A Night with PlayRaven and Aalto Game Executive Programme

Lasse Seppänen, CEO of PlayRaven, started the night by explaining to us why strategy matters. Going into game design is a serious business. Saying we "just want to make games" is like saying "I just want to drive a car": it's vague and directionless.  Lasse's piece of advice is to work out the details and have people who can actually handle managing all these decisions:  It's not enough to just make games without this foresight.

 

The Game Executive programme at Aalto University: an intensive three-part "bootcamp" for game developers that combines insight on such topics like Financial Planning, Free-to-play, Asian markets, Branding, and Pitching.  During the evening, Saila Laitinen, Co-founder of Sfonge Ltd gave us a breakdown on the facts about China as a mobile market:  China has had the largest number of active smartphones in any country since 2013.  China's mobile game market is expected to maintain growth over the next three years, while the global game market growth drops slightly.  But what Laitinen warns us about is that the Chinese market is much different.  Here, there are four times more Android devices than iOS users, and double the revenue.   The channels for distributing Android games is fragmented between many different providers, including China Telecom's own channel, Play.cn, and almost a third of iOS players derive games from third party platforms instead of the official AppStore.  Because of expensive mobile data tariffs and bandwidth limits, and the popularity of low to middle end devices, games developed for the Chinese market need to take this limitations into account to deliver the smoothest game experience possible.

To conclude the talks for the night, Anca Agapi, program manager for Aalto University Executive Education gave a run through of the full programme and prices of the education program, open to all game developers, which is starting on October 29th 2014.  Afterwards, the participants enjoyed mingling and sponsored drinks courtesy of PlayRaven.

IGDA Finland Presentations & October Gathering with PlayRaven

That time of the month again! Be prepared for another night of good times with fellow developers. This time we not only have a fun gathering for you, but also intriguing presentations right before: Introducing The Game Executive program by Aalto University Executive Education! Presentations: Lasse Seppänen CEO, PlayRaven “Why strategy matters in a gaming company”

Saila Laitinen Co-founder, Sfonge Ltd. “How to break into China Market”

Anca Agapi Program Manager Aalto University Executive Education “About Game Executive program”

IGDA Finland Presentations Time: 07.10.2014 at 18:00-19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki

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Recently, the world's first and only WW2 spy manager game totally surprised PlayRaven by rocketing up the charts and became a Top-10 strategy title in 99 countries! So this month, you're warmly welcome to celebrate the global launch of Spymaster with the devs.

IGDA Finland October Gathering Time: 07.10.2014 at 19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

As usual, the cloakroom service is offered free of charge on behalf of Club Adams. The event is restricted to adults only.

IGDA Finland September Gathering with NativeX

September Gathering welcomed us back from the summer holidays, and despite the rainy weather the atmosphere inside was as cheerful as ever. Our lovely sponsor NativeX gave us some insight into their ad technology, treated us with cool little USB phone chargers and entertained the crowd with impromptu singing. Tunes of the Moomin theme filled Adams, as everyone was encouraged to join in to sing along. I'm sure everyone can agree with me on that they sure knew how to attract people's attention!

Additionally, Patty Toledo dropped by the stage briefly to bring a cool event to our attention: BeatCon 2015, a music & games festival. Game developers, companies and producers will be offered several opportunities of workshops, lecturers and round-table discussions, with the goal of improving the game market, creating new opportunities and nurturing relationships. The event takes place in Jyväskylä on January 29-31.

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering with BoostTurku & Turku Indies

September came quickly around the corner and it was once again time to gather around to talk about games and game development with BoostTurku, the local entrepreneurship society! This time, we had a showcase where people could come and and present their awesome indie game projects & companies.

BoostTurku with it’s accelerator program Startup Journey has been a great source of very promising game companies and they are really central in the development of the game scene in Turku!

Here’s what’s hot in the Turku area!

NordicEdu, an educational and serious games company is about to release Tile Tail, a unique casual number puzzle game very soon. The game has an awesome look & feel and here’s  hoping it will find it’s puzzle-loving audience!

Tony Sundell, a Turku indie game developer who has been creating an adventure game all by himself for about 2 years now is reaching the beta stage with his preposterous and really fun adventure game “Bunker The Underground Game” promising over 4 hours of gameplay. Truly an achievement to behold. Check out the awesome trailer! (Amusement guaranteed!)

Walk Mode is a recently founded indie games company formed by 2 experienced game developers Juuso Mattila and Matti Faler. Their game “Papa Void’s Power Skateboarding” is not a platformer game - it’s a jumping game! Such a genre defying concept comes alive in this sweet looking screenshot and believe it, the game looks a lot better in action!

Bugbyte’s latest project is a mixture of a simplified mini game for mobile devices and a bigger  game for PC! Battlestation - Humanity’s Last Hope is a game where Babylon 5 meets Faster Than Light. This ambitious project has a lot of wind under its wings so we strongly recommend to check it out! http://battlestation.fi/

NoName Games is a very recently formed games startup that is looking to combine fresh game mechanics with classic game concepts. They were showing off their infinite runner game with drawing gameplay. Follow their interesting journey here! http://www.nonamegames.fi/

FakeFish is also a very recent games startup and they were presenting their Kalevala inspired upcoming role-playing-game Northbound. The startup has a large team so we’re expecting to see big things from them! Take a look at their devblog follow their undertakings through here http://fakefish.fi/

We did this kind of Turku Indie Gathering a year ago and it has been incredible to see the immense progress happening in the local scene. Rock on and be back for another gathering in October!

Tatu Laine

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Volunteers

IGDA Finland September Gathering with NativeX

Welcome to the IGDA Finland's September Gathering on Tuesday 9th September!

Hope you have been enjoying the hot summer days and some good rest & recreation over the summer because now it's time to get back to business! Come say hello to all your friends and peers you've been missing over the months, and make some new acquaintances!

This month's generous sponsor is NativeX. NativeX is the leading ad technology for games, with over 150 million unique MAU from top grossing apps. For developers who want advertising that really works, NativeX is the marketing technology platform that is reinventing in-app advertising. For over a decade, advertisers have relied on NativeX to acquire more than 1 billion high quality users.

IGDA Finland September Gathering Time: 09.09.2014 at 19:00 Place: Club Adams, Erottaja 15-17, Helsinki Finland

As usual, the cloakroom service is offered free of charge on behalf of Club Adams. The event is restricted to adults only.