A brief history of Iceland's game developers

I'm gonna tell you a story a little bit about a court which is the foundation of Iceland in a way and without the court we would be nothing Iceland was the poorest country of Europe in the early days we went on rowing boats and we fetched our court and we fill their stomachs with interest relation of the fisheries we became one of the richest countries of Europe thanks to the court the court was our gold like the timber is the gold of inland and each country

has his resources so how does this relate to what I'm going to talk about you talk about the gaming industry of Iceland first there was nothing except fisheries and then this arrived in Sweden first in Sweden the nest came in the late 90s and I was fortunate because my father brought one of the first five shipment that arrived in Gothenburg of the Nintendo brought it to her house and the Icelanders quickly got adjusted to their entertainment going from Schwarzenegger Stallone the movies and got like everybody else hooked on computer games because we had high purchasing power we were a little bit on top of things we were the early adopters

we're a small nation that is rich technically well acquit so we had the highest internet connection in the world most pcs per capita in the world so we had a very good infrastructure for technologies and a gaming sector and the Icelanders were optimistic turning from living in mud houses being a very poor nation in transforming into origination so this company was founded in the wake of this gaming revolution it was starting all around the world but the interesting part is that I cannot tell you a big story like Johanna was telling about the

Swedish market because the Swedish market is huge the Finnish market is huge don't know who's bigger now but the thing is that believe it or not the Icelandic gaming industry was ahead of the finning finished industry at a time we had three gaming companies 95-96 CCP was the one who survived the two other companies were making games for the playstation one platform didn't go as well but why did CCP succeed it succeeded because we had ambitious bankers coping bank that really founded this company we had no tradition of we seized in Iceland we only invested in cut cut was our money we just bought new trawlers and with his code and it was easy we sell it to Spain we shall it abroad we even stopped to eat the caught

ourselves and started to eat the head up because the code was so much gold we could get so much money so we changed that but this company got a decent funding of a few million dollars and it's moderately artistically very successful company I don't know if you heard about it financially doing relatively good other companies didn't go as good as that but the problem for us was that this bankers were very ambitious and a little bit too ambitious they decided I mean gaming is a small business but let's buy the world instead so they went and bought few banks in Sweden Norway they bought parts of North iya sample financials in Finland and a lot of other companies all over the world so pretty much nothing happens for 10 years in Iceland and this is a story that happens

in many societies that after our bust after a bank went bust here is our prime minister asking god to bless the icelandic nations because we got over ambitious that sometimes happens and kind of like became a little bit in the shell again because we couldn't make it so in the wake of the crisis like happened in finland nokia transform there in the beginning of the 90s started that started the finnish technology it also happened some changes in iceland and people started to think maybe you should do something more than rely on the fish and and since the the banking thing didn't work so good so we should maybe try some other things so i don't know a partly governmental fund funded a gaming company another decently funded gaming company called go gajic they had like 40 employees made a couple

of games and we had talent pool at the time it was a good technology good education some people had worked for ccp but this company made a lot of games but it was a little bit in the early days of facebook games and prior to to mobile in a way they made few mobile games and eventually they went past as well but things were starting people were starting to have ideas after the crisis so we had a second successful gaming company of iceland recently it's called quiz so I don't know if you heard about it but they launched the 2012 and they got 10 million downloads in eight weeks and became the biggest trivia game for the moment for some nine months until trivia cracker past them but this created a lot of optimism again so now in Iceland some of the what we

can call the fishermen are realizing that Iceland can have a say maybe like Finland Sweden and all other countries in this sector so we have been fortunate to get some investments to deals like studio i'm working for small studios are starting to develop and optimistic optimism is on the rise and so now we can say there is a new era in iceland we want there's a general sense that this better access to financing is creating a lot of optimism both by young people and older veterans older veterans have left CCP they are founding their own sheets

that has been transformation also off of this company that has a little bit stalled and people are starting a lot of new companies promising companies in every field and the talent pool is quite strong I mean we have even though there is a few people we have we have at least a couple of well I don't know maybe not to me but we have we have people have been working for our companies in old major studios in rovio inking in don't know in supercell don't think so but all over the world singer is I slanted working working for apple google and these companies and they want to come home or they want to work with Icelandic companies and they want to build something so what we are doing now is it's very diverse dislike more or less all kinds of small start-up in these sectors I'm

not going to talk so much about the rest of the game we are doing a simple sports game mobile sports games company that I'm working for and we are a little bit more more or less everywhere and we have recently recently be fun founded three funds investment funds local Icelandic investment funds that are all looking into investing a little bit in this sector so that is the story of today it's it's it's not a big story and we don't know how it's going to end but there is optimism in the industry and we are I think can arrive somewhere so this was a short overview of a short market in and Iceland we don't have a long

history it's mainly these two companies that have really succeeded but there's others on the way so if you have any questions I would be glad to tell you more I even about the history the economics or the gaming the technology or the blue lagoon well as a tourist trap that's the inside information but yeah if you want to travel if you want to go to Iceland like that's why I want to brief you on there is a lot of hot pools and we got we got this resources we are that everybody should go to a swimming pool outside swimming pool and swim in hot water try the blue lagoon as well but only ones i would definitely remember that it's a question

thanks for the good talk Marcus official innoGames you were a little bit talking about the industry there yeah I'm little bit switching to the other perspective what games are successful in that country is it like the same thing as in Europe because Iceland so isolated or is it Danish companies are doing good there or like media houses what is the perspective from that side can you a little bit talk about that yes we'll be happy to talk about that Iceland is is a little bit because it's between Europe and North America we describe it as much more Americanized country than than the rest of Scandinavia the Nordic countries but more or less the world is so global that you will see more or less the same games I mean we are playing the mobile games we're playing supercell once Angry Birds was the most popular game every kid in Iceland is playing minecraft it's

it's I think that's the most popular thing so the taste I mean the taste is I think it's more or less European American globe I think you would just fit it in there what what is most popular in our country