IGDA Finland Oulu hub: Polar Bear Pitching – pre party!

People attended:170Sponsors: Fingersoft, IBM, LudoCraft, PAVA Ry. Place: Gloria Nightclub Time: 24.2.2015 klo 20:00-01:00 (Afterparty @ Fingersoft jacuzzi)

IGDA Finland Oulu hub combined their forces with Oulu Pitch fest to warm up the people heading for the icy waters. This turned out to be the biggest event by Oulu hub so far with 170 people. We had a lively demo corner, snacks and drinks. We even had a polar bear visiting us!

Demo Corner presented: Icesolation (Oulu Gamelab), Gerty, Gobblin’ Goblinz (Frozen Vision), Happy Circus racing ( Meizi Games),  End State (Henry Vuontisjärvi), Fast and Futurous (Viima games), 5 seconds to kill, Disposables (Teemu Väisänen & Jonne Väisänen), Renegade Rockets (Naapukka productions)

Related links

Fingersoft (http://www.fingersoft.net/)
IBM (http://www.ibm.com/fi/fi/)
Ludocraft (http://www.ludocraft.com/)
PAVA Ry. (http://www.pava.fi/)
Polar Bear Pitch (http://www.pitchfestoulu.com/polarbear/)

Kajaani Industry Beer, now also an IGDA Finland Hub!

Industry Beer gathering had been active for two years until last February we got the title of IGDA Finland Kajaani Hub! We are really excited to have Kajaani as one of the hubs of IGDA Finland.

Game scene has been active in Kajaani since 2007, when Kajaani University of Applied Sciences started Finland’s first professional game industry degrees. Our community has been growing and working together since the beginning.

Industry Beer started in 2011 as a local game industry gathering, where people could catch up and discuss their ideas. First there were less than 10 people and the event was organized irregularly, but others showed interest and the gathering exploded. Past two years the event has been a monthly event open for everyone interested.

Starting left, Lauri Komulainen, Mikko Romppainen, Janne Remes, Jermu Joki and Aku Mähönen at Rock House Kulma

Our organizers are actively putting Kajaani scene on the map, it is important for us that the young talent that starts in the small city like Kajaani, gets discovered when the time is right.

Visions of the theme presented by Ilkka Leino from Supercell.

Visions of the theme presented by Ilkka Leino from Supercell

Ilkka talked us about how their teams are self-guided at Supercell and how important it is to have someone holding the vision of the product. He also studied in Kajaani among us and it has been great to follow a young man moving forward on his career.

We had 100 visitors at the event which is a local record, and according to official statistics 40 of them became IGDA Finland members on the site. This clearly shows how active our local developers are, and if you would like to meet them come and visit us.

Contact one of the organizers below to plan your visit to Kajaani.

IGDA Finland Kajaani Hub Facebook Group
Linkedin Aku Mähönen
LinkedIn Janne Remes
LinkedIn Lauri Komulainen
LinkedIn Mikko Romppainen

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering with BoostTurku & Turku Indies

September came quickly around the corner and it was once again time to gather around to talk about games and game development with BoostTurku, the local entrepreneurship society! This time, we had a showcase where people could come and and present their awesome indie game projects & companies.

BoostTurku with it’s accelerator program Startup Journey has been a great source of very promising game companies and they are really central in the development of the game scene in Turku!

Here’s what’s hot in the Turku area!

NordicEdu, an educational and serious games company is about to release Tile Tail, a unique casual number puzzle game very soon. The game has an awesome look & feel and here’s  hoping it will find it’s puzzle-loving audience!

Tony Sundell, a Turku indie game developer who has been creating an adventure game all by himself for about 2 years now is reaching the beta stage with his preposterous and really fun adventure game “Bunker The Underground Game” promising over 4 hours of gameplay. Truly an achievement to behold. Check out the awesome trailer! (Amusement guaranteed!)

Walk Mode is a recently founded indie games company formed by 2 experienced game developers Juuso Mattila and Matti Faler. Their game “Papa Void’s Power Skateboarding” is not a platformer game - it’s a jumping game! Such a genre defying concept comes alive in this sweet looking screenshot and believe it, the game looks a lot better in action!

Bugbyte’s latest project is a mixture of a simplified mini game for mobile devices and a bigger  game for PC! Battlestation - Humanity’s Last Hope is a game where Babylon 5 meets Faster Than Light. This ambitious project has a lot of wind under its wings so we strongly recommend to check it out! http://battlestation.fi/

NoName Games is a very recently formed games startup that is looking to combine fresh game mechanics with classic game concepts. They were showing off their infinite runner game with drawing gameplay. Follow their interesting journey here! http://www.nonamegames.fi/

FakeFish is also a very recent games startup and they were presenting their Kalevala inspired upcoming role-playing-game Northbound. The startup has a large team so we’re expecting to see big things from them! Take a look at their devblog follow their undertakings through here http://fakefish.fi/

We did this kind of Turku Indie Gathering a year ago and it has been incredible to see the immense progress happening in the local scene. Rock on and be back for another gathering in October!

Tatu Laine

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Volunteers

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering with Epic Games

Game developers and alike were quick to come back from their holidays and away from the scorching heat outside to meet with Epic Games in the Fall's first IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering.

Andy Hess, Technology Evangelist from Epic Games (with an impressive background from Apple, Ageia and NVIDIA)  was over at Turku's gathering showing off many of the amazing features UE4 has to offer. It was incredibly interesting to hear about what made Epic Games radically change course with their subscription model which of course in the end is all for the good of us, game developers. Andy's presentation was met with great interest and with a bombardment of clever questions. We wouldn't be suprised to see a few new UE4 games being developed in the area.

Almost 100 visitors came to enjoy the gathering atmosphere and of course - the drinks. Prepare to look forward to the upcoming gatherings! Next gathering will feature some of the coolest indie game projects in Turku!

Text: Tatu Laine Pictures: Henna Tuunainen Gathering: IGDA Finland Turku Hub volunteers

Tekes Skene Roadshow & EXPA May Gathering with JES

The Tekes Skene Roadshow visited Jyväskylä just one day before our monthly meeting. It ended up being a very personal visit, with Kari Korhonen talking about how the Skene program works and answering questions from game developers from Jyväskylä.

We were happy to arrange our May Gathering with our good friends, Jyväskylä Entrepreneurship society. The Gathering was at the Jyväskylä Train Depot, a great space all kinds of cultural events at Jyväskylä.

We had two great guests, with Kati Heljakka and Samuli Syvähuoko, who also visited us this time last year.

Kati Heljakka is a toy and games researcher, with a PhD from the university of Turku. She is also a creative director at the Finnish board game company, Tactic. Tactic was a very exciting example of a Finnish games company, since it does something most of us are not that familiar: board games. It also manages to be international and still make the games in Pori, Finland, when most board game companies have outsourced the production into Asia. Very inspirational to hear someone with both the theoretical training and practical experience about making physical games.

Samuli Syvähuoko is veteran of the Finnish game studies, having been involved with starting such game companies as Remedy. He’s been touring Finland, talking about the Game Brewery, a project for “refining the Finnish games industry.” On top of that, they managed to make actual beer for the games industry! He also argued at length that Finland is the best place to be making games. The numbers he showed us of Finnish games industry’s growth seemed pretty convincing.

The evening came to a great end at the Bar Paja, with the games industry’s own beer. This was also the last gathering this spring, with the next one waiting us in September.

Thank you JES, Kati and Samuli and see you all in September!