of the game (sprites, physics, gameplay logic, memory handling and effects, etc.) were wrapped up into a single library, the first game engine of its creator. Zombie engine - not only slow but a damn ugly one as well!

Game Project: 5D

5D was an experimental project of fast paced prototyping. In short: five games in five weeks with five people, five days a week and five hours a day. This project was inspired by Lasse Seppänen from Remedy/IGDA Finland and not only marked a milestone in communication with the local developer industry but also focused on the important things that our school can’t teach. We tried to document everything, so please go read our reports and watch the games.

Assembly Summer 2008

We got VIP seating thanks to Microsoft and Teemu Haila kept an XNA for beginners seminar. We didn’t have the time to participate in the game development compo but decided to do so at any costs next year. We also got in touch with some nice people and probably will feature our own (or shared) booth!

Trip to Norway

As a result of our visibility in Nordic Game we got an invitation to the University of Hamar! We kept two presentations about the benefits of club activities and how to start one. To our very pleasant surprise we met some of the local companies in their IGDA Hamar meeting and were even invited to party at their own game development lair! Please refer to our post-mortem from the trip for all juicy details.

Game: Pisara

XNA game by Heikki Leppänen about spiders battling it out on a rainy glass window. The official description in finnish: "Peli sijoittuu ikkunalasiin, jonka karmien alalaidoissa on hämähäkin verkot. Ulkona sataa ja lasiin lentelee pisaroiden lisäksi havunneulasia. Kaksi hämähäkkiä kiipeilee ikkunalasilla ja yrittää tehdä reitin toistensa verkkoihin ikkunaan lentelevistä havunneuloista, jolloin pisarat valuvat neulasia pitkin verkkoon. Pelaajat saavat vuorotellen hetken aikaa siirrellä ruudulla olevia neulasia. Pelaaja voittaa kun toisen verkkoon valuu liikaa pisaroita."

XNA game development course

Some of our members, Teemu Haila and Heikki Leppänen, kept a course on designing games with XNA in TAMK. The course was very special in the sense of everyone participating in Imagine Cup and thus getting free XNA training material from Microsoft! We are looking forward to keeping the course again next year, if possible.

XNA @ JKL

Again, Teemu and Heikki went of to keep a two day intensive course on XNA in the University of Jyväskylä, sponsored by Microsoft. We got some very positive feedback and will definitely do something similar in the future again!

Supernova Update

As 2008 was brought to an end, we got some Christmas presents from our school, consisting of (nearly) every top console title release in the last six months and some long awaited new hardware to keep out lab equipment up to date. Thanks, TAMK!

Epilogue:

All in all, we saw a lot of members come and go during the year with great and unique projects. Jenni Järvinen joined in our administration with a long background in IGDA volunteering, Teemu Haila gave room for Juho Hartikainen as the current standing president and both Heikki Leppänen and Antti Salomaa took much more active role in developing Score to the point it is now in.

We are also thrilled to say that all our board members (and several normal ones) are both IGDA members and IGDA Finland volunteers with Teemu being the web coordinator and Juho the webmaster of IGDA Finland.

Feature highlight: iPhone compatibility

It's time to highlight something we made just for you iDevice owners out there!

If you point your iPhone/iPod Touch browser to igda.fi, it will give you a customized version of the site for low bandwidth connections and touch screen UI. From there you can easily browse the newest updates at a glance without spending the whole day downloading our full site's features. Of course you can always choose to view the full instead by clicking the "normal view" link at the bottom of the page.

Do you like the feature? Please give us some feedback on the comments! :)

Neogames Salary Survey

We'd like to urge you to answer Neogames' current anonymous survey collecting national salary information. It literally takes mere seconds to complete and benefits our industry as a whole, so pretty please go visit the survey and nudge your friends to do the same! The results can only be considered reliable if enough people contribute, so now we lean on you, the community, to join the cause!

January Gathering Reminder

What’s happening in 2009? What surprises we will see? Which Finnishgame titles will come out? Which companies will be going to the GDC or Nordic Game Conference? Come to the IGDA Gathering to hear the latest buzz and hottest topics on January 13th at Cuba Café.

IGDA FINLAND JANUARY GATHERING

Place: Cuba Café, Erottajankatu 4, 00120 Helsinki Time: Tuesday, January 13th, doors open at 19:00

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2007-2008 Season Report, part 3: Gatherings Overview

Hi Everyone! This is the 3rd and final part of our season report for last season which ended in summer 2008. Be sure to check out parts one and two as well!

It's been another hectic fall and that has unfortunately meant that it's taken us way too long to get this report out again. Our apologies for that. Last part of the report will give you highlights from all the gatherings held during the season 2007-2008, including short introductions and links to the original articles.

(NOTE: Attendance figures in this report are the double checked ones and might in some case differ from those mentioned individual Gathering After Action Reports slightly)

August '07

After the relaxing summer break, the well-tanned game developers were full of eagerness at the IGDA August Gathering in System Rock on 28th August. This time 124 attendees joined the party. Digital Chocolate and Bugbear were especially well represented! Also professionals from Remedy, Red Lynx and Recoil were there.

September '07

This time IGDA Finland gathering started differently because the evening begun with our first-ever IGDA Finland Presentation event at Pääposti Auditorium. The theme of the session was money. We were positively surprised of the plentiful and versatile audience. There were a little over 60 people watching the presentations, from students to business developers and game designers. The gathering itself drew in 125 attendees. It was also good to notice how the presentations attracted people who have never been at the pub nights but found it a comfortable way to take part in our activities. Some practicalities were still looking for their place but otherwise things went well. The speakers at the first session were Erik Robertson from Nordic Game Program, Ilari Kuittinen from Housemarque and Timo Vuorensola from Energia Productions.

October '07

The cold fall weather took it’s toll on Octobers IGDA gathering attendance. Even with industry representatives from Tampere, the attendance rose to 99, just shy of a hundred.

Most notable at the gathering were the new decorations on the wall. System Rock had gone through a small facelift, which was well received by attendees. While attendance was lower than usual, those who showed up had the rare luxury of free tables. This luxury was quickly exploited and various boardgame sessions sprung up around the room, amongst them Munchin and Scrabble. A person with a brand-new iPhone got a lot of new friends as everyone wanted to try the device out.

November '07

Despite the icy and windy weather, 243 brave game industry professionals made it to the System Rock on 13th November for the Recoil-sponsored November gathering. 243! Thanks to everyone who attended -we clearly beat the previous record of 210 attendees set in November 2006 (which by the way was also a Recoil-sponsored event).

Finnish game development scene was well represented from Recoil, Bugbear and Sumea to RedLynx, Ironstar Helsinki and others. Also several IT-professional joined the party to marvel at active discussion amongst game developers. IGDA Finland was happy to welcome 45 newcomers to the party as well as people all the way from Spain, Digital Chocolate’s game studio Microjocs and a bit closer to home, from Tampere TTVO!

December '07

The last gathering of the year drew in a nice crowd of 174 attendees total! In December gathering AMD provided drink tickets ensuring the mood was indeed very merry all night long.

The other sponsor was Microsoft and they provided us with the demostands, with which we hosted 2 game competitions, as well as the prizes for those competitions. Both demostands were popular but Guitar Hero 3 demostand even had people lining up to play from time to time so it was clearly the more popular one.

January '08

Year 2008 got a kick start on 8th of January when there were both IGDA Finland Presentations and a pub night in snowy Helsinki.

This time IGDA Finland Presentations in association with Remedy was held at Papa Giovanni Showroom just opposite System Rock. The room was fully booked with 59 people. It was especially good to see new people joining as well as individuals who usually don’t visit the pub nights — something for all that is!

Pub night was in line with “tipaton tammikuu” (Alcohol-free January) with slightly less people than usual. This time 97 developers reached System Rock. Both lectures and pub night attracted new faces which is always super! There were also regulars from Bugbear, Housemarque and Sumea. Also a group from Tampere were there again which can be seen as a challenge to fellow developers from other bigger towns like Oulu, Jyväskylä and Turku!

Febuary '08

Long and dark winter is getting to the bones of Finnish game developers. It is the flu season in Finland and that surely shows! In February IGDA pub night attendees were a bit few in number but strong in spirit! This time there was only about 78 attendees.

Between pre-GDC chatting and local game industry news, the attendees filled out a questionnaire about the venue. There has been a discussion whether IGDA Finland should find a better venue for the gatherings (which finally happened in October 2008).

March '08

Bugbear was celebrating its 8th anniversary at the IGDA Finland March gathering. In addition to free drinks, the 209 party goers were treated with a slot car racing track to play and T-shirts to take home. Bugbear’s birthday party speech proudly proclaimed Bugbear as the worlds leading independent driving game developer (as all the other good ones had been bought off by publishers :P), and had a few interesting tidbits about Bugbear’s next projects.

April '08

The third IGDA Finland Presentations session was held on 8th of April at Papa Giovanni Showroom and drew 39 interested souls in to listen. This time the theme was education covering everything from most interesting research findings to current state of games’ education and recruitment in Finland: how to boost up collaboration between companies and school which would benefit both. The gathering itself attracted 93 attendees.

May '08

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 82 game enthusiasts joined the party chatting about game development and board games in particular.

June '08

Finnish casual game start-up Everyplay wanted to give a kick start to summer vacations on 10th of June when the last IGDA Gathering was held before the summer break. It was a great way to celebrate the birth of the latest addition to the line-up of Finnish game developers. IGDA Finland happily welcomes Everyplay and wishes them to live long and prosper!

IGDA June Gathering sponsored by Everyplay drew in 163 developers to join the event. You could clearly notice the closeness of summer vacation because the chat went around summer plans more than work related stuff and industry news.

Jussi Laakkonen the CEO of Everyplay gave a short presentation of the company. For many Jussi was previously known as the Business Development Director of Bugbear. This time he talked convincingly about casual games and how the current games are just the tip of the iceberg. Everyplay believed that games are for all and playful interaction is getting common outside game industry as well.

That's it for this season report. Make sure to read parts one and two as well!

- Joona and Lari