IGDA Finland Turku Hub February with King

In February IGDA Finland had the great pleasure of being visited by game developers from the Swedish company King. Benjamin Glaser, Mikael Säker and Robert Käck toured Finland and visited Kotka, Helsinki and last but not least, the Turku hub. Be sure to also check out the report of the Helsinki event. On Wednesday 10.2 they spoke both at the ICT-building in Turku, and at the IGDA evening gathering at Restaurant Mauno. The audience got an insight into King as a company and a brand, and a thorough and enthusiastic presentation of King’s game engine Defold, that is about to be publically launched very soon. The gathering also featured a demo corner.

From shooting bubbles to blasting blossoms

Robert and Benjamin gave us a short history of King, and some very helpful hints for students that are interested in breaking into the game industry.

The company was founded in 2003, and the first kinds of games produced were so called “skill games”. These are small puzzle type games with very quick rounds, and usually the theme was shooting bubbles. In the early business model there was also betting involved.

Between 2003 and 2010 King created around 150 IP’s. The company became profitable in 2005 and partnered with Yahoo at this time. When Facebook entered the social media scene, King developed the “Saga”-format and targeted Facebook users. The Saga format includes the maps that the player progresses on, the star system and the progression of the puzzles. In 2012 mobile had also become an important frontier for King games to conquer. The core mechanic of the games stays the same. A distinct feature is the cross platform functionality. King’s four franchises are Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes Saga and Bubble Witch Saga.

King has 1700 employees in 13 studios around the world. The Shanghai office is the newest one. King games have a user base of 330 million, which is challenging to manage. The company has been awarded the title of Sweden’s best employer twice, and there is much effort put on nurturing a balanced company culture and clear values. Employees need to have a certain mindset to fit in, and aspirants for jobs go through a process of interviews to make sure that they are a fit.

Robert, who works with the King brand, gave the students at the ICT lecture some valuable hints on how to apply for internships and jobs in the game industry on a general level. Target fewer companies, rather than shooting with a shotgun and sending out masses of generic applications. Be sure to write applications that stand out in the competition. What kind of company do you want to work for, and what is the company that you are applying for actually like? Ask around and do research. Also networking is very important, as many recruitments are made via referrals, at least when it comes to King. Volunteering for IGDA is one way to network for example…

Not for tech tinkerers

Benjamin and Mikael’s aim for doing this tour of Finland is also to spread the word on King’s game engine Defold. The engine has been in development for over six years, and is ready to be officially launched. Although it has been possible to get invites for quite a while already, so the engine is already functioning and in use. The latest game release from King – Blossom Blast – was made with Defold.

Although King is developing the engine, it is not only for internal use (and there are no King ads or anything like that in games made with it). One of the initial developers and founders of Defold, has said “we wanted to make something that was state of the art, not state of the industry”. The point being that Defold is not tech focused. It contains solutions for generic problems.

And it will be given out for free.

Benjamin mentioned several reasons for this: 1) To make sure King is relevant in the industry – that they are a tech savvy company; 2) Creating a larger user base leads to improved production quality and also benefits the internal users; 3) It’s nice, and they have the means to do it. Of course, showing good will to the game developer community is part of a branding strategy as well.

During the daytime lecture Mikael gave the audience a lot of insight into the game design process, and in the evening his presentation was more focused on showing how Defold works. One of his main messages was that when we are designing, we are not just having ideas and then implementing them, rather, design is about making ideas work, and “discovering the idea” as the design process moves forward.

The developers of Defold hope that their engine will make this process easier by making the engine and design process collaborative – “things communicate”. One effect of using Defold has been shortening the loading time for the games, which also makes the gaming experience much more pleasant for the player.

If you want to know more, check out the Defold webpage: http://www.defold.com/

Democorner

The gathering also had a couple of demos to try out: Sauna Simulator by students at Turku UAS and Quadro Delta’s Ragnorium. The Sauna Simulator was made in 48 hours at the Global Game Jam, and became an instant hit on YouTube with 25000 views in less than a week.

For more about Quadro Delta, check out their website: http://www.quadrodelta.com/

Text: Jenny Wiik

Photos: Natasha Trygg & Toni Heinonen

IGDA Finland Turku Hub

IGDA Finland Seminars + February Gathering with King: The Aftermath

Hello again! Time to recap the Helsinki February gathering! The atmosphere was very warm, with an impressive number of people having showed up to hear the pre-gathering seminar. We had King representatives talking about the company's new game engine Defold, as well as New Dawn and Housemarque to show us a teaser trailer of their upcoming documentary feature film, Name of the Game. While waiting for the Candy Crush Royalty to show up, we had a chance to set up a Pulla Crush of our own - King, our sponsor this month, had provided some delicious Shrove buns for the Almond team and the Jam team to battle over. ;)

The Defold Saga

Robert Käck, Mikael Säker, and Benjamin Glaser from King introduced us to King's brand new game engine, Defold. King acquired Defold, now a six-year-old company,  two years ago. So far, Defold has been used for the King title Blossom Blast Saga, and a number of indie games.

The core idea around Defold is to create a lightweight game engine that would cut down the time spent fiddling with tools, and help you spend more time actually creating awesome games. Since most of the Defold devs come from AAA backgrounds, they know the importance of performance and scale - not just that of the games, but of the tools as well. Moreover, they wanted a tool that the entire team can use, from programmers to artists.

The engine itself will be very customisable. Capable of 2D and some nice physics out of the box, at its core Defold is 3D. The main scripting language is Lua, and all the features support fast and easy workflow. When restructuring folders, for instance, the engine keeps track of references for you. You can even make changes in scripts while running the game in the editor and see them take effect immediately! This is really good news for testing small tweaks. The builds for different platforms are also very fast, thanks to Lua.

There are some limits, of course – 3D and requires a little bit more effort and tinkering, and Lua as scripting language means you basically need to go low-level to create AIs. Currently the devs are working on a new, better editor view and engine expandability.

Sharing is caring

King is releasing Defold to the open public for free. There will be no premium versions, the engine will be the same inside and outside the company. When asked why, the answer was "because we can". Openness also maintains positive pressure to keep up great quality and discourages trick solutions.

The engine is currently at invite phase, and there are invites available for IGDA people here. Defold will be officially published at around GDC this year.

Vote Finnish in IGDA elections!

Vesa Raudasoja was applauded to the stage to remind the audience of his nomination to IGDA Board of Directors. Mr. Raudasoja feels that while IGDA is the largest game developers' association in the world, it is very US-centric. Mr. Raudasoja would like to offer global perspective and unite the European game front. If you are a member of IGDA, exercise your right to vote!

Name of the Game

Last but not least, we got a teaser sample from Name of the Game. What started as a marketing video about Housemarque's still very hush-hush game project collaboration with the arcade game legend Eugene Jarvis has now turned into a full-length film production.

The New Dawn camera crew has been following the development process for 18 months now, and while Mikael Haveri, the Head of Self Publishing from Housemarque told us that at first they felt a bit shy and may have needed a beer to relax in front of the cameras, they have now become a natural part of the process. We can attest to that, having seen his butt in some epic ice swimming scenes!

The film will follow the key moments of the project, but it also dives into the lives of the devs outside the project. Release is expected after the game – still unnamed – is released, but we can't wait to see the result!

If you missed the presentation, you find the trailer and more info here.

Photos by Daniel Schildt

That's that for this time! Hope to see you in March!

White Nights Helsinki: Update

It’s now official: the White Nights conference welcomes developers and publishers for all platforms!

On February, 11-12, 2016 the Wanha Satama exhibition centre will open its doors for the White Nights attendees!

The very first White Nights conference in 2012 was focused solely on mobile games. Last year 'social' was added to the event title. Although, the games market is constantly changing and the phenomenon of cross-platform has become a trend impossible to ignore. It was time to make the change and invite the entire gaming industry with PC, console, web, social and mobile projects!

Program

The final program is available on the conference website. Experts from leading companies will share their knowledge and secrets to success! Viber, Supercell, Rovio, Wooga, Playraven, Wargaming, Google, Amazon, YouTube, Sony Playstation, Facebook, VK.com, and many more will be attending!

Matchmaking

A list of already registered companies (http://wnconf.com/en/attendees/index) is now available on the conference website and is being updated on a regular basis!

Networking parties

It’s not a secret that the White Nights Conference is famous for its awesome networking parties (http://wnconf.com/en/parties)!

There will be two parties held at the conference in Helsinki. The pre-party will take place on February 10 in the Teatteri Restaurant. At the end of the first day of the conference, on February 11, there will be an official White Nights all-night party held at the lounge-restaurant Club Capital! Dinner buffet, drinks kindly sponsored by Supercell, DJ and great networking will be awaiting the conference attendees! This is the party nobody wants to miss.

Raffle

At the end of the second day of the conference, from 6:30pm till 7pm all attendees are invited to take their chances in the White Nights Super Raffle! You never know, it could be you leaving the conference with one of the prizes.

There is still time to register: http://wnconf.com/en/#registration Use promo code IGDA-Finland to get 20% off the price.

See you in Helsinki!

Vesa Raudasoja nominated for IGDA Board of Directors / Vesa Raudasoja ehdolla IGDA:n hallitukseen

A long time active IGDA Finland member and a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Vesa Raudasoja has been nominated for International Game Developer's Association's (IGDA) Board of Directors. Raudasoja has been involved with IGDA Finland since the beginning, and is the first Finnish person nominated for the Board. Previously the Board of Directors has mainly consisted of members from North America.

A game developer himself, and having closely followed the growth of Finnish game industry, Raudasoja finds IGDA's role very important for game developer communities and wants to get European and Scandinavian voices heard more in the community.

"I'm sure that many game studios in Finland and internationally have started because of IGDA's activities. Without an organization like this the game industry in Finland, for example, would probably be much smaller. Game developer communities are very important and IGDA has been creating these for years all around the world.”

All full members of IGDA are eligible to vote on the election until the end of February. There are four candidates in total of which two will be elected.

Raudasoja will be saying a few words on his nomination at the February gathering on 9.2.

More information on the election: http://www.igda.org/?page=elections2016

Vesa's Campaign Page: https://www.facebook.com/voteforvesa

IGDA Finlandin pitkäaikainen aktiivi, Lifetime Achievement Awardilla palkittu Vesa Raudasoja on ehdolla International Game Developer's Association (IGDA):n hallitukseen. Raudasoja on ollut mukana IGDA Finlandin toiminnassa sen perustamisesta lähtien ja on ensimmäisenä suomalaisena ehdolla hallitukseen, jonka paikat ovat aiemmin jakautuneet enimmäkseen pohjois-amerikkalaisten toimijoiden kesken.

Raudasoja on itsekin pelinkehittäjä, ja on ollut seuraamassa Suomen peliteollisuuden kasvua pienistä indie-studioista satojen pelialan yritysten maaksi. Hän pitää IGDA:n roolia erittäin tärkeänä peliteollisuudelle, ja haluaa saada yhteisössä kuuluviin erityisesti pohjoismaista ja eurooppalaista ääntä.

“Olen varma, että monikin pelialan yritys niin Suomessa kuin ulkomaillakin on saanut alkunsa IGDA:n ansiosta. Ilman tällaista toimijaa peliteollisuus etenkin Suomessa olisi varmasti pienempi. Yhteisöt ovat erittäin tärkeitä ja IGDA on luonut näitä vuosien ajan ympäri maailman.”

Kaikki IGDA:n täysivaltaiset jäsenet voivat äänestää vaaleissa aina helmikuun loppuun asti. Neljästä nimetystä ehdokkaasta kaksi valitaan hallitukseen.

Raudasoja on paikalla helmikuun tapaamisessa 9.2. ja pitää puheenvuoron ehdokkuudestaan.

More information on the election: http://www.igda.org/?page=elections2016

Vesa's Campaign Page: https://www.facebook.com/voteforvesa

IGDA Finland Seminars + February Gathering With King

After a great start for the new year it's time to get ready for the February gathering!

The gathering will be sponsored by King, best known for launching several hugely popular titles like Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga and Bubble Witch Saga. To get the evening started we'll have a seminar with presentations from three amazing gentlemen: Robert Käck, Mikael Säker and Benjamin Glaser.

Robert's main claim to fame was winning both gold and silver at the Swedish championships in NHLPA Hockey '93 and NHL '94 on Sega Mega Drive back in the day. Nowadays he makes sure that King is a great place to work and create games at, heading up the employer brand team. Mikael Säker has been working professionally in the videogames industry since 2002; as a writer, narrative designer, game designer and game director. He is currently working in King's Defold team as a technical writer, designer and developer and for DICE as a narrative director. Benjamin Glaser started out as a game artist in 2001. He has been responsible for a number of original titles from, among others, King and has worked both as artist and game designer, mainly in the mobile space. Lately he has focused on bringing digital products to market, working with companies such as Spotify and is currently responsible for the public launch of King's game engine Defold.

Also, a long time active IGDA Finland member and a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Vesa Raudasoja, who was recently nominated for IGDA Board of Directors, will say a few words about his nomination.

And that's not all! On top of all that we'll be showing a clip of the upcoming documentary film The Name of the Game. The film covers the adventures and collaboration of the legendary game designer, Eugene Jarvis, and the Finnish game developer, Housemarque.

So come and escape the snow and cold for an evening of fun and friends!

IGDA Finland Seminars, Sponsored by King
Time: 09.02.2016 at 17:30 – 18:30
Place: Maxine, Urho Kekkosen katu 1 A, 6th floor, 00100 Helsinki

- Robert Käck, Mikael Säker and Benjamin Glaser

IGDA Finland February Gathering with King
Time: 09.02.2016 at 19:00
Place: Maxine, Urho Kekkosen katu 1 A, 6th floor, 00100 Helsinki

Please note that you need to be at least 18 years old to attend. The cloakroom service is offered free of charge.