IMGAWARDS - time to vote!

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Vision: Mobile Games are the driver of innovation in the smartphone industry and the most successful category in the apps economy. Mission: Manage and market the world’s largest competition for mobile games and recognize and reward the best mobile game developers.

Great games nominated from Finland: Bike Baron, Shadow Cities, Death Rally, Draw Race 2 and WildChords amongst the best of the best. Vote now and bring People's Choice Award to Finland :)

The competition is now the mobile entertainment industry’s leading showcase for groundbreaking innovations, displaying exceptional quality and new trends in mobile entertainment, whether the games are made for the iPhone, for Android Phones, Windows Mobile, Bada (Samsung), BREW MP, for Blackberry, WebOS, J2ME, Flash, HTML5 or any other widely spread Operating System for mobile handsets.

Job satisfaction survey (by Univ. of Jyväskylä)

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WELCOME TO THE SURVEY OF JOB SATISFACTION IN THE FINNISH GAME INDUSTRY: I am Tuomas Roininen, Digital Culture (MA) student from University of Jyväskylä. I am doing a research for my MA thesis based on IGDA's Quality of Life White Paper (2004) but from the point of view of Finnish game companies. The purpose of this research is to carry out a similar survey as in Quality of Life White Paper (2004). Idea of this survey is to find material for my research about the job satisfaction in the Finnish game industry. This is valid way to find issues in the industry that need fixing to better in Finland. I hope that many as possible working in the Finnish game companies would respond to the survey, so that research should be comprehensive, reliable and useful for anyone who works in the field.

The themes of the survey are: - General Satisfaction - Job Stability - Work Load - Work Organization - Job Quality

I wish that you could answer as truthfully as you can, because that is the way to find the real pittfalls of the industry and also there can be done valid conclusions. All of the survey respondents will be treated as anonymously.

Survey takes about 10 - 15 mins and it includes multiple-choice questions.

Regards, Tuomas Roininen E-mail: tuomas.roininen@jyu.fi University of Jyväskylä Department of Arts and Culture Studies Master's Programme in Digital Culture

Thesis supervisor: Raine Koskimaa, Professor of Digital Culture

Survey is open until 17th of February 2012.

IGDA Finland February Gathering: Finnish Game Jam gems!

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It's time for us to gather around in the lovely Cuba Bar and talk about life and stuff. And games! The year started with a bang and thank you to everyone for making it possible. Let's continue that way! As most of you might know, last weekend a bunch of hard-working people participated in the Global Game Jam and gathered all around Finland to create cool games in just 48 hours! If you haven't seen those games yet (and even if you have) come to Cuba next Tuesday to take a look.

We'll also be announcing the winners of Finnish Game Jam 2012. So don't miss this!

IGDA Finland February Gathering Tuesday, January 7, 2012 at 7PM Cuba Bar, Erottaja 4, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland & Unity special

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New year started with a Unity Special on 10th of January. We organized IGDA Finland Presentations event focusing on Unity and IGDA Finland Gathering at Cuba bar was sponsored by Unity and Umbra. We have had more and more people attending both IGDA Finland Gatherings and Presentations events. Thus we are looking for bigger venues for the events. If you attended IGDA Finland Presentations event in January and would like to share your opinion about the venue, we are all ears.

At the IGDA Finland Presentations: Unity Special! we had Unity Evangelist Carl Callewaert & Sales Director Nick Jovic giving a hands on presentation of Unity. Next speakers were Sampo Lappalainen and Thomas Puha from Umbra, Finnish company specializing in rendering optimization middleware. Their presentation discussed what Umbra's technology is and does and what kind benefits it offers. A version of Umbra's technology is integrated into Unity. Thomas and Sampo gave some best practice advice on how to best take advantage of Umbra's occlusion culling in Unity. Arto Koistinen from Dicework Games shared his tips and tricks and Damien Morello (Recoil Games / Colossal Order) shared lessons learned from Rochard project. Fantastic presentations! On top of all we had a special guest star Julie Heyde from Bandello. They focus on assisting independent developers from all corners of the video game industry, providing insight and know-how in the go-to-market process. If you are indie developer and need marketing help, talk to Julie.

Slides from the presentation session & Unity show reel:

Nick from Unity sent the showreel and this message - thanks to all IGDA Volunteers and everyone who attended (over 130 persons attended Presentations event!)!

"Unity would like to say a big thank you to Sonja for organising fantastic event and to everyone who attended the presentations and Cuba Bar! It was a great pleasure to present alongside, Recoil Games, Colossal Order and Dicework Games - thank you for providing such varied and inspiring content. The organisation and popularity of IGDA Finland is certainly impressive. I can't wait for our next visit and to see you all again!"

After Presentations event we headed to Cuba where Unity and Umbra sponsored drinks. Thanks for those 185 who attended, great night!

Other IGDA Finland events in January:

IGDA Finland Little Xmas party with Remedy

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Traditional IGDA Finland Little Xmas party was held on 13th December at Cuba bar. The party was organized together with Remedy Entertainment. Remedy had just announced the release of Alan Wake's American Nightmare in February 2012. Along with a Alan Wake's American Nightmare trailer, Remedy's EVP Aki Järvilehto delivered their Holiday wishes to the whole Finnish game developers' community.

Remedy also sponsored IGDA Finland Hoodies which means that from now on it is easier for you to recognize IGDA Finland staff at Cuba! Please come to talk to us if you have questions, suggestions regarding IGDA Gatherings, Presentation topics…

As a special gift, we had a band, Time Flux Invaders playing brilliant versions of game themes throughout the decades. Remedy treats, Holiday spirit, fantastic game music by Time Flux Invaders and latest news from Finnish game industry made the evening. This time there were 214 of us present! Wow! Thanks for 2011 and see you in 2012!