LAST FEW WEEKS (24-26/2018) IN THE FINNISH GAME INDUSTRY

Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine  weeks 24-26/2018 from the Finnish Game Industry.
News are gathered from the Play Finland group posts during the week. That is why we recommend you to post by yourself (however not flood) your Finnish Game Industry related news to the group. It also guarantees that your news will be visible in the weekly newsletter /news compilation. Play Finland is at the moment one of the main channels for sharing information inside the industry.

 
Events:

• 12-13th June Illusion 2018 / Joensuu
• 27th  June, the annual Finnish Game Day event in St. Petersburg
• 29th June – 1st July Jam Jam Festival / Sappee
• 5-8th July The Big Indie Fest at ReVersed 2018 / Vienna
• 2 August 2018, Shanghai: IMGA China Launch Seminar and Party in conjunction with China Joy. Business talks around the hottest topics.
• 2.-5. August Assembly Summer Messukeskus Helsinki 
  • Assembly ARTtech seminar
• 21st-25th August Games Com Cologne
• 8th September Intuitive Digital Workflow with Loish / Turku
• 11-12th September Pocket Gamer Connects
  • Exclusive 20% discount using code FINLAND20.
• October 19th Monetization in Games: Past, Present and Future – ft. John Romero / Helsinki
• 24th-26th October, Join Neogames and the Nordics at Game Connection Europe / Paris
• 19-23 November 2018, Nanjing: IMGA Judging Sessions, China Game Design Seminar and the Awards Ceremony & Parties

See also The Game Industry Events calendar: http://www.neogames.fi/en/events/eventcalendar
Open jobs:

• Frozenbyte is currently looking for a talented 3D asset artist
  • Some of the materials and guides have been written by them, while some are links to external sources we’ve found to be useful. The wiki page is a transformed version of their internal guidelines with some of the most top-secret bits edited out. Maybe their wiki inspires you to join our Frozenbyte family. Come see more information on the available position and apply at www.frozenbyte.com/jobs
• Ike Lindell is available to draw pixel art for $
• 10tons is looking for an artist and a marketing / biz dev person!
• Full XP is looking for Senior Game Programmer Interested in working for a mobile gaming start-up with an emphasis on entertainment for women? Full XP is looking for a senior game programmer with solid experience in Unity to join our team.
• Mantisbite etsii koodaajaa ja 3D mallintajaa VR pelejä tekemään.
• Ubisoft are looking to employ a Finnish Speaking Customer Support Agent. They would be working in the Newcastle office in the north of England. They would need to ideally be big gamer’s and quite technically minded, this is because they will be troubleshooting issues for players of their games. They also need to have a Native level of spoken and written Finnish PM Ville Ikäheimonen for details
• Gigglebug Entertainment is looking to hire a person passionate about kids and YouTube to join our Helsinki team starting in August. For more information and an expanded job description contact thatcher@gigglebug.fi
• 700+ game companies in the Nordics to get an overview of game development jobs available right now. Currently 440 job openings in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway – browse through them at http://gameform.eu/
• More jobs at gamesjobs.fi

Releases;

• FuturePlay’s Battlelands Royale globally released on iOS
• Laina Interactive’s  The Slater released on STEAM.
• Escapism Artworks released Far-Out at Steam
• Dark Amber Softworks Avenging Angel on Steam.
• Gamingzone to produce a new entertainment program for the launch of Nitro Games’ new game “ Heroes of Warland

Annoucments;

• According to Finnish economy magazine “Talouselämä” 20 biggest Finnish Game Companies are making in total EUR 2176 million turnover.
  • Talouselämä listasi Suomen suurimmat peliyritykset: Suuret pelitalot kilpailevat nyt 100 miljoonan euron rajan ylittämisestä. 20 suurinta peliyhtiötä tekivät viime vuonna yhteensä 2176 miljoonan euron liikevaihdon. Se on 11 prosenttia edellisvuotta vähemmän, ja syy löytyy erityisesti Supercellistä.
• Critical Force nets $6.3m investment to scale esports operation
  • Kotimainen Critical Force haali yli 5 miljoonan rahoituksen eUrheilun kehittämiseen – jo 40 miljoonaa pelilatausta kasassa
  • Kajaanilaiselle peliyritykselle yli viiden miljoonan rahoitus – Business Finland tukee yritystä kasvavilla mobiilipelimarkkinoilla
• ‘Control’ is the next game from ‘Alan Wake’ developer Remedy
  • Suurtuotannoistaan tunnettu suomalainen peliyhtiö Remedy esitteli Los Angelesissa odotetun uutuuspelinsä – Tämän takia se voi olla seuraava suomalainen hittipeli
• The annual Apple Design Awards have been going in one way or another for almost 20 years and celebrate the best in app design. This year, the first winner was the Finnish Bandimal from Yatatoy, a composing app for children which is sensational.
  • Yatatoy-yrityksen musiikkisovellus (Bandimal) voitti Applen sovelluskehittäjien Oscarin – Forbes: “Sensaatiomainen”

Other News;

• Uusi peliyhtiö matkalla 100 miljoonan euron sarjaan – Small Giant Games ylitti viime vuoden jättipottinsa jo huhtikuussa
• Veikkaus Game Studio had a blast at Nordic Game this year and made a little clip about the event
• Planetrism rose to the top on Imgur front page today in about 2 hours
• Slack for the Finnish Game Industry;  for anyone working in the Finnish games industry.
• THIS WEEKS FRIDAY IS THE LAST DAY TO BUY VIP-TICKETS! to Illusion 2018
• The Walking Dead: Our World from Next Games will be out on July 12!
• Mäkiautopeli Hill Climb Racing kaasuttaa: Oululainen pelitalo Fingersoft tuplasi liikevaihtonsa lähes 30 miljoonaan
• Game dev studios based in Helsinki, a new travel grant from the City of Helsinki covers 70 % of your travel costs up to 2500 €
• Mikä ihmeen Valas Media? – Haastatteluista kieltäytyvä pelistudio takoi jo 6,2 miljoonan liikevaihdon
• Pako 2 gets the most requested feat from the first Pako: Chase Cam! Update out now on Steam (also, SALE!), mobile versions still need bit of work.
• Owen Soh; how entertainment is evolving rapidly in China. Key takeaways are:
  1. Chinese are very aware of global trend (theme / art style / genre) and will combine proven concepts (gameplay) to give it a local twist while still appealing to global mass
  2. technicals not top notch but improving rapidly. local market has little patience for low quality products
  3. with enough localization and marketing (UA), there is a chance this could be on the chartsin the west
     P/S – if you’re applying for the ISBN license for your game. gore is acceptable as long as blood shown is not red
• Kohti ääretöntä ja sen yli. Frozenbyte luo itsensä uudelleen
• I’m Tuomas Erikoinen original artist of Angry Birds and creator of Silly Walks and Space Frontier AskMeAnything!
• Void of Heroes -Mech Battle Royale NOW available for mobile!
• Adventure Islands very first Steam game releases on 2nd of July! Super Dangerous Dungeons is now available for wishlisting! 
• Zombipelit koukuttivat kuluttajatutkijan – Sulake oli pioneeri virtuaaliekonomian rakentamisessa
• The madness and method of Supercell’s M&A philosophy
• All four speeches and numerous interviews of Bit1 are now on Youtube! You can watch them on our website
• HRGGC is the Human Resource Global Game Competition organised by Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF), Malaysia. The objective of the competition is to attract game developers from all around the world in order to create innovative demos for an HR themed game. The winners will be awarded $2,000 for the the 1st prize, $1,000 for the 2nd prize and $500 for the 3rd prize.
• Finnish publisher Full XP names Eliza Ralph as CTO
• Kamina Dimension  released a pre-alpha demo of MindSeize, a 2D Action-Adventure game set in a sci-fi universe.
  • Kamina Dimension have just launched a Kickstarter campaign for our new game MindSeize!
• Gregory Pellechi; Scriptwriting for TV, film and theater has a long history and as a result is very structured. Video games being a younger medium don’t have such structure. That’s why I just released a new episode of The Writing Game about scriptwriting and everything that needs to be included for video games  The podcast version can be found here
• Gregory Pellechi’s The latest episode of The Writing Game is live and this time its all about them themes! Finding, strengthening and supporting them as you make your games. The podcast version can be found here

This is the weekly summary of news from the Finnish game  industry. If you want to have your news on the list, post them on the Play Finland Facebook group. The summary will be posted every Friday afternoon. Check out previous week’s list.