Play Finland’s Weekly Newsletter
In this report we will combine weeks 3-4/2024 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:
- 26-28 January; Finnish Game Jam, sites on Kymeenlaakso, Turku, Kuopio, Helsinki, Vaasa, Lappeenranta, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Porvoo, Lahti, Kajaani, Tampere, Rovaniemi. Many of them also in hybrid. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.fi/o/finnish-game-jam-ry-6802261839
- 30th January Expe&IGDA hybrid meetup / Jyväskylä. Mika Tammenkoski talking about hoe to stand out in Mobile in 2024. The stream starts at 18.00. doors open at 17:30 Venue: LIVE @ Digi & Game Center, Matarankatu 2, Jyväskylä. #DemoCornerJKL is open for all to showcase their things at event The event is FREE and open for all, language of the Meetup event is English!
- 4th February composer Hideyuki Shima is having casual meetup to talk about game musics
- 7th February Over 7 Hills 2023 / Turku
- 23rd February Game Development World Championship The event will be at Tallinn, Estonia
Awards will also be live streamed on their youtube channel
- 31 January FASHION X GAME – Opportunities for Collaboration between the Fashion and Game Industry (event in English) registration ends at 29th Jan.
- 18-22 March Game Developers Conference / San Francisco
- Digital Dragons 19-21 May 2024. Indie Showcase applications are accepted until March 1, 2024. Another opportunity for studios to show their games in front of investors, publishers, and media is Digital Dragons Arena. Krakow, Poland
See also The Game Industry Events calendar 
Game Conference Guide Calendar Flemish Game association calendar & Game Industry Biz
Announcements:
- City of Kajaani is funding Game City Kajaani EUR 0.5million. Article in Finnish
- Metaplay launches Unity-based SDK to scale mobile games
- Business Finland has invested EUR 2.8 million to Kymeenlaakso. Nitro Games from Kotka got the major share; EUR 1.5 million. (Article in Finnish)
Open jobs & Recruitment:
- If you are a Facebook user and looking for jobs in gaming in Finland, make sure to follow Pelialan työpaikat Suomessa Facebook group hosted by Finnish employment agency Duunitori. Open positions tagged to game industry are shared in the group automatically. We are in no way affiliated with Duunitori, but wanted to point out this resource as another good way to check out open positions.
- 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. Additionally, here is an anonymous list of talents who joined our Games Job Fair event and are open to career opportunities. If you want to see someone’s full profile, please feel free to reach out with the Contact button, so that they reach out to the talent for their consent. In your email please specify the project and/or position you are hiring for. A job description would be ideal.
- Take a look at https://thehub.fi/jobs for the current list of all jobs available in the Finnish Game Industry!
- Uratarinoita, erilaisista ihmisistä / mostly in Finnish, but few different career stories in English too
New releases 
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Wild Spark just released their latest game Spell Masters both on App Store and Google Play
Discussion
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Tuomas Roininen ask if anyone have done this Famous and respected #Harvard Free course in CS50’s Introduction to Game Development
Other News
- Solip’s Comic special episode of Game Expats Story about Game Makers of Finland
- Composer Hideyuki Shima is visiting in Lahti (Feb. 26-28th) and Helsinki after that.
- Solip’s Comic special episode about Finland’s game jam culture! FYI, there will be Global Game Jam happening all across the world this weekend – including here in Finland Finnish Game Jam. Enjoy!
- Harpist Salla Hakkola composes award winning game music, that millions of players of Merge Mansion and Clash of Clans have enjoyed. (Article in Finnish)
- Theme Park. A digital art event: Supercell visual developers have the principle of “efficient design” deeply incorporated into all their art assets. Alexey Kalibin’s talk about his approach to character design is available in youtube
- “Chaos Sister” beat’em up game combines fight and magic
- Better Games Together now has a website, and we’re looking for more studios to join us in making the game industry a safer place for LGBTQIA+ people!
- REPLAY – The European Game Design Masters (Erasmus Mundus), Master of Arts (Art and Design), masters programme in game (design) will start next Autumn. Consider applying (deadline is Feb 15th) if you are interested in giving your career a boost (and ensuring that you have that masters diploma you have been thinking about getting).
- Kimmo Lahtinen’s (www.gimblll.com) next game is called Sektori. It’s a twin-stick shooter and it’s coming out later in 2024 at least on PC (or will it? oh, the suspense!).
- Dear jammers, jam organizers and jamtivists in Finland – we are working on a book project elaborating the Finnish game jam stories gathered to the same name exhibition at the Finnish Museum of Games (the exhibition is still available for visit, go and check it out!). Please consider submitting your text or photos at by 4th February!