TechSoup

Internationalization Awards of the President of the Republic go to Finnish gaming cluster

2012-02-12T12:09:00.005+02:00

Press release February 9, 2012 President of the Republic of Finland Tarja Halonen has presented the 2011 Internationalization Awards to the Finnish gaming cluster, which promotes the creation of a new growth industry. The aim of the internationalization award is to promote companies' activities in an international environment and their ability to develop and

Pelijammailu & luovuus 28.1. ilmaistilaisuus Helsingissä

2012-01-17T16:50:00.002+02:00

Hapessa järjestetään yleisötilaisuus pelinkehityksestä lauantaina 28.1.2012 klo 12–15. Keskustelua käydään mm. ruohonjuuritason toiminnasta ja indie-pelien matkasta menestykseen. Puhujina kuullaan pelialan ammattilaisia. Tapahtuma on kaikille avoin, tervetuloa!Tule kuulemaan mitä pelijammailu on, miten opettajat voisivat soveltaa sitä arjessa, mikä rooli itsenäisillä ja isoista julkaisijoista

Book: "Digital Pioneers. Cultural drivers of future media culture" (download for FREE!)

2011-11-12T10:51:00.005+02:00

My new book (anthology) is out! You can download it for free!DIGITAL PIONEERS Cultural drivers of future media culture Sonja Kangas (ed.) Digital media are central in youngsters' lives, both time-wise and culturally - creating meanings, strengthening relationships and pondering values. Digital activities are gaining a bigger share of youths' everyday life. The Internet provides several ways for

Urbanization is shaping the future forms of gaming

2011-05-30T12:50:00.001+03:00

My article from the upcoming Future play project report (Tampere university's Tekes project).Urbanization and the development of various types of locative games are giving hints of the shape of things to come. Research projects have piloted locative, pervasive and urban games (e.g. Magenkurt et al, 2005, Ballages et al 2007) for years already. Lately, locative games have become commercially

Pelisuunnitteluklubi Helsingissä kesäkuussa!

2011-05-26T10:56:00.001+03:00

Onko kipinää pelien suunnitteluun, mutta ei riittävästi tietoa tai oikeita kavereita hommaan? Tule suunnittelemaan ja kehittämään pelejä ammattilaisten johdolla. Sinun ei tarvitse olla itseoppinut osaaja, kunhan olet kiinnostunut hommasta ja innokas tekemään. Klubissa lähdetään tutustumaan pelisuunnitteluun kevyesti valmiita työkaluja hyväksi käyttäen. Ohjelmassa käydään läpi kattavasti koko

Youth, digital media and games: Future challenges in a nutshell

2010-08-16T14:21:00.003+03:00

I will be giving a couple of ´youth/games/digital media´ talks this fall. I thought of sharing some points I will make in those presentations.1. Playfulness a way to gather, process and share informationGames and entertainment in different forms is the typical way children and youngsters learn to use digital mediaThis is already visible in digital marketing (see e.g. Coca Cola Happiness

Assembly 2010

2010-08-10T13:38:00.004+03:00

19th Assembly computer festival was arranged at Hartwall Arena Helsinki Finland from 5th until 8th August. Once again the event attracted 5000+ participants and there were plenty of gaming and quality compos during the weekend.Winners of the demo, 4k intro and 64k intro were impressive. The winner of Short Film category also received lots of attention. It is cool alright but reminds be a bit of

IGDA Finland presenting Finnish game startup companies

2010-05-27T10:48:00.005+03:00

IGDA Finland chapter will organize "Startup stories" presentation session on Tuesday 8th June at 5PM (GMT +3). Check out the live stream at Igda.fi web site. The recording will also be available through the site later on.Ookoohko, Rocket Pack, Relationship Games, Uplause, Fantastec and Ironstar Helsinki will be sharing their stories with us.After the IGDA Finland Presentations session it is IGDA

Nordic Game 2010 conference was stellar!

2010-05-01T13:38:00.013+03:00

(Luckily) deserted Malmö Mässan ceased to exist and Nordic Game conference moved to Slagthuset. New venue worked well for the conference & expo and was well in line with the casual & cosy atmosphere of the event. The other difference was that this year there were no super stars from Asia but instead really solid set of Nordic success stories. For example Trials HD (xbla), Max & the Magic Marker (

GDC2010: Microsoft Women in Gaming Awards

2010-03-13T17:52:00.012+02:00

Yesterday I attended the Microsoft WiG luncheon. Microsoft had invited Jade Raymond and Peter Molyneux to give keynotes at the luncheon. Jade's talk highlighted the role of mentoring when pursuing a courier in games business and that mentoring and learning from seniors (as well as applying good practices from other industries) is the only way to become a leading expert in game business. Peter

Day 2 & 3 at GDC2010 highlights

2010-03-12T18:08:00.008+02:00

After the first two summit days it was time to kick the main conference going. Uncharted 2 and social games are in a very big role this year. A love letter to flash = funnies video of Wednesday :)Playdom people talked at their presentation "Games as a live service: a 360 degree look at the art and science of managing social games" about user generated content and their community building efforts

GDC2010, day 1. My top 3

2010-03-10T03:12:00.008+02:00

1. Nexus OneWoot, I got a Nexus One! I don't like the design but new gadgets are always cool! And some feelings (see the photo) from North Hall (GDC2010) -- that's so 80s ;)2. Focus group driven development not as relevant in Facebook10 years ago the popular saying was that if you manage to get girls into gaming, you will double the market and become a billionaire over night. The development was

Facebook games for Grannies

2010-02-27T11:42:00.007+02:00

In "2010 PopCap Social Gaming Research" report, the company found that fully two-thirds of social game players in the United States are 40 years of age or older, while the majority of players in the United Kingdom are under the age of 40. Young adults and teens in both countries are the least interested in playing games on sites like Facebook and MySpace: only 9% of U.K. casual gamers are 21

Startup scene in Finland -- When should we start to worry?

2010-02-08T13:42:00.006+02:00

Tietoviikko magazine listed 25 most interesting startups from Finland (February 2010). The list is put together by acknowledged experts from Forum Virium Helsinki, Technopolis and Arctic Startup. All of these corporations should have very good picture of the overall situation.Finland has not exactly been the cradle of startups and entrepreneurship hasn't been that desirable alternative due to

We made Lyre Inspyre at the Finnish Game Jam

2010-02-04T11:57:00.006+02:00

The first ever Finnish Game Jam (FGJ) was held last weekend. FGJ was a part of the Global Game Jam event taking place in 39 countries around the world at the same time. Game developers jammed for 48 hours and made games around the theme: Deception. Besides the theme Finnish participants were also asked to utilize at least one of the following constraints: lyre, fire or wire in the games.Global

Addition to my "closing of 2009" post

2010-01-14T15:16:00.004+02:00

A couple of things: first of all thanks to the feedback to my previous blog post! I just wanted to add that yes, I am also working with good guys at Paf and we are about to revolutionize online money gaming. Unfortunately I (and we) didn't have enough time to do it last year ;) But I can assure you that it will most definitely happen this year!So yeah yeah! I am also spending a lot of time with

2009 highlights and plans for 2010

2010-01-08T13:46:00.011+02:00

I am a type of a person who likes to make plans. I am far too rational to be a dreamer and I like to take risks and confront challenges. Every year around this time I plan what I would like to see happening within next 12 months. Besides making plans I also tend to look back and see how well my 2009 plans realized and what surprises and good things happened.Last year I lived in Copenhagen Denmark

Hottest trends in games 2010

2009-12-28T11:21:00.009+02:00

A year ago I suggested that the following five trends will have an impact to the games industry in 2009:1. Tinkering2. Networked experience3. Alternative revenue models 4. Massively competitive co-ops FPSs 5. Networking mini games adding valueThe list was relatively accurate. Tinkering definitely was and is an aspect in games. For example XBLA games, Scribblenauts and indie scene all brought up

Random thoughts of game business and funding

2009-12-16T10:36:00.006+02:00

From me November was the month of funding. I was a member of the jury in Nordic Game Program (game development) and Live2011 project focusing on digital art projects. Both sessions made me to think of the gap between business knowledge (/business focus) and games development practices.Nordic Game funds are given out in two rounds per a year. There were 84 applications on the second round of 2009

Multiverse and idea bubbles

2009-11-26T14:23:00.010+02:00

Yesterday I joined Idean 10 years party in Helsinki. Idean is user centric design company which has come a long way with user interface design and ideation work within last 10 years. As a company Idean delivers also an interesting story of entrepreneurship. In the beginning of their path, they had good mix of will, luck or coincidence and trust (from seed funder) to get things going even if they

IGDA Finland November event, Finland Game Jam kick off

2009-10-31T12:32:00.008+02:00

Do you want to know how the leading game studios do their demo? Or are you interested in Global Game Jam event which shall take place in January 2010? Game Jamming will happen in over 50 location around the world at the same time. It will be 48 hours of sweat, ideation, game mechanics, coding, sound and graphic design, team work and networking. Remedy Entertainment will give a demo of Alan Wake

MindTrek - there and back

2009-10-02T10:57:00.006+03:00

MindTrek conference is the only conference in Finland providing good crossover of anything and everything to do with digital media. This year MindTrek attracted nearly 800 participants. Sunny Thursday was well spent at the conference. I chatted with people, followed start up lauch pad session and had good time at the party (thanks Jussi & other friends!). The organizators of the conference had

Online video rules ok

2009-09-29T15:05:00.003+03:00

Interesting research data from comScore (with US focus).