IGDA Finland Turku Hub gathering with Rival Games and Shark Punch

The March gathering was back in Hunter’s Inn, and this time with presentations by Rival Games and Shark Punch. Also in the demo corner: BitByByte’s first game Planet Shock.

Romanced by Rival Games

The future is looking good for Rival Games. After a hard year 2015 they have received funding and are soon ready to publish the third and last episode of their game The Detail. The Detail has a very decent metacritic score and has been received with much delight by both players and critics. The company is one of the more successful ones in the Turku game development scene. And more success is sure to come for this hard working studio. Rival Games currently employs 16 people, and they will be hiring more people this year.

On Wednesday the audience had the pleasure of hearing CEO Jukka Laakso talk about sales figures for The Detail on Steam, and lead writer JD Sorvari gave us insight into the process of writing the game.

The Detail is a graphic novel style game reminiscent of Frank Miller. It was initially planned to be five episodes long, but now the story is going to have its closure in the third episode. Sorvari told us about the shock that he as a writer had, realizing that his story would be cut shorter. First he had thought he had plenty of space to develop the plot and “romance” the players – but it was not to be. However, being forced to compress and reduce can often lead to better storytelling, which Sorvari hopes to have succeeded with in the third episode.

Releasing a game in episodes gives the business model an interesting flair. Laakso was able to visualize this by showing us graphs from Steam sales. Firstly, Steam is the number one sales platform for Rival Games, and stands for 63-70 % of their sales revenue. Other distribution channels are nowhere near as fruitful, for example iOS sales is only at 14 %, and others (like humble bundles and such) stay at 24 % of total sales revenue. For every episode and sale period the sales spike increased, while almost flat-lining in between. We wish Rival Games good luck with their third episode release!

Playfield taking a punch at Steam

The company Shark Punch was presented by Tero Tapio and Peter-Erik Kiis. They told about the origins, team and philosophy of the company. Shark Punch employs 13 people and their HQ is in Helsinki. The founders managed to sell their previous company to Disney, and then they went indie.

They initially released a game called The Masterplan – a 70s style heist game. After this first release they have focused on another type of development project: a distribution platform for other game developers, www.playfield.io.

There are thousands of games being released every year, and a new game very easily drowns in the static. How can developers get visibility and find the right type of player? The focus in Playfield is on helping game developers get discovered by players. Shark Punch wants to achieve this by personalizing recommendations and having a great storefront. They also have partnerships with Twitch and YouTube users.

Currently Playfield has 2000 games, and 1000 developers on board. The community is mostly between 25 and 34 years of age, and also mostly male. Half are from English speaking countries.

Playfield will be coming out of beta in Spring 2016. The point is: they don’t want players to miss “gems” in the game avalanche. They urge game developers to bravely contact them and try out Playfield.

BitByByte and Planet Shock

In the demo corner we got some space ship shooting and cosmic eye candy. BitByByte Creations is a new game development team based in Turku, and the game “Planet Shock” is in Steam Greenlight at the moment, go check this link and give support!

Text: Jenny Wiik

Photos: Natasha Trygg & Toni Heinonen

IGDA Finland Turku Hub

IGDA Finland Turku Hub February with King

In February IGDA Finland had the great pleasure of being visited by game developers from the Swedish company King. Benjamin Glaser, Mikael Säker and Robert Käck toured Finland and visited Kotka, Helsinki and last but not least, the Turku hub. Be sure to also check out the report of the Helsinki event. On Wednesday 10.2 they spoke both at the ICT-building in Turku, and at the IGDA evening gathering at Restaurant Mauno. The audience got an insight into King as a company and a brand, and a thorough and enthusiastic presentation of King’s game engine Defold, that is about to be publically launched very soon. The gathering also featured a demo corner.

From shooting bubbles to blasting blossoms

Robert and Benjamin gave us a short history of King, and some very helpful hints for students that are interested in breaking into the game industry.

The company was founded in 2003, and the first kinds of games produced were so called “skill games”. These are small puzzle type games with very quick rounds, and usually the theme was shooting bubbles. In the early business model there was also betting involved.

Between 2003 and 2010 King created around 150 IP’s. The company became profitable in 2005 and partnered with Yahoo at this time. When Facebook entered the social media scene, King developed the “Saga”-format and targeted Facebook users. The Saga format includes the maps that the player progresses on, the star system and the progression of the puzzles. In 2012 mobile had also become an important frontier for King games to conquer. The core mechanic of the games stays the same. A distinct feature is the cross platform functionality. King’s four franchises are Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes Saga and Bubble Witch Saga.

King has 1700 employees in 13 studios around the world. The Shanghai office is the newest one. King games have a user base of 330 million, which is challenging to manage. The company has been awarded the title of Sweden’s best employer twice, and there is much effort put on nurturing a balanced company culture and clear values. Employees need to have a certain mindset to fit in, and aspirants for jobs go through a process of interviews to make sure that they are a fit.

Robert, who works with the King brand, gave the students at the ICT lecture some valuable hints on how to apply for internships and jobs in the game industry on a general level. Target fewer companies, rather than shooting with a shotgun and sending out masses of generic applications. Be sure to write applications that stand out in the competition. What kind of company do you want to work for, and what is the company that you are applying for actually like? Ask around and do research. Also networking is very important, as many recruitments are made via referrals, at least when it comes to King. Volunteering for IGDA is one way to network for example…

Not for tech tinkerers

Benjamin and Mikael’s aim for doing this tour of Finland is also to spread the word on King’s game engine Defold. The engine has been in development for over six years, and is ready to be officially launched. Although it has been possible to get invites for quite a while already, so the engine is already functioning and in use. The latest game release from King – Blossom Blast – was made with Defold.

Although King is developing the engine, it is not only for internal use (and there are no King ads or anything like that in games made with it). One of the initial developers and founders of Defold, has said “we wanted to make something that was state of the art, not state of the industry”. The point being that Defold is not tech focused. It contains solutions for generic problems.

And it will be given out for free.

Benjamin mentioned several reasons for this: 1) To make sure King is relevant in the industry – that they are a tech savvy company; 2) Creating a larger user base leads to improved production quality and also benefits the internal users; 3) It’s nice, and they have the means to do it. Of course, showing good will to the game developer community is part of a branding strategy as well.

During the daytime lecture Mikael gave the audience a lot of insight into the game design process, and in the evening his presentation was more focused on showing how Defold works. One of his main messages was that when we are designing, we are not just having ideas and then implementing them, rather, design is about making ideas work, and “discovering the idea” as the design process moves forward.

The developers of Defold hope that their engine will make this process easier by making the engine and design process collaborative – “things communicate”. One effect of using Defold has been shortening the loading time for the games, which also makes the gaming experience much more pleasant for the player.

If you want to know more, check out the Defold webpage: http://www.defold.com/

Democorner

The gathering also had a couple of demos to try out: Sauna Simulator by students at Turku UAS and Quadro Delta’s Ragnorium. The Sauna Simulator was made in 48 hours at the Global Game Jam, and became an instant hit on YouTube with 25000 views in less than a week.

For more about Quadro Delta, check out their website: http://www.quadrodelta.com/

Text: Jenny Wiik

Photos: Natasha Trygg & Toni Heinonen

IGDA Finland Turku Hub

Games for Health Finland and IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering in Sparkup Turku 10.12.2015

On Thursday 10 December researchers and professionals from the gaming industry and health care sector gathered in the ICT-building in Turku. The seminar was organized by Turku Science Park and keynotes were held on topics like the serious game market in China, exercise games for the elderly and emerging trends in health games.

The seminar guests could also try health games themselves in an exhibition outside of the seminar room. There were virtual reality exercise bikes, health care robots and different physical games to play.

Making healthcare fun

Some reflections on the seminar: a lot of people seem unhappy with the concept of “serious games” and other suggestions popped up during the day, like ”applied games”. The word “serious” makes you think if something that is not primarily fun, and the point of gamifying health care is to make it more fun. Health games have a track record of not being very “good games”, so this is an area that needs development. If gamification is to actually work, the games have to be good and as engaging and addictive as mainstream games.

The atmosphere was optimistic. We are still only in the beginning of developing health games as a business, even though the idea of health games is not new anymore. But there is much potential for growth, and Finland is in a leading position. The problem right now is the lack of actual finished and good products. Health care researchers brought up the various challenges in creating health games: are they supposed to be actual medical devices with all the extensive and time-consuming testing and research that is needed for certification? Validation and testing processes in health care are very slow.

As an answer to this there is a research project in Turku University where commercial games are being tested on people with brain injuries. Could already existing and engaging games help in rehabilitating these people? As part of this project, player preferences are also being researched. If health games are to be effective at all, we also need to understand what kind of games different kinds of people like to play. A good finishing point for the seminar was the statement that creating good and effective health games, requires focusing on: 1. Entertainment, 2. Mechanics, 3. Player preferences, 4. Business model.

IGDA gathering and after party

In the evening IGDA took over and hosted an after party for everyone. The gathering was held in the newly opened Sparkup facilities, where Boost Turku, Creve and Turku Science Park are giving the local start up scene a cool new home.

There were presentations by NordicEdu, Morrow games, Ikoniac, Boost, Turku Game Lab and Quadro Delta.

Tatu Laine’s post mortem of NordicEdu’s math game Tile Tales was very insightful. Tile Tale is math, puzzle game with beautiful graphics and music that was aimed at a core audience of casual, social gamers and puzzle lovers. Developing it took two years, and it was first launched as F2P on the Windows phone. And this autumn it was launched on Appstore as a premium game, and it was featured in several countries, still it did not make it to become a big hit, even though reviews were largely positive. Tatu’s message to us all was that they had to eat a lot of humble pie, but “it’s a good pie”.

The other talks were a bit shorter, but no less sweeter. Liisa from Morrow games presented their horror game Crowmire. Jaakko from the new game company Ikoniac presented their work on a sci fi, puzzle game with deep storytelling for mobile (and they are hiring!). Konsta from Boost told us some more about the coming Startup Journey 2016. Natasha from Turku Game Lab gave us some exciting news about new developments for next year (Turku Game Lab is entering the entertainment industry). And finally Vitali from Quadro Delta blew our minds with a new, almost finished game trailer.

After the presentations the evening continued with drinks, snacks, networking and some gaming on Sparkup’s huge TV screen.

IGDA Finland Turku Hub wishes you a Merry X-mas and Happy New Year. Hope Santa brings you something nice!

IGDA Finland Hub coordinators meet in Joensuu Illusion

workshop

By tradition, IGDA Finland Hubs gather once a year to plan out the next season in Joensuu's Illusion game industry event. The usual challenges the IGDA Finland volunteers thrive to utilize is the continuing rise of the industry and the individuals with it.

Staying true to IGDA Finland's mission to promote and develop the recognition of the game developer community, volunteers around Finland do their best to make it happen. There are now over 40 IGDA Finland gatherings yearly in the whole country.

coordinators

IGDA Finland hub coordinators are a big bunch already. With 8 hubs volunteering around Finland, the reach is very good. We're looking forward to the next season and the exciting events it will entail!

IGDA Finland Turku Hub April Gathering with Epic Games

IGDA Finland Turku Hub was again happy to have Epic Games as a guest in our gathering. This time we tried another a slightly bigger venue Ravintola Mauno which turned out great. The gathering was the official party for this years Turku Game Day.

Sjoerd De Jong gave a live gamedev demo of Unreal Engine 4 and also showed off his own project Solus by Teotl Studios. We were very impressed what kind of freedom the tools in UE4 give to designers. Solus has basically been pieced together by Sjoerd almost on his own so quite an achievement.

We also had the pleasure of hosting guests from Fingersoft in our gathering so the night was great in many ways. 120 people attended the gathering this time so that sets a new record for IGDA Finland Turku Hub gatherings!

We’ll be back in May!