WEEK (48/2019) IN THE FINNISH GAME INDUSTRY

Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine weeks 48/2019 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:

• 3rd December IGDA Finland Turku Hub XMAS PARTY / Turku
• 3rd December Tampere Game Incubator Demo Day 2019 / Tampere
• 10th December IGDA Finland Helsinki Hub Xmas Party with Rovio / Helsinki
• 12th December 2019 Game Industry retrospective at Arcade5. / Helsinki
• 13th December, Business Finland event; “Tuleeko sitä rahaa vai ei? Kuinka enkelit oikeasti toimivat ja miten he tekevät päätöksensä?” / Helsinki
• 16th Dec. IGDA Lahti Christmas Gathering / Lahti
• 20th-21st January Pocket Gamer Connects London.
• 3rd of March Game Audio Awards 2020
  • Submissions are open now
• April 1st Games First / London
• 14th April Hyper UA Gamevasion / Copenhagen

See also The Game Industry Events calendar: http://www.neogames.fi/en/events/eventcalendar
Neogames is creating a tool for the city of Helsinki summarising all key games industry related events in Helsinki
 
Open jobs & Recruitment

• Redhill Games is looking for Environment Artist
  
• Games Factory Talents are actively looking for talents to 10 open hot positions in Games in Helsinki and more coming! You all know that Games Factory is gone now, but Games Factory Talents are still there at Arcade5 Maria 01 and our door is always open! They are actively looking for talents for multiple roles in Games industry in Helsinki. Please check the positions and companies and APPLY
• 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!

Releases;

• Ville Helin and Jyri’s physics puzzle game with 340 levels now out on Android and iOS.
  
• Youth Control Games released its first game Mixmstr earlier this week.
• FakeFish published second major post-launch update for Barotrauma!

Discussion;

• Laura Vilsone is looking for a person interested in doing PR/marketing/funding acquisition for story driven games. The work is for her hobby projects that she do as creative outlets/portfolio pieces, and it’s not paid, unless the game makes money.
  Basically this person is her partner. While PR/marketing/funding acquisition is often thought of as secondary in an indie development community, She see it as the deciding line between having any chance at all and a failed project.

Other News;

• Perorder Burnout Legends – Bike edition and Android version here.
• Henrik Byman is conducting a research for his Master’s Thesis and looking for video game players who have participated in game development projects (for example games on Steam’s Early Access platform or in Kickstarter platform) to answer a short survey about their experiences and attitudes regarding ‘player participation’.
  
• Developer Diaries: Why A Game Community Manager Is Essential To Success
• Digi & Game Center premises at Matarankatu 2, Jyväskylä, Central Finland have been Pre booked already 95%!! Still few rooms left to jump in with us. Also co-working remote spaces are now available for early adapters to book them too. Also if you are big company that are looking for branch office base for Game or Digi industries, contact us we might have cool opportunity with us to you too.The Digi & Game Center opens 01/01/2020. Ps. They do have some e.g Helsinki based companies coming to that premises too.. so no matter where the company’s main Base is.
• 16 international mobile games including World of Warships Blitz approved for China
• Making a career in games more sustainable
• (only in Finnish) Tekoälyä hyödyntävä simulaatiopeli sai yrityksen kyseenalaistamaan vanhat johtamismallit: “Peliin jää koukkuun, kun tulee tarve parantaa suoritustaan”

• Jere Partanen  wanted to say a word of thanks to all that made it to Press Start last week. I truly hope you enjoyed the event and that we managed to curate content you found insightful.
  Special thanks to many of you that offered a helping hand during the year. Before our dear volunteers stepped in, this was mostly a solo effort for me so all of the assistance was absolutely invaluable. I will be moving on to other things (hello, employers), but I’ll make sure the team has everything they need to in order for it to be even better next year!
  You can check out photos of the event from our Flickr.
  Here’s also a list of studios and games from the Demo Showcase:
  

  1. Beyond 39 Hills – Robo_Proxy
  2. Superplus Games – Hills of Steel 2
  3. Tuokio / Team Boom Slingers – Boom Slingers
  4. dc1ab – Dominus
  5. Tuttifrutti Interactive – Darkarta: A Broken Heart’s Quest
  6. Utopos Games – Utopos Rocketship Game
  7. Reality Crisis – SKATRIX
  8. Timi Koponen – Ubi’s Dimensions
  9. All 4 Games – SEN: Seven Eight Nine
  10. Nutfarm Games – Children of the Eclipse
  11. Unicorn Pirates Studio – Idle Cat Stars
  12. Twisted Ark – Flu Season
• EGD 033: On A Mission To Do Something Good with Steffen Kabbelgaard Co-Founder and CEO of BetaDwarf
• Last call to participate in survey about the UR/UX workshops! Together with the folks from UX is fine (Game & UX Consulting) the Games UR/UX Finland group is planning to offer workshops on Games User Research and User Experience and we need your feedback on what content would be most relevant for you! The survey is about 5 minutes long and completely anonymous. Interested in our group? Come and join us.
• HAUSSA: henkivakuutusyhtiön nettisivuille kuvattaviin printtikuviin persoonallinen, pieni pelifirma – tai pieni tv-tai – radio- tai muu ns. digifirma, jossa vähintään 3 työntekijää. Persoonallinen, kaikenkirjava porukka haussa.
  Kuvauksesta maksetaan ( verokortti ) 300€ per henkilö tai 400€ + alv. per henkilö. Summan voi myös laskuttaa kokonaisuudessan yritykselle.
  Kuvaus tapahtuisi yrityksen omissa tiloissa 12.12 tai 13.12 mahdollisimman vähin häiriöin. Yriyksen tilat eivät kuitenkaan tule tunnistettavasti näkymään kuvissa. Kiinnostuneet:
  sähköposti os. roolihakemukset@gmail.com TAI
  viesti numeroon 0405277161.
  Kerro viestissä lyhyesti yrityksen toimiala ja jos mahdollista, lähetä mukana kuva, jossa näkyy firman työporukka ( tai osa siitä ) – tai ainakin oma kuvasi. / Casting director seeks small game company (3-5 ppl) for insurance company’s advertising photos. Gamedev won’t be identifiable from the finished ad.

• EGD 032: Advising Gaming Startups In Legal Matters With Ilkka Perheentupa

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.