IGDA Finland ry Annual Meeting

Greetings all members of IGDA Finland association! You are warmly welcome to join the statutory annual meeting that was delayed in May due to issues with our accounting company. The meeting is held on Tuesday, 9th of August, 2016, from 5 PM until 7 PM, at Business Meeting Park (CORNER, Salomonkatu 5 C, 00100 Helsinki). It is also possible to participate virtually via Google Hangouts.

The main purpose of this meeting is to go over our actions and accept our financial accounts for 2015 but it’s also a good moment to discuss the big picture of IGDA Finland with the current board of directors. Light snacks will be served.

Please RSVP by email to teemu.haila@igda.fi by the end of business hours on Friday, 29th of July, 2016.

If you have any questions regarding the event, please contact teemu.haila@igda.fi

THE AGENDA OF THE ANNUAL MEETING ON AUGUST 9, 2016

1. Opening the meeting
2. Selecting the officials for the meeting
3. Legality and power of decision
4. Confirming the agenda
5. Action report
6. Presenting and confirming the financial accounts and auditors’ reports
7. Granting the discharge for the board and others that are held accountable
8. Other emerging issues
9. Ending the meeting

IGDA Finland Turku Hub Gathering in May

May 12 was Turku Game day, and IGDA Turku Hub organized a full specced evening program at Sparkup, with talks by several prominent game industry people. Read more about how to make money when everything is free, what Rival Games learned from their game series The Detail, how NordicEdu designs the future of serious games and what Appstar are up to. Read all the way to the end, and get some good advice from IGDA volunteer of the year.

Lovell’s Curve

Nicholas Lovell, an investment banker, author and consultant, held a thought-provoking talk about his theory on ”how to make money when everything is going free”. Lovell claimed that F2P is not actually a business model it is a marketing tool. By offering the product for free first, you reach an audience, but after that you have to “earn your right” to talk to the customer again.

The Curve refers to the amount that a person, a customer, is willing to pay. The idea was inconceivable before the Internet. The web has enabled one-to-one communication, but also increased the amount of products that are given away for free. How do we keep paying our bills when the competition gives away their stuff for free?

We can let people choose how much they spend – this is a marketing opportunity. Some of the audience will pay even if most will not. Lovell’s Curve can be broken down into three steps: 1. Find an audience 2. Earn the right to talk to them again 3. Enable superfans.

His advice is that we as game developers and creators need to keep our customers in “our ecosystem”. You offer the customers the chance to pay what they want (and including some ridiculously over-priced items, tiers or pledges, makes the cheaper ones look like a bargain). Also enabling people to participate in the journey of the game has turned out to be a successful strategy. Lovell mentioned Tim Schafer’s Kickstarter as an example. One-third of the pledgers did not even play the finished game – they backed the project for the creator’s journey.

So, how can you enable the people who love what you do? Let superfans spend money on something they value, let them “level up” as supporters. Lovell also pointed out that people in the digital era spend money on content that gives them status and emotions. The point is not to extract money from people. This is something that stops working after a time, according to Lovell. Delivering human joy is what works.

A Detailed Post-Mortem

Rival Games and Jukka Laakso held a presentation about their third and last episode of The Detail. For those of the readers who do not yet know about Rival Games, they are currently the biggest Turku game company, with 17 employees. They focus on interactive narratives and storytelling. The core game loop focuses on choices, particularly on the gray areas of our moral compass. These choices make the player emotionally attached to the characters in the game. Interestingly it is the smaller choices that really bring the characters alive. The Detail is a game series that is about how people experience stories differently.

The third episode of The Detail – Devil in the Details was recently released on Steam. Laakso gave the audience a post-mortem highlighting first the good, then the bad.

The writers did a good job, the visual style was unique and appealing, audio was successful, coders made things seem as they should. Communication within the team has improved.

The list of bad things was slightly longer, or more detailed. The team expected more money from revenue, and Laakso gave us the advice to plan the budget so that it lasts for the whole game. Because of the lack of money, deadlines and delivery failed. There was too much time between episodes, and sales were bad because of it. The team had to cut the last two episodes, and a lot of the plot was cut short. The core team changed a lot. Design was neglected, and so was gameplay. There was no iteration just execution. The art style was inconsistent because of the change of artists. There were bugs and there was not enough time left for testing. Many of the problems had their origin at management level. But all you can do is learn from it and move on.

Currently Rival Games has a partnership with a comics print, and the budget problems are solved.

Serious forest games

The following presentation was by NordicEdu CEO Tomi Kokkonen. NordicEdu has been making games for five years, and already have an excellent track record of serious games. They currently employ seven people and reside in the Manilla building in Turku.

NordicEdu’s goal is to become the best serious game company in Finland, and globally. They offer expertise to different organizations. They have three types of customers: other companies that want to implement a game idea; unions, federations or public organizations that need partners to develop a game; organizations that commission advertisement games.

People learn best when they are motivated. There are different approaches to serious games, and some projects are more about gamification or gameful design. Kokkonen lists types of serious games: teaching games, simulations, meaningful games and purposeful games. NordicEdu’s current project MobiMetsä is for UPM and the Scouts. It is a game about teaching the sustainable use of the Finnish forest. The players need to, for example, take photos of real trees in the game.

Kokkonen also gave us an introduction on how NordicEdu does their projects. They start with a workshop day and they create a user experience journey. Focus group opinions are crucial in developing good serious games. Making graphics and coding is almost trivial compared to the much more demanding process of getting to know the core audience.

NordicEdu also showed us an interesting way to garner comments from testers: short video blogs by the testers that are sent through Whatsapp. It is hard to get people to write, and when they talk freely they give away much more information.

Tapping into a fashionable audience

Appstar’s current game is focusing on the dress up genre with a more casual (but fashionable) twist. Olesja Parkkali introduced the small start-up that is about to grow. They have gained success with their beta version of World of Fashion and are developing the game further.

According to studies, women and girls spend more money and time on mobile games than men. Still this customer group is underserved. Appstar has been able to engage female players ages 13-20. The game itself is about collecting celebrities and doing global challenges. The players comment and like styles.

The Turku Game Day evening ended with a short presentation by an IGDA volunteer from Helsinki: Jenni. Her most valuable hints were to 1) volunteer 2) get a spot at the door to the gatherings, that way you meet everyone.

Our demo corner got many people interested in testing the new games.

IGDA is all about networking and an inclusive community, and making work as a game developer fun.

Text: Jenny Wiik

Photos: Oskari Tamminen and Toni Heinonen

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!