Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine week 19/2021 from the Finnish Game Industry and will be posted every Friday afternoon. Check out the previous post here.
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.
Best Regards,
Neogames Finland
Events:
- 10th March – and continue all the way to the end of May. Quantum Games 2021 goes Twitch – public lectures open for everyone! Register here
- 14-16th May Meep Up! Con – virtual board game convention
- 19th of May Recruitment event organized by Digi & Game Center in cooperation with Business Jyväskylä
- 20-21 May Get funded Neogames Finland association organises two info sessions about funding instruments for Finnish game developers.
- 26-28 May Nordic Game Conference
- You’ll get a free ticket for a friend/colleague if you register before 31 March!
- 12-16 July PGC London 2021
- 19th-23rd of July GDC 2021
- 28th Sept – 1st Oct PGC Helsinki 2021
- 14-15th October W Love Games
- SUBMIT A TALK there is still time to send your proposals for a talk / panel / workshop, as this year it will be two-days event with multiple tracks
- SUBMIT A WORKSKOP
-
The recorded sessions from W
Games 2020 are now available on website
See also The Game Industry Events calendar 
Game Conference Guide Calendar Flemish Game association calendar
Announcements:
- Zynga pays Small Giant $240 million in second performance earn-out
- Finnish Game Research Association together with Neogames Finland have announced the winners of this year Game Studies Thesis competition. The winners are Mikaela Kumlander from University of Tampere ans Sonja Hämäläinen from University of Applied Sciences (HUMAK). Official recognition of excellence was given to Heini säynevirta from University of Helsinki. (Article in Finnish).
Open jobs & Recruitment:
-
Fingersoft is hiring! We are looking for QA Engineer and Full Stack Developer to join our teams in Oulu.
- Kajaani UAS is looking for a game programming lecturer!
- Luotsaamo Lab is looking for game industry trainer that coaches new talents (information in Finnish).
- GamePro by Saranen is looking for companies to a recruitment round starting in late August/early September! For more information, contact Arja Martikainen or Tommi Ohtonen or buy online.
- If you are looking for talented games industry professionals for short- or long-term hire – please check out the anonymous GameDevTalents board with screened and pre-interviewed talents ranging from mid to senior levels of experience and open to career opportunities. Feel free to reach out for details! And if you are Talent working in games industry or willing to join the Finnish games industry, feel free to apply https://gamedevtalents.com
- Take a look at https://thehub.fi/jobs for the current list of all jobs available in the Finnish Game Industry!
New releases 
- Nighthouse Games has released Sockventure on STEAM
- Dreamloop Games‘ latest project Layers of Fear 2 will be dropped to Switch next week
🔔Neogames is Reminding:
Discussion
- Kim Soares asks; What is a bad/average/good ratio for ingame currency from IAP’s versus ingame faucets?
- Maria Maunula asks what other (than Evergreen, which has been good) findings people at Play Finland may have found during these times regarding team motivation, communication, appreciation showing, and rewarding employees – anything that can help others to improve the daily life of a dev during the pandemic/remote working!
Maybe it’s not an app, integration, etc. but a way of working or any other tips & tricks to share with us all? - Aung Pyae asks if you have experiences in VR-based exercises/workouts, can you please help by answering to survey?
- Marke Kivijärvi calls for guests to speak about their companies’ diversity and inclusion practices.
Other News
- Solip’s Comic new episode: “Referral” in Finland is one of the main challenges to game expats in Finland
- Digi & Game Center in Jyväskylä provides recruitment services for companies – and encourages companies to take interns too (article in Finnish only).
- University of Jyväskylä is gathering memories that people have about game music with open survey (in Finnish).
- Helsingin Sanomat writes how’s Housemarques journey to publish Returnal went (article in Finnish). HS also reviewed Returnal.