Interview with Joonas Laakso, Executive Producer at Next Games Oy, Finland

This interview, published in the 2017 issue of the gamevironments journal, features Joonas Laakso, Executive Producer at Next Games Oy, a Helsinki-based studio of roughly 120 people that develops mobile games built on established entertainment intellectual properties. The conversation covers the company's origins in 2013, its flagship title The Walking Dead: No Man's Land (2015), its upcoming augmented reality project The Walking Dead: Our World, and a Blade Runner mobile game in development. Laakso explains that the studio aims to become the preferred partner for bringing major entertainment brands into mobile gaming.

A central theme is the cultural variation Next Games encounters across global markets. Laakso notes that acceptable content differs sharply by region: depictions of blood, dead bodies, or religious symbols require careful handling, and South Korea presents a strict age-rating barrier. He also describes differing attitudes toward spending visibility, with some players in China and Russia preferring their purchases to be seen while others keep them private, and he observes that African and Asian gaming cultures diverge notably from Western aesthetic norms.

On process, Laakso describes the studio's incubation and prototyping initiative, which begins by involving internal fans of a brand in workshops to identify its emotional and wish-fulfillment core before the development team generates game concepts. The interview also highlights the shift of play time toward mobile devices and free-to-play, short-session models. Laakso's personal background in storytelling, music, and tabletop roleplaying is presented as shaping his perspective on the intersection of games and narrative.