Cursor's Teemu Saarelainen on boosting the games industry in Finland

hi again um as I said earlier my name is Tam and I'm the head of games at gusar and player uh I'm going to talk uh a bit about uh boosting the uh the games industry in southern Finland so um let's see if this works okay now it works great thanks all right let's continue um while I was PR preparing my uh talk uh during the past couple of weeks um I was thinking and and trying to remember uh the presentation at presentations at uh GDC um I'm getting old so closer to 40 now and can't remember everything so uh I I um resorted to the GDC Vault and uh looked up a few of the uh

interesting presentations there and I picked up picked up um some things uh from the talks so one of the things uh that came up was uh this image um there was a talk uh by uh Daniel Bernstein uh on game studios and uh he had this uh Iceberg metaphor in his presentation um it said the development is the visible part in the everyday life of the uh of the studios but what's underneath is everything else so financing cash flow budgeting legal stuff marketing uh all sorts of stuff and more recently user acquisition monetization uh live Ops uh metrics you name it

uh there's also some stuff added uh from the uh presentation of Jason delara who runs the uh execution labs in Canada uh I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff missing from this uh this slide as well but most the most important ones I'm sure are there so this is just to uh give you some sort of a hint of of what's going on with the with the game studio uh today and this is what we were thinking uh back in the years when when we were deciding and research making research on on what to do with the uh with the very early uh game studios that are just been founded and and are starting up their operations so they often need help especially in these areas underneath

next a bit of background so to uh kind of put things into perspective uh we're going to do a short uh jump back in time so back in the days 2010 we uh were starting out our operations and doing some research so during 2010 uh we did a bunch of uh bunch of surveys and and relied on on Research made by Neo games which is the uh kind of the leading support Organization for the games industry in Finland uh so there were lots of uh material for us to to base our operations on uh plus a very important research was made by by one of the uh the the leading uh game Professionals in in our region as well

So based on these these studies uh there was an very active need to uh develop the industry to support it uh the key areas uh for these initiatives were as follows so uh the main uh five areas that needed help uh business and process development and other expert services for for game studios such as design legal all sorts of things uh they needed a lot of funding to get their operation started so for projects and demos uh those were key uh at least during Back 2010 to get deals from Publishers so that was

important we needed uh publishing and distribution development because there were no uh finished Publishers during 2010 2011 maybe you can count Robo as a publisher uh then uh PR and marketing there are lots of international events in the industry so those need to be attended by the studios if they want to get deals and lastly but not not the least education development and research so uh a skilled Workforce in Finland is a must uh for the industry to succeed and this was seen as as one of the key key areas so although they there are five different areas mentioned here uh the the last one needs uh a little bit of of a boost more more than the others combined

uh the results uh from from this work back in the days so during 2011 uh we uh got funding for over 5 million euros from the uh uh the EU to boost the games industry and startups and research and education in in the southern Finland so the uh bayat Regional Council uh uh gave us uh about 3 and a half million euros for two different projects uh and some other instruments another 2 million or so so that was a really really big boost in 2011 the actual work uh got started uh during the Spring 2011 and has continued until till this day

so one of the initiatives uh that came about was the game cluster project which is uh a project in southern Finland during 2012 2014 there are six Partners so Duru which is um let me see if I can to right here so we're in Helsinki over there uh then metropolia uh University of applied sciences here in Helsinki uh then Guam University of applied sciences which has uh campuses in kka and kovala and then uh in laa over there we had uh Sima University of applied sciences and L Baran the University of Technology so um six partners and covering the whole of Southern Finland basically

and uh we decided uh to uh put our money into these areas so these kind of reflect the uh the background research uh quite a bit so on publishing and distribution development we had a work package then on internationalization business and process development we had another work package uh then on uh we had a Research Forum and game business research mainly operated by by laa University of Technology uh then we had game education development by the universities of applied sciences so turu Helsinki uh kotka and kovala and La were all part of this uh we had some um investment money for uh developing some uh environments for for doing uh learning testing and development so we had some sites uh in

Kola kka and laara that were built for for these activities and then as a quite a big work package we had also the pr marketing and and attending the uh events uh some results so to just quickly to uh move on uh the development environments uh were Meda game studio in goola uh then we had two uh level up sites so we branded them them uh was 2012 we had one site in kotka and one in laa these were mainly for uh for new Studios and new teams uh we had uh specialized hardware and uh software for game development in in these sites and also in the uh in the medows again game Studio at at Guam in

Goa so among others we had um um a motion capture environment in the uh in the goola studio and the usual software packages for for doing stuff with unity and 3ds Max and and whatnot we also had a a multitude uh of mobile devices for mainly for doing game testing so I don't know there were like 40 50 devices that that traveled around from from company to company and was used for for mainly for doing test testing uh these offered of course a a a nice co-working space for the for the startups but also u a nice environment for the for the students to have a real word projects and this was a major part of the the uh the whole uh game cluster project as a whole because um the

students were very eager to take part in in this real world uh game demo development projects uh another result uh was the uh game U player launch pad that offered support in uh several key areas so we had legal and IPR issues that that um needed to take been taken care of so we had a a bunch of experts from from um legal officers that offered training but also uh very specific support to uh to different uh game studios and mainly in the in the Capital Area here in Finland we had a quality assurance uh work package in there uh we had we were lucky to have a have a

QA company based in kotka and operating here in Helsinki as well that we could use um we did a lot of uh game testing process development with these companies and piloted the uh these processes with with several actual games that got tested by uh by the QA company and the students were also involved in this as well then we had a work package in game design um a big work package in in publishing where we studied free-to-play uh publishing models um and all all things related to that user acquisition uh soft launches and we actually produced a kind of a quick uh manual on how to do that uh then on um training we had a game executive program to together with Al the

university so that's going to be one of the topics uh later today on uh on the uh panel and actually the the QA is going to be another topic of a panel so those are going to be covered in bit more detail uh after lunch uh all in all we had more than 20 companies involved in our operations so game studios and and other U game companies uh those work packages that we have in the Launchpad uh enable funding improve the workflow and and increase the competences of of several people um we had uh a lot of tuning done in the publishing processes and natur the QA stuff uh

helped to make better games but also help the processes in in which the uh the games are being tested so this whole Launchpad thing was uh a very successful in in providing the needs uh the means to to help the U the game studios and their needs on marketing uh one of the uh the biggest uh work was done with the uh with the EV events so we had International beb events we attended a lot of them and arranged uh as Miko said earlier these investor events we were part of that as well so here's a kind of short list of of what we did so we attended uh game connection and GDC America the last couple of years um game connection Europe 2012

2013 uh Gamescom and GDC Europe 2012 2013 and I guess we also went to uh E3 uh in 2012 Nordic game naturally that's one of the uh the main events uh in the Nordic countries and also a lot of people from across the globe come there actually the image image over there is is from the uh from the booth that we had uh and for the first time we had this play Finland branded booth in Nordic game so this was in cooperation with with with the whole Finnish games industry and we were able to Showcase some of the uh the companies that operated with us yes and I'm sure Miko mentioned uh before that we had these investor events

in London Singapore New York and in Helsinki so we were at slush for for instance um more than 15 different Studios attended these B2B events um we had on a rough scale we had more than 500 individual meetings in these events we had lots of new contacts uh and new networks and the studios got several publishing deals projects and and a lot of funding so this was a very in uh very important part of the marketing efforts and a bit more about marketing PR naturally we had active presence in in social media we had a website we had all sorts of marketing material print media coverage we were um partt of

edge um I guess more than a year back uh we did some video footage and marketing trailers for the companies and and the game cluster project and were were very actively involved in the community so we uh were present at at the igda Finland uh Gatherings and we were there to uh help uh people establish the local hubs for instance in turu uh kka at least in in those locations a New igda Finland local Hub was was formed within a year so all in all all of these uh marketing efforts improve the visibility for for all the stakeholders that were involved and as an indirect result actually uh there's a movie about the the games industry coming out within a

year or so so there's a um there's a company making making a movie about The Finnish games industry uh and actually it's kind of based on on people founding a new uh game studio in a remote town uh and trying to to survive basically and it's a it's a kind of learning process and it's it's really fun to see how these uh three guys uh uh establish a studio basically from nothing they have an idea and then just uh try to uh learn learn how to swim in the in the sea of the games industry uh here's a list of some of the companies uh that have been founded during during the project or during the last couple of years uh some of them don't no longer exist but uh most of them are are

active um and this is just a kind of a short list of of those companies so a lot more I'm sure are there as well and some of them have been have been more involved in in our operations and and some of them a bit less and in addition to this of course there are a a big list of of of companies that have been involved in these uh events and operations as well but more on that uh this afternoon so um if we take a look back at the iceberg what started my presentation the iceberg is a kind of brilliant met metaphor uh uh we can see that uh the the weak points the traditional weak points that

uh has that have been kind of influenced by our activities are the first four so financing uh budgeting cash flow that's been uh covered legal that's been covered marketing and internationalization has been covered but the four in the bottom so user acquisition monetization servers and hosting so live Ops metrics and analytics that uh could not have been seen uh back in 2010 and 2011 when we uh started our our operations so that there's a change in Market naturally and free to play has become the the kind of dominating uh standard in mobile games and in other platforms as well so um to sum it up we still need uh support in in those those areas of of

expertise uh the game cluster project uh is about to end so uh in the end of June uh our project officially ends um but we need um new initiatives because as we all know the industry is is constantly um evolving and changing um so I'm sure player and csor will uh do some more project in the future we will uh try our best to to get funding for doing more development on especially these new topics that have Arisen risen from the uh from the industry but it's been an exciting to years doing this stuff and uh I want to

thank all of our partners that that are here today and uh hopefully you you'll have a have a pleasant two days at the Pocket Gamer connects there's a lot of interesting stuff being presented in the halls and I'm sure there are a lot of parties in the evening so enjoy the conference thank you [Applause]