Finnish Game Day '19 in St. Petersburg

Finnish Game Day is an annual event that takes place in St. Petersburg at the Consulate of Finland on June 18th, a day before the White Nights Conference.

The mission of this event is to bring investors, publishers and founders of game studios from Finland, Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia together to explore business opportunities. Leading industry experts will participate in panel discussions on topics like investments in games, publishing and new markets, as well as, Finland as a place to grow game companies. Panelists will share their views about trends in the market and discuss business opportunities.

The Finnish Game Day team will be selecting 15 game studios and startups to receive a package that includes the Finnish Game Day seminar, two standard tickets to the White Nights Conference, a mini-stand in the Play Finland area to promote your games and company, and a networking boat tour along the Neva River and canals all for 200EUR + VAT.

There will be a Warm Up event to FGD19 will be held at Helsinki Games Factory on May 14th at 16.00 where a detailed plan of the events in St. Petersburg will be presented along with a question and answer session.

Warm Up Facebook event

For more information on the events, panelists and traveling to Russia visit: https://finnishgameday.com/fgdtrip19

For those who can’t make it to St. Petersburg, Devs.tv will provide a live stream of the FGD19 panel discussions that will be shown at the Helsinki Games Factory.

Helsinki Hub: May Demo Corner Sign Up

May's sponsor is PlayStack, a publisher founded on the belief that even the greatest developers need support in order to create their best work. PlayStack can offer that support in three key ways; end-to-end funding, publishing expertise, and tech to build a strong gamer audience and community.

It goes without saying that folks from PlayStack will be present at the gathering on May 14th and scouting for good teams who believe they have the next great thing.

With this in mind, we shall do our best to accommodate as many teams as possible in this month’s demo corner. That said, we may need to cut teams if the list gets too long, especially if there are a number of demos that require lots of space. Otherwise registration ends Sunday, May 12th.

Helsinki Hub: April Gathering with Game Makers of Finland

By Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo

The April IGDA gathering at the Helsinki Hub was sponsored by Game Makers of Finland, the first union in the world for workers of the game industry. Game Makers of Finland celebrated their first anniversary by adding a few surprising spins to the traditional IGDA event; both a professional photographer and a career coach offered their services for free and helped all the interested attendees to improve their CVs.

The main goal of Game Makers of Finland is to ensure that workers and students alike get the required tools and training to prepare them to face the challenges of working in the games industry today. Their vision is to make Finnish gaming industry the best in the world, built upon the values of diversity and equality.

Milla Pennanen and Sami Vuolanne, Coordinator and Vice President of Game Makers of Finland respectively, organized an in-depth panel discussion about working in the Finnish game industry and tried to answer all the burning questions related to it. During this process, the audience was able to participate by answering survey questions via an online platform.

The topics of education, salaries, working benefits, work time and stability were discussed by a diverse panel of professionals- that included Mariina Hallikainen, CEO of Colossal Order, Koopee Hiltunen, Director at Neogames, Joonas Häll, Teacher of Game Design at Metropolia and Jenny Tirkkonen, 3D artist at Sulake.

Left to right: Panelists Jenny Tirkkonen, Koopee Hiltunen, Mariina Hallikainen, Joonas Häll and moderators Milla Pennanen and Sami Vuolanne. Photo by Jesse Eloranta.

After the panelists introduced themselves, they first kicked off the conversation with the topic of education. They unanimously agreed that the theoretical background that education offers is key to getting hired, and cannot be matched by other means of learning. That knowledge can also help students feel more confident and self assured when entering the workforce.  

Unfortunately, not all students have the same luck when it comes to the quality of education they receive. Educational institutions are usually not constructed in a way that allows teachers and students to quickly adapt to ever evolving market conditions. Technology moves very fast and the teachers have to work hard to stay ahead of the curve, which is not always encouraged by academia.

The panel then moved on to salaries and working benefits. The consensus was that workers should always be aware of what their salary demands should be to stay competitive in the market. For that matter, they should consider  moving on to different workplaces if they feel that their career has stalled. An important parameter of course is the different priorities that various employees might have; working for a startup might offer a lower income but keep a worker more engaged in what they do.

Working benefits can be, and many times have been, a decisive factor in the hiring process. Salaries are always relative to living costs, so it should never define one’s choices before put into proper context. Working benefits such as paid overtime, health insurance, and leisure time activities have typically outweigh higher salaries because they better appeal better to the job seekers’ needs.

On the topic of work time and crunching the speakers shared their insight about how companies should treat their employees when they want to reach strict deadlines. While having to work extra is a common phenomenon, there is an important distinction  between agreed overtime and crunching. The first option is generally seen as a fair way to keep employees at work for more hours, while the latter was mostly described as inability to schedule properly that should not be encouraged in any workplace.

The final subject was stability. While it was stated that instability is partially in the nature of the industry, it should never be an excuse for lack of professional planning and management. The workers should always be informed of any given situation of their workplace so they can make their own decisions.

After the seminar session ended, the attendees had the chance to talk with the panelists and the hosts as they wrapped up an informative evening.

If you missed the event and the panel discussion, you can watch it below:

Get 10% Off Game Access in Brno

Are you ready to discover Brno? Game Access '19, the largest annual game development conference in the Czech Republic, will take place from May 24-25, 2019, in the Brno Exhibition Centre. Get ready for talks by well-known game industry professionals from Eidos, Tekla Inc, Isomniac Games, Exit Plan, Ubisoft, Redhill, King, EA, Virtuos, Housemarque, Amanita Design, Seriously, and Geewa. There will also be also dozens of new games, unforgettable networking parties, and two amazing musical performances based on games “Mafia” and “Witcher” (tickets sold separately). All of this and more is waiting for you in the heart of Europe.

IGDA Members get 10% off a conference pass when using promo code: GA19IGDA10

For more information visit the conference website: https://game-access.com

Helsinki Hub: March gathering with Ubisoft RedLynx

Text By Giorgos Riskas and Roope Sorvo

With the winter snow finally starting to melt away, the IGDA Helsinki community came together for the March gathering at Maxine. The March gathering was sponsored by Ubisoft RedLynx, who was celebrating the release of their latest addition to the Trials franchise, Trials Rising. Trials Rising is a physics-based racing platformer with a tongue-in-cheek attitude and over-the-top action. Guests were invited to try out the game in the demo corner and there was a quiz whose winner received a grand prize. When leaving, all of the attendees were treated with a goodie bag.

The gathering was kicked off with a short seminar. Julius Fondem, an Associate Producer at Ubisoft RedLynx, started things off with his presentation Building ‘Trials Rising’ Together with the Community, Julius went through the history of the series, from its browser game roots all the way to the release of Trials Rising, which he describes as a “decided return to the series’ roots.” While the few previous titles had had more fantastical themes that were less grounded in reality, the development team of Trials Rising wanted to focus more on the three pillars at the series’ core: community, competition, and creativity.

Julius Fondem talking about the creation of Trials Rising. Photo by Jesse Eloranta.

Community has always been at the heart of the series. Ubisoft RedLynx has a history of collaborating with the series’ fans, be it through hiring top builders of custom levels, inviting groups of experienced players to the studio for workshops and actively listening to the community’s feedback through a myriad of social media channels. When asked if this kind of collaboration with the community is something any developer could include in their games, Julius’ answered a resounding ‘Yes’. “However, it depends heavily on the type of game being developed,” Julius elaborated. “Each genre and format creates its own type of challenges and limitations.”

The second presentation was hosted by Roland Kindermann, Technical Director, Mobile at Ubisoft RedLynx. His seminar Bringing South Park to the Small Screen delved into the challenges met during development of the mobile collectible card game South Park: Phone Destroyer. This included the process of replicating the world of South Park in a way that that supports the gameplay and works within the limits of a mobile platform, and the processes necessary to produce live content with an incredibly low lead time.

Gathering visitors playing Trials Rising. Photo by Casimir Kuusela.

See you in April!