Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine week 34/2018 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.
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
Best Regards,
Neogames Finland
Events:
- 24th-25th August Join the HR Game Jam this weekend. You can join online or at the Full XP office in Helsinki.
🔸 The HR Game Jam will be held simoutaneously online and at the Full XP office in Helsinki
🔸 They will start the HR Game Jam on Friday (24.08.) at 18:00 and finish it on Sunday (26.08.) at 18:00.
🔸You still have time if you haven’t registered yet. You can do it here.
🔸Everyone has to join the slack, invitations to registered participants have been sent. It will be where everyone will communicate with each other and form teams during the jam
🔸Join also itchy, where you will upload your demo.
- 8th September Intuitive Digital Workflow with Loish / Turku
- 11-12th September Pocket Gamer Connects
- Exclusive 20% discount using code FINLAND20.
- IGDA Finland and Pocket Gamer want everyone to have a chance to take part in upcoming #PGCHelsinki event, no matter your location, and to make everything more accessible and convenient for our friends outside the Helsinki area we are organizing bus rides from hubs all around the country. The buses, provided by Pocket Gamer, are completely free of charge – you just need to register on the form below and turn up!We will need to know for the total numbers for the buses so please register by Friday August 31 to grab your seat. First come – first served!
=> Buses will go from Jyväskylä & Tampere, Turku, and Kouvola & Kotka, please register here: (NOTE: THE BUS TICKET DOES NOT INCLUDE ENTRY TO THE CONFERENCE – you will need a conference ticket to get access to the event(s).
- Oct 4-5th Northern Game Summit – NGS / Kajaani
- 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
- 22-24th May Nordic Game Conference
See also The Game Industry Events calendar: http://www.neogames.fi/en/events/eventcalendar
Open jobs:
- Surrogate Games from in Helsinki is looking for a Chief Gaming Officer – with equity & salary!
- More jobs at gamesjobs.fi
Announcements;
Other News;
- Suomi voisi nousta tekotodellisuuden globaaliksi mahtitekijäksi, mutta riittääkö aika? Yrittäjä: ”Jos aikaikkuna menetetään, menetetään todella paljon koko Suomen kansantalouden kannalta”
- Spell Slingers is being developed little further everyday. And it might soon be time to let more people try it out. Woo! (Scary and Exciting). You are invited to to sign-up for their mailing list here:
- STUDENTS/TEACHERS/EDUCATORS! Want a chance to learn from the games industry giants?Aalto ENT and IGDA Finland are co-organizing the Monetization in Games seminar in Aalto Design Factory in Espoo on October 19. We are bringing together international experts to talk about how to monetize effectively and ethically. Join us on this learning mission with the Doom creator John Romero, Maarten Noyons, Michail Katkoff and Oscar Clark – either in person or via our free live stream!
- everyone is invited to participate in a non-profit called codebar. codebar connects experienced programmers with beginners from groups which are underrepresented in the industry for free monthly workshops.Thanks to their sponsors, Seriously and Games factory, the next event will be gamedev focused – they want to provide an opportunity of learning code through making games! Also, they will have afterwork with BBQ
They are looking for two groups of people,1) COACHES – anybody with at least an intermediate level of programming who thinks that they could teach beginners or help guide them through some tutorials.
Here’s a coaching guide they recommend future coaches to read.
For this next event they are looking for coaches in: Unity (C# and/or Javascript), Javascript, Python.2) STUDENTS – people from groups underrepresented in the industry (typically women and LGBTQ+ but decide for yourself if you qualify) who want to get some coaching in coding.
Here’s a student guide that has eligibility criteria, attendance policy and other useful things. - Jyväskyläläisen startupin (PsyonGames) peli taistelee väärää rokotustietoa vastaan – sijoittana myös Rovion Peter Vesterbacka
- Toni Aaltola inerviewed from Frostbullet for Tilt.fi. Finnish language only.
- Mikael Leinonen is opening the challenges of China regulation;
- Hey folks, there’s been number of articles recently about the game approvals situation in China and bunch of people have contacted me for more information, so I thought I could share my views on the issue here.
- First, it’s indeed correct information that since March there has not been new ISBN licenses approved. The reason for this is that the whole organisation structure and its leadership are undergoing some changes. At MyGamez, we too have bunch of games stuck in the process and waiting for it to resume. They are still accepting new applications and based on the insights we hear we’re expecting it to resume latest in October. MOC approvals have had some hickups as well, but the process seems to be working now and currently the platforms are more relaxed about MOC. There is now grey area to publish games without any in-app-purchases even without the government approvals. This is also what Tencent has done with PUBG mobile version: it’s been out for months now without IAPs and it’s wildly popular. Anything that involves purchases must get ISBN prior publishing. Now Tencent crossed this line with Monster Hunter and got punished. I have no idea why they did it – to test their limits or to push the regulator to resume the approval process or something else – but I personally don’t see this Monster Hunter take down bearing that much significance as some of the panic driven opinion pieces might be suggesting.
- Overall, I see this whole hassle following a rather familiar pattern how China sometimes comes up with a new regulation and then starts to figure out how to best implement it. Frankly, there’s lot to improve in the ISBN application process and hopefully this organisation change will be able to address some of those issues. However, I don’t see signs suggesting that the government would want to kill the whole games industry or stop foreign games from entering the market. My recommendation for studios who seriously want to enter the market would be to start applying for ISBN now (MyGamez and other publishers can help) and just be prepared that it might take longer time to go through. Once it’s approved, you’ll have huge advantage over those studios who decided to wait and see.
- As for the suffering of Chinese game studios: it’s real. We’re organising the IMGA China and we see lot of good games coming from Chinese indies. They can’t get the games live in China but they also don’t have the experience or resources to successfully publish them outside of China.
- Nitro Games releases The first ever trailer video for Heroes of Warland!
- PG Connects Helsinki. Free buses to the event! Just Free buses to the event! Just register!!
- After +2000 hours, Please Be Patient‘s 1st game, Gates of Horn and Ivory, is close at hand! Release date on STEAM has been set to September 7th.
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.