IGDA Finland February Gathering with Amazon Web Services and VIOPE

The February gathering of IGDA Finland was teeming with eager guests as Amazon Web Services held a presentation about their latest game development tools and there was also a message from the Finnish Game Jam 2014 that attracted over 700 jammers all around Finland, the biggest FGJ to date! 

One of the main events of the evening though was Viope’s announcement of the Game Development World Championship 2013 winners. The competition attracted developers from 79 countries as participants competed in the Student or the Pro track. Congratulations to Hopping Penguin (Winner of the student track) and Like a Boss (Winner of the pro track and the main prize)! Check out the GDWC website to see all of the finalists and a video of the closing event: http://viope.com/contest.

Despite the rain and the cold weather Adams was jam-packed by the end of the evening. Thank you to all who attended and we hope to see you at today's gathering!

IGDA Finland March Gathering with Lexia and PlayRaven

It’s almost time for the March Gathering! This month we’ll have three awesome speakers for you in IGDA Finland Presentations. These guests of honor represent the mobile games marketing platform developer Applift, mobile services developer and operator DeNA and one of the world’s six Tier 1 Internet operators, Level3. More details about each of their topics will be announced later this week on Facebook and in the reminder email. The presentations start at 17:00.

As always, we also have sponsors who make sure everyone can enjoy the gathering to the fullest! This month our fun time is boosted by one of our rising startup stars, PlayRaven, and the legal superheroes at Lexia. They’ll have some words to share with us around 20:00 so keep your eyes fixed on the stage at that point.

PlayRaven is a Helsinki-based mobile game studio on a mission to serve uncontested gaming audiences in app stores worldwide. PlayRaven has just completed a $2.3 million seed investment round and is backed by Creandum as well as early-stage Supercell investors Jari Ovaskainen and London Venture Partners.

Lexia has advised several Finnish games developers on significant investment rounds, including the $2.3 million seed funding round of PlayRaven. Lexia offers its clients a business minded approach and attitude that brings competitive edge.

For Lexia legal is not just about avoiding problems – it is also adding value by ensuring business goals are met efficiently.

About Lexia:

Lexia Attorneys is a Finnish law firm offering high-quality expertise in all areas of domestic and international business law. Lexia is internationally recognized as one of the leading Finnish law firms in the field of Technology & Media, Intellectual Property, and Finance. Lexia’s international networks enable effective and reliable execution of assignments worldwide.

Lexia also provides the Lexia Growth Program (LGP) for supporting new potential growth companies. LGP includes different elements that are coordinated by Lexia and provided by us or by our exclusive partner network for fixed and project based fees.

IGDA Finland Presentations Time: 11.03.2014 at 17:00-19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

IGDA Finland March Gathering Time: 11.03.2014 at 19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

 The lovely people of Club Adams offer the cloakroom service free of charge!

Jyväskylä February Gathering

Expa’s second gathering this year was held on its usual spot and time, on a Tuesday at Shaker. We had two great guests, researchers from the Gamecloud-project from Lappeenranta University of Technology and Lasse Seppänen from PlayRaven.

Before the gathering we had a workshop with Gamecloud, connecting game projects to the cloud service developed in the project. Janne Parkkila, Kati Järvi and Timo Hynninen helped us figure out Gamecloud and get the service running. It is now in closed beta, but the API is open and on Github. At the gathering, we heard a bit more on where their research is now and how we can use it for making games.

Our other guest was Lasse Seppänen, CEO of PlayRaven, which just received $2.3M in seed investment. Lasse told us about his history at Remedy, for example about making Alan Wake. He also told us more about PlayRaven, and the game they are currently making, Spymaster. A game about managing spies in mid-war Europe? Can’t wait for it to be out. Everyone was eager to hear tips from a games industry veteran, so we almost didn’t let him off the stage after the questions started pouring in.

Thank you everyone for a fun gathering and we hope our guests visit us again soon!

Expa & IGDA Finland Jyväskylä Hub volunteers

IGDA Finland February Gathering with Amazon Web Services and VIOPE

Now that the year has finally gotten to a great start, we decided to ramp it up in IGDA Finland February Gathering.

First up we have a small message from this year’s awesome Finnish Game Jam 2014. After that the people from Amazon Web Services will give you a short intro on how gaming companies are leveraging their platform. And last but not least is the VIOPE crew presenting the Game Development World Championship 2013 which has reached its end. The 4-month-long competition drew massive attention of developers from 79 countries around the globe. It’s now time to reveal the finalists and announce the winners. Come and celebrate with us at the GDWC Closing Ceremony!

Here is a sneak-peak at what Amazon is presenting at the Gathering:

Amazon 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. Learn how companies like Supercell, Rovio, Grand Cru, and Mojang are utilizing AWS platform to innovate faster and focus on game development instead of undifferentiated heavy-lifting of managing IT infrastructures. You will also get a chance to hear about some of our latest developments including application and game streaming from the cloud (Amazon AppStream) and C3, our latest generation of compute-optimized instances providing customers with the highest performing processors and enhanced network performance making this instance type a perfect fit for MMOG games.

The lovely people Club Adams offer the cloakroom service free of charge!

IGDA Finland February Gathering Time: 11.02.2014 at 18:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

Jyväskylä Expa, now also an IGDA Finland Hub!

Expa's December Gathering had both a great guest and lots of cause for celebration. Formally, Expa is registered in 2013, but actually, it was already alive and well in 2012. This means that Expa is now one year old!

Congratulations Expa!

But there is more: Expa is now officially an IGDA Finland hub, representing game developers from Jyväskylä around Finland and the world.

As a guest, we had Joachim Achrén, formerly the lead analyst at Supercell and now running his own company, Next Games. Joachim gave us great tips on what kinds of numbers to crunch in games.

We also heard about the game projects that are part of Expa Game Lab. Four games in total are on their way to completion in 2014, and we heard what Buggers, Seth, COMA and CyberAfrica had been doing.

In January, Expa kicked the year off with Unity and Microsoft, when the LevelUp-tour came to Jyväskylä. First, developers spent the day doing games for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. It was a great chance to hear tips and tricks for Unity, and then have a chance at publishing a game on the Windows platforms.

Later in the evening, we played Tekken Tag Tournament 2. There was a tournament of 12 players, with Sami Sorvo taking the lead with an unbroken chain of wins. Congratulations!