THIS WEEK (16/2018) IN THE FINNISH GAME INDUSTRY

Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine the week 16/2018 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:

• April 24th Finnish Game Awards Helsinki. 
  • Registration is now open! There is a limited number of tickets available for purchase at https://fga2018.eventbrite.com/
• April 24-25th The University of Tampere Game Research Lab Spring Seminar, Making Games.
• April 25th Visual Storytelling – Helping Artists With Words – Q & A / Helsinki
• May 4th FutureZone Mediapolis: E-urheilu. Ylen Studiot L1 ja L3, Mediapolis, 4.5. klo 12-16.30
  Ilmoittautuminen: oheisen linkin kautta viimeistään 27.4.
• May 5th Game Över 11- pelitapahtuma Lahden pääkirjastolla
• May 8th Games First / Helsinki
  • The pitching you’ll hear at GF is not about user acquisition pipeline optimization and ad revenue monetization – it’s about games. To be precise: Game Demos. This year, it’s going to be even cooler as we’ve got something special from our dear friends at Trojan Horse was a Unicorn. Come present to your fellow developers what you’re working on and apply for a Game Demo ticket now!
• 16-17 May Bit1 Metropolia game event / Helsinki
• May 23-25 Nordic Game Conference / Malmö, Sweden
  • IGDA members get 20% off for Nordic Game Conference 2018!!! This is how you do it:
    Hurry up, go to www.conf.nordicgame.com, push the “Register” button, check the “Organisation discount” box, choose “IGDA” from the drop down menu, and then enter the code “XJ7VnpGDsM” in the “Discount Code” box.
• May 25-27th SmirnovSchool / Theme Park May Workshop / Kouvola
  • Eugene Je (Evgeniya Zherebtsova), instructor, who is going to run one of the workshops in May, have some new art on her ArtStation, go check it out.

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

• 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

Announcements;

• The Finnish Cultural Foundation will open a track for *games* for the October 2018 application season. Finally! 

Releases;

• All New Gladiator Bastards is now out on Android and ready ship to China and IOS too!

Other News;

• Rovio’s games revenues don’t make for bad reading, in fact the company is doing pretty well. Last year former head of games Wilhelm Taht told me the KPIs for its latest titles are the best it’s seen. So why is the company struggling with its IPO? Jon Jordan took a look
• Tero Kuittinen dooms; Something has gone terribly wrong with Finland – it has become an emblem of mobile games industry stagnation
• Why you should consider developing user-generated content-based mobile games
• Panzer Hearts Demo is on Steam!
• Spring has arrived to Critical Ops folks
• Game Music Collective on tour Helsinki, Tampere and Turku
• If you want to shape the future of EU funding for games industry, please reply to this survey.
• Kajaani University engineering students have done a VR mecha battle simulator as part of their studies 
• Call opens for NGDC wild cards!
• Rovio AGM live blogging on Kauppalehti [in Finnish] “Rovion kuumaksi ennakoitu yhtiökokous nuijittiin lopulta vauhdilla läpi”
• Good times while playing NoReload Heroes – Wizards with Epics Guns! (4 Player Gameplay)

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.