Panel: Nordic Gaming - State of Play.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] so we're gonna finish strong I'm glad there's so many of you you in here we've got some of the the biggest names of the finished games industry talking about the state of play of the industry uh and that'll be led off by oh that was a special chair he's got his own chair coffee uh copy come to the stage in your special chair it's like Mastermind here you've got like a special image cool I'm gonna let you introduce your panelists and and just take over so I've been talking all day and everybody loves come and sit down let's just give me a good one this would be a good way to get a strong ending I'll just get on don't understand

color laughs everybody on board so thank you guys for this is very tight yeah yeah the reason we managed we manage the reason this is so tight that actually we were supposed to be four persons in the morning Eric called me that okay I can't come I have fallen ill then I Shanghai Arya to our panel and then Eric informed that Mika is coming also so we are instead of four persons we are five and instead of Eric we have Mika and Arya who are voluntarily participating to this panel so that's the story long story short but hey sword of introductions and I mean sword all right hey my name is Hillary

Clinton I'm a studio head managing director of house mark I've been interviewing this industry for three decades of 248 years of those at house Mark the company I co-founded um we are currently part of the PlayStation Studios we were acquired two years ago a latest game it's called play return on PlayStation 5 and we we got quite nice Awards like Finnish game Award of the Year Award of the Year and best game at bafta so been around for a while very good uh hello everyone my name is I am head of marketing at small Giant games uh we are a Helsinki based developer part of Zenga part of take two interactive and I've been working at the company for better part of six years now before that spent five years at Rovio uh enjoying some Nordic

collaboration among our Studios there but happy to be here yeah and that's exactly what we are talking today so Mick hello everyone my name is Meek Clinton I'm currently VP publisher of sunsoft Sons of this uh gaming company or let's say publisher investor gaming studio coming from Saudi Arabia and I have about 25 years business career at gaming industry I started at Nokia in the early days growing the Java Games business engage everybody knows side talking and whatnot so crazy times boosting The Finnish gaming ecosystem and then after that 2011 I joined Rubio went there over 10 years and then now I've been a bit over one year at sunsoft and owned Arya from yeah hello everyone my name is Arya martikan and I've been in gaming industry since 2004 for uh I'm

still one of the I hold still one of the original uh Sumaya contracts so but somewhere became a Digital Chocolate so I was there HR from start to finish and then after that I continued to Barona where I run games jobs Finland um so I'm a one of the recruiters of this industry doing also a lot something else and my hobby has been ciso BC for since 2015 so uh baby I know something about that side too but I do not make any decisions so don't come to ask money from me go to samoli Chief Operating Officer at fingersoft I think it must be now 16 years in games which seems short and long at the same time I believe you all know what I'm talking about um I currently saw my responsibilities I

have six game teams are live Ops and QA so kind of trying to help people make games kind of like how we dreamed it would be possible to make games nowaday actually is it wasn't 16 years ago I believe Hillary had even bigger dream back in the day so yeah thank you so basically we are things talking about the other nordics so you can see where it goes so and I just actually made a rough estimation that there is 120 years of games industry experienced on this stage at the moment including me so it's it's quite a long time we have seen things I I guess but hey the first question what do we actually know about the other Nordic game industry so so do we know enough do we know anything where what are the sources of our information so who want to start well I can start it's mostly through personal connections to be honest we have a great not a game community so

over the years you get to know lots of different people in the industry so so basically I think the you know some of the studios you've been talking with them for a long time so that I think that's kind of the main source of that and then of course there's a kind of some public records like at least in Swedish Swedish data spell foreign maybe not that much for the Norway or Denmark they are like only a few companies there but but you know you have a some sort of big picture of the big players but maybe not the kind of Grassroots yeah yeah but some like I guess there's some 15 years ago we used to do this Nordic trade missions together yeah the way we had a closer connection to the other even the small Studios also oh but uh I'd say actually

one good place just to find a lot of Nordic game companies is just to look at the top grossing charts uh of a lot of different countries even in the US we've had a number of number of uh very successful uh companies not only here in Finland but also in uh in Denmark out of Sweden on the mobile side but also on the console side when you look at some incredible successes that Sweden for example has produced especially in AAA uh I'd say that's a good place to to come across these guys so you mean like King and mo Chung and dice and and sibo and and those final comment those kind of companies exactly yeah yeah how about Mika you have been doing business also on the other side so in I mean in the Nokia side packing yeah yeah so obviously during my career I've been always like sourcing side meaning that I've been sourcing games for the nuclear devices I've been sourcing code development partners for Rubio and nowadays sourcing games to be published

by by science of um obviously have been building my network in the in the nordics and I know many companies in the area but uh clearly it is uh and a growing ecosystem and I see that there is more convergence now than ever because in the early days it was that Finland was the destination of mobile gaming and then Sweden was the destination of console gaming and PC gaming Denmark was following a bit behind now you see that big screen converging the small screen due to that cross-platform gaming I think there's a much more units is that what has been earlier so and Iceland for CCP yeah exactly exactly yeah you have been looking at this industry also from the other side I mean recruiting side and it just told me that you made your first recruitment recruitment to Sweden was it correct uh yeah so that's about to happen now but then before that I've been helping um at least three Icelandic companies to establish their their teams in in

Finland so uh the Mainframe the 1939 and and uh then solid clouds uh at least those so I know quite a bit about of the developers in the nordics through my cases um so and and when when we end up to uh recruitment case anything can happen happen so a company may even have a have a unit in Paris of the of the My Touch so uh but it's um yeah I I can say that I have fairly large Network in the nordics but that's what I do and then also like uh from investment side of course this who has been focusing uh to genetics and to Finland but also elsewhere so yeah this is the home this is nordics and actually I think that one of

the things we have seen happening during the pandemic and after the pandemic is is remote work across border work and and it takes place in Europe not only in the nordics but it takes a little place in the Europe at the moment yes a lot so there are some companies in which like 30 percent of people work elsewhere like anywhere in Europe or Beyond what is your take yeah so so there's many takes but um one of the things which I find is is we had a lot of um France in Swedish um gaming gaming ecosystem and um of course they they're very focused on the like let's say PC control big games uh whereas of course the mobile side is maybe I would say that we are the kings in Finland but uh but very like let's say we don't have like a direct

um any kind of Partnerships or anything but a lot of friends a lot of useful discussions and and of course Dirty Bit in Norway kind of holding the flag up there so like trying to help them as well because I I believe we can so I would say like it's it's close friends not so much business relationship at least in terms of things yeah and I think that one of the reasons for for this kind of close friendship has been the Nordic parties in different different occasions in Gamescom in GDC or in in norikem and so on and so on so actually we have connections due to other Nordic countries and as you mentioned companies like Dirty Bit on it has been very active also here in Finland and I think that she knows us quite well at the moment yeah so yeah when you have been doing business or having close relationship between between Nordic Studios or with

the Nordic Studios what are the similarities is there any similarities let's say in Finnish Studio or Swedish Studio or Norwegian Studio or for God's sake or Icelandic or dated in studio so what do you think about that now with the icelandics you need to learn to listen to their English first yeah that's very true here yeah but otherwise I I feel like that we we feel very familiar we we have a certain type of uh cultural background that is very similar so it's very easy to adapt the Nordic values yeah yeah this kind of trust feeling of trust I guess very easy to get along yeah I'd also say that that the Nordic value is in terms of how the company sort of is how how large of a part of the company is of the individual's life in terms of you're expected to do x amount of work

and then you have a life in addition to work I think that's something that combines a lot of the a lot of the countries in in terms of uh work-life balance and how much that is valued in across the Nordic countries so I'd say that that's uh so you have this great thing called life outside working place at least that small giant that's how we try to set up the everything so uh and it's been working out for us and I would definitely recommend yeah yeah I think to say how the companies are set up to how they operate I think there's a spirit of collaboration in store instead of a hierarchy about the line below the line if you know what you mean that like it's there's a boss who says everything and make everything decisions I think is not not the Nordic way at all so we try to collaborate quite a bit Yeah Yeah well if you think about the last trendy or so years the industry has been growing a lot so so in 2004 or three around those days when we made our first study actually about the Nordic industry

about the figures facts and figures so so we were like like uh 3 000 employees and the turnover to the industry was in the whole Nordic areas 250 million Euros which is a lot of money it's a shitload of money but if it's compared to the 15 in 15 000 employees today and around 7 billion euros of turnover today so so we have been growing a lot in in 20 years so what do you see if we think about individual countries or Nordic areas whole or what have been the key points in in that growth in the in the past artwork hard work yeah I think it's success uh success Spirit success so so I think that we started well 20 years ago we started to have two I think first truly Global hits like here Max Payne was a big thing Battlefield so you started to have that and so so it

puts nordics in the map and hey we can invest here because it's like the same what happened in Finland like a Rovio effect in a way or something like that so you start to believe and somehow the you know expertise is building up and you build companies are being being built and so forth so I guess it's because the example of these successes exactly so if you look at for example how Robia is bounded by some some you know Tech students that happen to meet in a certain University and then they have 50 products a couple of couple hits after that and then the other guy from across the pond notices that hey those guys made it pretty big might as well start a game Studio myself and then because of the whole education and support that we've had around it you meet people like-minded everything so I I definitely sympathize with what you're saying and the more we have sorry more we have that it's pretty non-linear linear how things happen and suddenly you have Minecrafts or class of fast like 10 years later you start to have

like truly amazing successes billion billions of words of revenues it's a non-linear thing that something happens like and I would say like I I just add to that that ijda yeah I think this kind of like uh collaboration attitude I think is is quite exceptional which has been at least helping us because we're from from the north uh and and we've kind of had to find our way in the world and I found that it's quite easy through itda to to find friends like this and help us along the way so yeah yeah I would Echo that that success creates success when I look at the time back you know or back in the time when I was working for Nokia and we were releasing the first uh feature phones and smartphones we reached out to finish developers to create content to be embedded on those devices and and that obviously was start

of the Sumerian Mr good living and and whatnot and we see now that these entrepreneurs are still working in this industry so I was just having discussion earlier today that does anyone know any people that have left the gaming industry like uh is there any movement outside of gaming industry if you come to game gaming industry you'll probably stick it for your lifetime it's a lifetime sentence yeah yeah yeah uh I I know actually some people that have left gaming industry but they're like what I say that yeah we need to drag them back yeah maybe it's a bit early earlier days when the cultures you know the companies were that yeah developed and all this value you know we didn't have the value everybody everything is for me nobody knew what they were doing so maybe people burnt out themselves Within look into this we didn't have HR or anything like that right so yeah so there wasn't there wasn't anything like that there so so now companies have

matured and we I think as a car as an industry we take very good care of our employees so what I can say also is that there what has been great uh is that there is still some sort of hygiene within like between the companies that we have realized that if we do not like uh nurse do nursing like uh nurture the the uh for example the organization or bring new people in it's not going to grow and it's useless to try to steal from Think Neighbor because it doesn't lead anywhere so there is only one cake to to share so it's better to try to bring in new people and think out of the box every now and then okay like all right and and that's how it has been growing and what I find also wonderful is that I know that CEOs have this uh breakfast meetings and such where they basically

open up their numbers to each other and tell like how did it go really so a lot of sharing happening like Global attitude I would say like because we're friends we're small but attitude is global yes yeah what I heard even even in the states are here like even the local developers don't meet up at all you know in Seattle area yeah basically so it's like sounds pretty weird yeah this morning I heard that uh like one person from Sweden just told me that there is no like very little happenings for example in the igda Sweden which has been a Super Booster in Finland so there is differences also although we have this Spirit of collaboration to some extent there is also differences between two countries do you think that it's because of the different kind of histories as mentioned Sweden has always been more console driven PC driven and there has been

Studios which have been owned by big studios like EA and so on and so on so do you do you think that that's the reason for that difference in Sharing hard to say yeah maybe it's more of uh the regional chapter of for example ijda potentially not being as strong there but then for example you do have major events like uh like the one in Malmo that is now coming in exactly is becoming an annual sort of uh uh I've personally never been but I it's it's a thing that now for the past couple of years tend to keep getting messages around the beginning of May that hey are you actually going which means that the the sort of um yeah the profile of that event for example is rising and the profile of more and more of the culture of that company in gaming is also Rising as a result when you have these larger get-togethers and like this event right here is a is a a major benefactor also to a lot of the

up and coming Finnish gaming Studios other Nordic gaming Studios because it's promoting and giving an opportunity for new game studios and on their way to be established gaming Studios to meet people and and meet financiers meet basically others and and exchange the knowledge like Aria mentioned uh yeah I I totally agree that having this kind of event in Helsinki or as you mentioned in knowing in the May so it's it's pretty crucial when we think about the development of the of the Nordic area and the Nordic game studios and Nori game Industries and as in fact in fact there is going to be another Nordic game conference just before Sloss so so we'll send you information about that that's quite soon so so you and one of the things you mentioned is that okay if we combine all the Nordic countries we are like 25 million people or 27 or we are about the

same size as Shanghai or a little bit smaller when it comes to the number of people so and in back in the day for a background we have been doing this kind of some kind of cooperation with an auto Nordic Nordic clusters like Dr Spell transient from Sweden and producing firing and from Denmark and and and and Norway and IGA Icelandic games industry from the Iceland since 2004 and back in those days our reasoning was exactly that we are 25 million people we are small player we are kind of it makes more sense for us to pull the money and pull the resources and do something as a Nordic and then that's the reason why we still have for instance in the Gamescom but do you well now when we're growing when we're happy growing Sweden is is a big gun Finland is big and and so on do you see that there is this kind of

Reason does it any exist anymore to do the Nordic cooperation or are we big enough by ourselves to do things I don't know at least my feeling is that definitely we do need each other because it's it's um my feeling is in Creative Industries in general we benefit from talking to other companies for to other people to you know representing being around people because creativity isn't something which is kind of like there's no limit to it or there's no kind of like downside to it so so basically tomorrow you talk to people the more intuition you grow the better things you can create and you have more opportunities I I find that the more we're active in these things the better we do as a company so that's my feeling at least yeah I kind of what I agree on that that

if you look at now the current Trend that for example remedy both of them have a studio in Sweden so literally we are running all the talented here in Finland so if you want to develop big games you need to have more talent and the best way of doing that is that you set up a studio in in other Nordic countries because I said we are sharing the same culture so it's a really easy to to operate it's only one hour time difference what we have between the countries and the other thing is that now that because of the covet and the pandemic in general I think that the remote working is getting more and more popular so so that's an easy way now to expand your teams you will find talent that wants to work remotely not willing to move to Finland for for various reasons so so I think that will be just growing the kind of a collaboration between the countries in game development and and whatnot and I have

been sometimes cheering with the idea that why don't we see the nordics as a one working area so basically it's all the same to we in which Nordic countries live but but you can work across border to other Nordic country and we have been remedy has opened up a studio in in Stockholm and there is Rubio studio in Stockholm and and Copenhagen and Copenhagen as well so even in Denmark so that's that's very good that's very good progress in that sense so yes and and I think that like the current geopolitical situation has opened up the importance of being together and I think that all these countries they are looking looking at each other much more closely and and kind of like we are kind of like welding each hour together so I I think it's good and I was in malama again for after all very many years of break and I managed to drag somebody to Helsinki so if somebody is calling you next time to

Malmo go it's fantastic there and you make friends yeah you could please do it because if you haven't done it I don't I don't see what's the reason for that but one of the things I have noticed that now when we have been you mentioned geopolitics and now when we are almost everybody in nature and Sweden will soon be in NATO I think that it's a form of collaboration also not in the games industry as such but it kind of creates a bond between the countries yeah I think that it's like in naughty collaboration there is a high tide at the moment so like there has been it has been questioning like is there any sense like doing like everybody does their own gigs but now even more than ever and then it's from there from it's easy to expand globally also and one interesting final point for this is that we we managed to get I believe we have like over 20 nationalities now at fingersoft and most of them are in all yeah and we found that it's actually it seems to like the

Nordic countries have a very good pull from abroad outside the nordics or Australia is that people actually want to come here work here and live here and it's very like um it happened during covert we didn't yeah expect it we were expecting that maybe some people would like to move here or in Olu but now actually it's very easy to get people like it's from any anywhere that's that's quite interesting we have only one poor Suite from other Nordic countries we still have a 20 nationalities so so I don't I don't know maybe whether it's kind of the what we are doing we're doing a big console game that there's lots of opportunities to eat and for instance you have one one or two studios in both Norway and and Denmark so and czp is something right literally on an island person married to a Finn so I remember one Suite like in Finland and it was uh he ended up marrying a Finnish woman so

I came here that's that's the quite typical way baltics is very large sea to cross and middle middle is important we actually have several employees who moved to Finland because of medalsa and somebody some people move away from Finland because of that but you know I think that is something I have to quite nicely yeah yeah a very famous question what do you envy from the other Nordic countries I mean from the other Nordic gaming Industries is there something you envy is there something you really would like to have here in Finland um I don't know good question I would say probably if there's anything you can actually Envy is uh geo location in a sense that we're not part of the Northern end of Germany for

example yeah therefore it would be easier to go to work with the train from another country for example yeah that's just in Finland we can never have that geographical and yes in a way that's it that's that's the extent to that yeah yeah yeah we are not willing to go further apparently so there is there is nothing much we can do for that but we are worried there is but I mean we're probably not going to yeah okay yeah I don't know it's pretty silent here I think one reason or let's say one area that we could maybe Envy is that the Swedish let's say entrepreneurship like that they are more interested to set up their companies they probably it's easier to raise funding for the company so kind of a supportive kind of what the gumball let's say country and and also investors can provide to help you to to set up your own companies probably easier in Sweden I don't know if it is true but that's my

gut feeling if you just look at the landscape that how many success stories we have coming from Sweden in General on on this business yeah I would I would say that yeah they at least historically they have better access to Capital that's why they have so many of those big console game developers figures they were able to list those companies already made nine days early 2000s in some of the lists OTC what kind of list they are so so I guess that builds up right so they're a bit ahead of the game at least in that regards I have always said the biggest difference between Swedish Sweden Finn is that that when Finn tries something which is impossible and and it doesn't it doesn't uh succeed he doesn't succeed he is not surprised but the Venice we try something which is impossible and he doesn't succeed he is surprised so so

that's the reason why we are the happiest nation in the world we always expect the worst I guess happiest nation in the world Heal the World yeah I think we have to change that to be content I I believe the word is completely wrong it's not happy it's Contender yeah well I guess that that we the the topic of this talk was uh the state of blade of the Nordic games industry so what do you think what is the state of play of the Nordic game industry are we doing well in nordics in general so so pretty tough question I know it seems to me that we are in a good health and uh yeah I will always like to say to like we're not we have this monthly internal company things I oftentimes say that we are just getting started that's the way it seems to me that we are we have been building the foundations of have uh

excellent creative industry and now we actually have it so where's the go but up yeah and certainly we can have those non-linear successes you know more and more you know with which we've had over the past decade or two yeah and uh I was like thinking about it of course we are doing fine but the uh the um what I've heard from from CEOs and and founding Partners at the moment there has been a bit of a struggle to get funding so it has been a rough year for many but then also yesterday we had a chat inside Cecil so that basically at least Sizzle is very committed to support and also after our times as a certain founder of Cesar said so so it's going to be a long long-term commitment to Nordic gaming industry and that's how it's supposed to supposed to

be in like in in good times and in bad times okay good good answers to very very difficult question I guess that this situation at the moment is affecting a little bit of to all of us despite what our Industries are more are like mobile driven or PC console driven or online driven or but but I guess that if you think about the the nordicam industries at large we are very established Industries we have a lot of code assets a lot of good qualities and we are there is no doubt in my mind that we are able to cope in all all circumstances in the future so as Mr Winston Churchill said this is not the end this is not maybe even the beginning of the end but this is maybe the end of the end of beginning that's the way that was the quote sorry so I guess that then it sums

up this quite nicely increases standing up and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but yeah well it's always nice to aim to the Winston threshold code but if this is not the end the last question I will ask from all of you what is the best Nordic game made ever and it don't you don't say your own games but but they are the best foreign so I I'll say the first thing that came to mind Max Payne okay that's a good answer but I I admit that I played um SimCity mobile of track 20 for a very long time so you were addicted too yeah it's like my old mates did that so I was so proud of them okay because Mila took my answer you have I have to say then Alan Wake

okay okay Auntie I'm gonna take Billy's answer and just say Max Payne anyway I should have prepared for this it was in the list I know I know I didn't read the whole list I don't know I don't know truly truly don't know because you excluded some of the best games I'll leave it leave it to them they already didn't do much space so I can't like this but there is still a lot of games yeah I've made this badly I should have said one of them yeah I kind of want to decline to ask it okay there is four answers uh one who doesn't answer and and I'm because I'm moderator I don't have to answer either I can only ask questions but now it's time to give a big hand to the panel and let the Chris come to the stage

[Applause] now I I just want to say that is the most you have the difficult thing of being letter Finns talking about the Nordic industry and you did talk about Nordic industry if I've been like any other country I've just gone let's talk more about Finland I have amazing Finland is but that was the most finished panel ever that was so even-handed and fair it's ridiculous but thank you so much I really I've made loads of notes it's been fabulous does anybody have a final question for this incredible panel before we go to lunch people hungry I know we I know we're doing lunch later than you like it but it is out there so I'm not no big thank you again for this incredible panel thank you so much guys [Applause] [Music]