Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine week 3/2021 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:
- 25th January Games Now! open lecture series at Aalto University; “Founding a Game Company (in Finland), Again” (online)
- 26th January GamesBeat: Driving Game Growth & Into the Metaverse: Industry leaders online for two days of gaming content surrounding game growth after IDFA and the latest on the metaverse
-
28th January; How To Create A Game Studio Pitch Deck”. In this workshop Joakim Achrén will guide you through the best practice process of creating a pitch deck. Sign up here
- 29th January GDWC Talks on twitch
- 15th February Games Now! open lecture series at Aalto University; “Building Sustainable Gaming Cultures” (online)
- 29th March Games Now! open lecture series at Aalto University; “Fostering Playful Experiences with Wearables” (online)
- March 2021(Date tbc) British Academy Games Awards
- Tuesday 2 March 2021 – Nominations announced
- March 2021 (Date tbc) – British Academy Games Awards
- 19th April Games Now! open lecture series at Aalto University; “Next Generation of Interactive Streaming” (online)
- 3rd May Games Now! open lecture series at Aalto University; “Art of Learning by Doing – The Great Game Jam Panel” (online)
- 19th-23rd of July GDC 2021
See also The Game Industry Events calendar 
EGDF in co-operation with Slovak Game Developers Association has build gameconfguide.com for complete list of games industry events and conferences and their status.
Announcements:
- Amazon acquires Finnish software company Umbra (article only in Finnish)
- Critical Force raised over 8 million EUR investment (article only in Finnish)
- Savage Game Studios has raised $4.4 million to create two mobile game studios in Helsinki and Berlin. The company is at work on its first title, a mobile game shooter.
- The Finnish Museum of Games celebrates its 4th birthday on this weekend!
- Ohayoo is opening contest for hyper-casual to casual games. Ohayoo has strong relation with ByteDance and publish games across Douyin, one of the largest short-video network in China with over 600 million DAU. This is a Great opportunity to get your games reviewed or even tested in China, a booming casual game market!
Open jobs & Recruitment:
- 10th Muse is looking for a QA tester who could do a few hours of testing per week for our interactive reading app which is built with React Native. They have budgeted around 300€/month for this. Send an email to veera@10thmuse.net or karoliina@10thmuse.net!
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Luotsaamo Lab is looking for game development coach. Read more here (in Finnish)
- Kim Kupiainen shares document to support employment at game industry; several different job boards in many different countries, reference salaries and job discipline communities etc.
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Redhill Games is looking for UA manager
- Grandia is looking for teacher in game programming (position in Finnish)
- 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.
- If you are looking for talented games industry professionals in Finland for short or long term hire – please check out ever growing #GamesFactoryTalentBoard and please reach out for details! Also if you are #Talent working in games industry or willing to join the Finnish games industry feel free to apply! https://gamesfactorytalents.com
- Take a look at https://thehub.fi/jobs for the current list of all jobs available in the Finnish Game Industry!
New releases 
Other News
- Aalto University has developed a game to treat depression (article in Finnish only)
- We In Games Finland & IGDA Finland announces Experience Survey.
- MiTale Dev-Blog: Interview with the founder and CEO of PsycApps Silja Litvin on the mental health app eQuoo
- Roleplaying gaming is the field of the future
- Solip Park, a Doctoral student at Aalto University is documenting the stories of immigrant/expatriate game creators in Finland. If you are working for a Finnish video game company but originally came from outside Finland (within or outside EU) Do signup for this form or DM Solip
- Video games-oriented Media Studies Master’s student (Emilia Joutsio) in University of Turku is looking for an internship place for 2021 (preferably summer or latter half)! Her final paper theme was “ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS AND COVID-19: Contemporary player experiences during the COVID-19-epidemic”
- Rovio has soft-launched Angry Birds Journey, a new casual puzzle game that will see the classic slingshot gameplay return to the series
- Nutfarm Games took part in the Global Top Round investment this weekend. Their game, Children of the Eclipse, made it into the top 10 finalists!
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Jansu Lahtela is looking to place where to do his internship