IGDA Finland Rovaniemi Hub launch

The northernmost IGDA hub in the world has now officially been opened at Rovaniemi, on 26th of September, in the arctic where it’s so cold that computers keep constantly freezing! Not really, just kidding..

The formal part of this event took place at the main campus of Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences. There we had two guests who talked about IGDA Finland, about the support it has to offer for students and starting game developers, and about their personal experiences on taking up a career in gaming industry. Total number of people listening and asking lots of good questions was 19, so one might say that we had a fairly good start considering the size of the audience.

First speaker was Tatu Laine, Creative Director from NordicEdu. He talked about IGDA, what it actually is and why we should know it, and also about educational games that his company’s focuses on.

Second speaker was Jukka Laakso, CEO from Rival Games. Among other things related to working in a game startup, he introduced us to IGDA Scholarship. It is really something you should check out if you’re planning to have a career in the business.

After the formal part we moved to have some drinks and of course talk some more. We also had totally new participants who were then introduced to the Pelilabra room at Valtakatu 19.

All in all, it was very encouraging and motivating to hear the guys’ startup stories and the things they had learned along the way. The stuff I personally learned from this event actually could have their own post some time later. Informative and fun indeed, more of this, please! Here are some photos from the gathering:

How our new Industry Partner AWS can help Finnish game studios to grow?

IGDA Finland has recently got fabulous new Studio Affiliates like Frogmind, Kuuasema and Housemarque. Also Amazon Web Services, G-Cluster and Lexia have joined as Industry Partners. Welcome! Amazon Web Services (AWS) has witnessed several game industry success stories. That's why we decided to have a chat with the AWS guys to learn what type of business growth tips they can give to Finnish game studios.

When it comes to cloud computing, there's no bigger name than Amazon Web Services (AWS). Most likely every relevant Facebook and mobile game developer knows and uses / has used AWS. How big AWS actually is?

AWS: We have hundreds of thousands of customers in over 190 countries and among those customers we have a significant number of gaming customers leveraging AWS. Customers like Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Supercell and Sega all take advantage of the flexibility and scalability of AWS technology. For game developers AWS offers a comprehensive set of development tools and services that make it faster and easier for developers to build, deploy, distribute, scale, analyze, and monetize successful games.

Why you decided to become an IGDA Finland's Industry Partner?

AWS: We want to support the Finnish game developer community to help them become more successful in their game development efforts. Leveraging AWS services has helped companies like Supercell, Rovio, and Grand Cru to focus on game development instead of setting up and managing the infrastructure.

More concretely, how can AWS help Finnish game development studios to grow? AWS: Game development is part science and part art. Developers strive to deliver compelling entertaining experiences for users but never really know how successful their game will be until they actually launch it. A big question that a game developer must address is how to prepare for game success or even failure? For a Social Game the number of players can be unpredictable; for some games the number increases rapidly and then drops again. To cope with the rapid growth anticipated with their most popular games Monster World, Diamond Dash and Bubble Island, Wooga turned to Amazon Web Services. With AWS Wooga (link to the case study) could scale easily to meet their peak demands. On the flip side, when the peak was met and the game dropped back to a steady state they were able to scale back the number of servers they were using just as easily and all without the headache of acquiring and managing their own physical infrastructure.

Amazon focuses on five things:

1) Pricing - always looking for ways to drive down costs for customers. When Sega’s Online Operation team was looking for a new home for their public websites, AWS was the obvious answer. Once migration on to AWS was complete, Sega noted a cost reduction in server costs of 50%.

2) Flexibility – Game developers are innovators. They are always looking for new ways to bring compelling entertainment in the form of games to users and as such need the flexibility to stitch together infrastructure as they see fit. Sony’s Naughty Dog Game Studio (link to the case study), maker of the popular Uncharted Series, looked to AWS to support them with Uncharted 3’s online multiplayer features and noted that the ability to have low level access to AWS’ powerful services meant that they are never in a position where there is something they can’t do.

3) Rapid Provisioning – With AWS Auto Scaling game developers know that they can programmatically increase the number of servers they use to meet user demand. This means that they can provision only as much as they need to get started and as the game grows in popularity they can scale to meet demand. In addition, they can scale back down when the demand decreases to a steady state.

4) Focus on the game – AWS enables game developers to focus on what they love, building great games, while AWS handles the undifferentiated heavy lifting of core infrastructure.

5) Rapid Growth and Scale – game developers can be confident that there are always resources available to support the rapid growth when a game becomes a hit. Take for example the Finnish-based game developer, Supercell, that successfully launched Hay Day and Clash of Clans in 2012. Since then Supercell's player base has reached over 8.5 million daily players and to manage their infrastructure they use AWS. The AWS services are important for Supercell to manage the rapid growth of their server usage and keep their players happy.

Amazon has done lots of case studies, including many Finnish game industry super stars: take a look at the Amazon case studies to learn more. Just to highlight some, check out Rovio and Supercell case study.

Join IGDA Finland November 12th Gathering to meet with Amazon guys in person.

IGDA Finland Oulu Hub September Gathering

On 19th of September the local game developers of Oulu gathered once again for a relaxed night out at the restaurant 45 Special to embrace (or ward off) the closing autumn. This time there were no presentations or other official programme, but rather some laid-back socializing and casual conversation. Amongst the discussion one could hear longing for the “good old” games, listen to new game ideas being tossed around and participate in general game or game development related chat. All in all, a very warm and easy-going evening.

In October IGDA Finland Oulu Hub will arrange a “Interested in game industry” evening, targeted especially for students interested in applying for a job or an internship in a game development company. We will have a couple of presentations from professional game developers and after that we’ll spend the rest of the evening networking and having fun. And of course, you don’t have to be a student to join in; all are welcome!

For more information about our events and news concerning the Oulu game development scene, follow https://www.facebook.com/IGDA.Finland.Oulu.Hub

Antti Wilenius & IGDA Finland Oulu Hub coordinators

IGDA Finland October Gathering and Presentation with Unity

The weather is getting colder, but our season is just getting warmed up! We have cooked up for you a hot bowl of IGDA Finland Presentation on the topic of Unity to keep you warm, so check out the presentations and speakers below:

Native 2D is coming to Unity! (Andy Touch) Andy will demonstrate the new framework and how to setup your projects to use 2D features such as physics, polygon collider generation, sprite objects and spritesheet animation. He will also talk about how the new features fit into Unity's existing asset-creation workflows and give examples of 2D-related additions to the scripting API.

Unity Tips&Tricks and Good Practices (Marco Trivellato) In this presentation we will talk about different Unity tricks that the audience will be able to take away and use immediately. Topics include profiling and optimisations, memory and garbage collection, editor tricks as well as Unity game development good practices.

Unity Physics Gameplay (Sampsa Lehtonen) In this session we delve into the physics features of Unity and explore how they can be used to implement and enhance gameplay. The focus is on Sampsa's personal experiences and lessons he has learned while working on Unity games with 2D / 2.5D physics gameplay.

Unity Editor: Make it work for you (Brendan Erquiaga) In this presentation we will cover all aspects of Editor Scripting and how everyone should leverage them to improve development. We will talk about scripts to help remove friction from your pipeline, methods to automate tedious tasks, and tricks for improving day-to-day Unity use. Additionally we will explore the strength of giving editor tools to your designers, allowing them to maximize their efficiency. 

Game Development World Championship 2013 (VIOPE) Game Development World Championship 2013 is a sequel of successful Viope Game Programming Contest 2012, which engaged over 500 teams from 70 countries. The GDWC 2013 is open to game developers and enthusiasts all over the world, from students to freelancers and professionals. The competition starts from 8th October 2013 and lasts to 26th January 2014. Especially throughout the competition, participants will be couched by the world's famous companies - Rovio and Microsoft - to name a few. The winning team will get great prizes (to be be announced at the Opening Ceremony), more importantly to showcase your talents and grab future opportunities in the gaming industry.

Presenters:

Andy Touch (Unity) Since he added physics to a cube and watched it bounce, Andy has been interested in experimenting and playing around with gaming technology. Having specialised in Unity at university, and then going on to teach the engine to higher education students, he is now part of the Evangelist team at Unity Technologies and helps to spread the word to new users and to show off what it can do! He loves creating interactive 3D art experiments, taking part in game jams & hack days and helping Unity Developers to get the most out of the game engine.

Marco Trivellato (Unity) Marco is a veteran in the game industry with a strong background in computer science and a passion for programming and video games. He worked for many years in Italy, Canada and now England. In his time in Vancouver he worked for Electronic Arts and Next Level Games as systems and rendering software engineer on triple-A titles like FIFA, Fight Night 3 and Captain America, spending most of his time on game engines, focusing on their performance and architecture. Then he decided to move on and joined Unity for a new career challenge. He now works in UK as Field Engineer helping other game developers to make great games!

Sampsa Lehtonen (Recoil Games & Draconus Entertainment ltd.) Sampsa Lehtonen is a game programmer with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Even with a Master's degree in computer science, he is self-taught what comes to developing games. He has been working on titles ranging from indie (Triplane Turmoil 2 for PC) to mobile (Rock Runners for iOS and Android, Bad Piggies) to "triple A next-gen" console games (Rochard for PS3, PC, Mac and Linux).

Brendan Erquiaga (Retora Game Studios) Brendan is an independent game developer who has been using the Unity Engine to fuel his creations for the past four years. Being a Designer/Programmer, he has always enjoyed the freedom & speed of working in Unity. He started as a self-taught hobbyist, then attended university for game design which helped him work his way up to full-time developer. He has lead large teams, created solo projects, done Unity contract work, developed for Retora Game Studios, and last year he taught teenagers to develop mobile games in Unity. Currently Brendan is the Creative Director at Retora Black, a mobile game studio out of Phoenix, Arizona.

IGDA Finland Gathering start at the same place right after the presentations. Stay tuned for updates!

IGDA Finland Presentations – Unity Time: 8.10.2013 at 17:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland October Gathering Time: 8.10.2013 at 19:15 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering with Turku Game Startups

The fall gatherings were kicked off in the flavour of Turku based game startups and boy, was it tasty! Bar Bryssel was once again filled with enthusiasm especially because this time we had a show from a total of 6 arising game development stars!

• Kuutti Entertainment, who are bringing game classics back to life

• Binary Cat Games, who are developing a rock-themed puzzle platform game for PC called Synesthesia

• Team Enigmatic, who are developing Enigma Elevator, an eccentric point'n'click adventure where you play as the only teenager in the world

• Vitali Kirpu, an indie dev who is working on Pixel Piracy, a side-scrolling 2d, pirate roguelike game

• Indium Game Stories, who are developing Unhuman, where you play as a survivor in the city of the damned. Indium is also working on a cross-platform game engine

• Brainboxing, who are developing Caligula Master, a game heavily inspired by the movie Cube

  

The night continued on with some special announcements. Turku’s very own Unity hero, Veli-Pekka Kokkonen, who has been really active in boosting the local gamedev community also treated us with live news about Unity2D from the Unite ‘13 conference. He’s been involved in creating the Unity2D framework and so the news were met with cheers and requests for demos and premium support!

Also, one of the longest running game companies in Turku, Treehouse was over to playtest one of the most ambitious games the Turku game scene had seen so far. Fierce battles were had between contestants with this highly competetive game, but we’ll get back with this awesome game a bit later...

Tatu Laine & IGDA Finland Turku Hub coordinators