Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine week 17/2020 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.
We (admins) occasionally publish industry related posts or links in Play Finland. But since there is so many things going on, we don´t even try to cover the whole field.
Best Regards,
Neogames Finland
Events:
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24th April at 13.00 IGDA Finland Virtual Mentor Cafe
- 13th – 14th May European Games BizDev Gathering
- 15th May BooBJam2020
- 26-29th May AWE – Augmented World Expo AWE USA 2020’s online event
- Become a member of AWE Nite Helsinki’s meetup group https://www.meetup.com/AWENiteHelsinki/ and get a special discount at just $99 (by April 1st)
- 27-29th May Nordic Game 2020 / Malmö, Sweden => online event
- June 8-12 PG Connects Digital #2. Interested to speak at there?
- 4-6thAugust GDC Organizers Plan New 3-Day GDC Summer Event For August
- 25-29 August; Gamescom / Cologne. Gamescom will under no circumstances take place on site in Cologne this year. Digital event will be organized.
- 29-30th September Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki
- 15th October Reboot Develop Blue / Croatia
- Over the years, Develop Blue has become one of the main annual conferences for European game developer communities. Therefore, EGDF and Neogames Finland ry. are happy to announce a 10% discount code for a STANDARD CONFERENCE PASS Please do not hesitate to contact the associations to receive yours.
- 16 October W Love Games conference / Helsinki
- Tickets sign-up starts in May and the link is first shared to those who have signed up for W Love Games newsletter. Sign up to a newsletter here.
- 6th of November #XmasJKL 2020 – The Finnish Game Industry Seminar / Jyväskylä
See also The Game Industry Events calendar: http://www.neogames.fi/en/events/eventcalendar
Webinars & Streams & Videos
Since all the game industry events have been postponed, cancelled or moved to online due to Corona virus epidemic, EGDF in co-operation with European country organizations has collected a list of online (and postponed) events.
- Gamesbeat Summit is kicking off next week and the Slack channel is already active. Zsuzsa James offers discount for for those interested GBS2020James
- GDC 2020 Talks Are Now Available To Watch For Free On The GDC Vault!
Open jobs & Recruitment:
- Offering services;
- Timo Halén & UXpectations can help you with your UX strategy, UX improvement execution planning and UX research itself.
- Artem Kirillovskii experienced game developers from CZ/SK is looking for outsource work. Mainly mobile hyper-casual prototyping for reasonable price.
- 4goodgames is looking for Unity Developer and Game Designer.
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BusinessFinland has launched a nationwide job board to advertise jobs for #English speakers in #Finland. Advertising the open positions in the portal is free of charge for the companies.
- Games Factory Talents launched new Games focused tech Talent board that helps Talents to land a Dream job at a Games Studio in Helsinki. Please check the positions and companies and APPLY
- Pocket hunt has launched their recruiting app for games people in Finland, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Benelux countries, Bangalore and Singapore.
- Jobs in Games: Rovio’s Heini Kaihu on how to get a job as head of studio.
- if people are interested in taking part in ‘Jobs in Games’ series feel free to get in touch with Craig Chapple!
- Take a look at https://thehub.fi/jobs for the current list of all jobs available in the Finnish Game Industry!
Announcements:
- Reworks gets 4M€ from EQT, Play Ventures and launches its game/app globally / Nyt on aikaa haaveilla sisustuksesta ja pelata: Sisustuspeli Redecorin kehittäjä nappasi 4 miljoonan euron kasvupotin ruotsalaisrahasto EQT:lta
- Nitro Games Announcing theHunter: Mobile together with Avalanche Studios
- Baba Is You from Hempuli, Control – Remedy from Remedy Entertainment, Barotrauma from FakeFish and Undertow Games and Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest from Ctrl Alt Ninja Ltd. selected (by NG jury) as Nordic Game Awards nominees from Finland.
Financial support;
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Join David Gardner (London Venture Partners) for a chat about the state of investment. Please use the link below to register. (Limited places) Registration informationWhen: Apr 30, 2020 11:00 AM Helsinki
Topic: LVP Visits Helsinki (virtually!) - Fast Forward Games (ffwd.games) is an initiative that brings together the top gaming CEOs, VCs and Angel Investors, offering their time, expertise, network and experience to accelerate the funding process for gaming start-ups. Due to COVID-19, the funding climate has changed, resulting a more challenging environment for many start-up studios looking to raise much-needed capital. We are here to help gaming entrepreneurs navigate these unprecedented times.
- Neogames has conducted the government support together in one page
- Business Finland lanseeraa kaksi uutta rahoituspalvelua lieventämään koronavirusepidemian aiheuttamia talousvaikutuksia. / Funding for SMEs and midcap companies whose business is affected by corona virus outbreak.
- 1) Only apply if you are in actual need. Every application is reviewed and that takes time and going through “free moneys, gimme!” applications just takes times from those in real crisis.
2) To be applicable for the grant, the Covid-19 must have affected your business in a negative manner and the project you plan to do with the funding needs to be either a new function/service/model for your company while the crisis is on-going or some way that you cope with the situation. This is not a grant to develop a DLC!
3) Check that you don’t have any unpaid taxes in foreclosure and match your application grant according to your revenue. If your company is generating 10k a year you will not be receiving a 100k grant. If you are a startup with running costs, external funding and product still in development but can’t launch due to covid or have some other issue, explain it to us in the application and this will be taken in account.
4) BF crisis funding is now only for companies between 6-250 employees. If you applied before this rule came into action last week your application will be reviewed and this new rule will not cause the application to fail.
- 1) Only apply if you are in actual need. Every application is reviewed and that takes time and going through “free moneys, gimme!” applications just takes times from those in real crisis.
- ELY-keskusten rahoitus yrityksille koronaviruksen aiheuttamassa poikkeustilanteessa ELY tuki tarkoitettu alle 5 hengen yrityksille. Business Finland tuki tätä isommille, jos kuitenkin on jo haettu BF tukea ei hakemusta pidä peruuttaa. Molemmista tukea ei kuitenkaan voi hakea / ELY Centres’ funding for companies in the exceptional circumstances caused by the coronavirus. Note that if company is over 5 people you should apply from Business Finland and smaller from ELY. If company already applied from BF, then it is ok, do not cancel your application. However, should not apply from both BF & ELY.
Other News:
- Isn’t it weird to go into spring without any hockey-related news? The team at Adjective Animal is releasin Puck Buddies later on this year on STEAM.
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Ticca is working on Story Scribe, a mobile game where players create a story together by taking turns writing and drawing and inviting every one of you to test this out! The game is available on Google Play store and via Testflight for Apple users.
- Free demo available for oIron Danger at STEAM
- FakeFish releases another another Barotrauma update!
- (This post only in Finnish). Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö kerää tietoa Koronaviruksen vaikutuksista kulttuurialoihin (joihin pelilalakin kuuluu). Kyselyyn voivat vastata niin yritykset, erilaiset yhdistykset kuin yksityishenkilötkin. Organisaatiot vastaavat kyselyyn yhdellä organisaation edustajan lähettämällä vastauksella. Vastaus pyydetään toimittamaan viimeistään 26.4.2020. Kyselyn täyttämiseen kannattaa varata noin 20-30 min.
- Building a living world without borders. MMO studio Black Block’s CEO Robin Squire discusses his plans for mobile-first connected worlds
- Gaming Sales Are Up, but Production Is Down.The coronavirus pandemic is offering mixed news and new challenges for gaming companies, both independent and corporate.
- Ivan Rinas created questionary about his game
- At the end of March 2020, EGDF conducted a pan-European survey in order to have a rough idea of the business impact of the COVID 19 outbreak on the European games industry. EGDF received replies from 239 studios, about 5% of almost 5000 game developer studios in Europe.
- Living Game Intelligence Network is looking for new volunteer mentors. If you’re an industry professional who’d like to support young game teams and our amazing game dev community, ping suvi@lgin.fi There’s many kinds of teams, and space for many kinds of mentors.
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Are You looking for skilled digital or game industry professionals to Your team? Through Sustainable Digi & Game Ecosystem networks, you can find professionals from the grassroots directly through our a peer-to-peer networks. Now you have access to a brand new Digi & Game Center recruitment section.
- Korona Aid campaign to raise money for Digi & Game Center is still running.
- Supercell’s would-be GDC game design talk about how the Clash of Clans team designed their Battle Pass feature. supr.cl/BBBP-QnA
- Kayo Games; Learn few things about bats with this Augmented Reality experience.
- Tietoa Business Finlandin rahoitusperiaatteista ja päätöksenteosta
- Boreal Foundry; Shielta: Veil of Stars, story-driven PC-game has just launched on Kickstarter!
- Calling all Finnish developers! For the European Games BizDev Gathering. There is more than 50 publishers and investors to pitch your games and companies to: Sony PlayStation, ID @ XBOX, Sega, Bandai Namco and so much more. Tickets only 35 euro on.
- Rumble Hockey, the sibling of Rumble Stars Football (by Frogmind) is now available in soft-launch for Android and iOS in Canada, Finland, Australia, Spain, Romania and France.
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.