If you're in Helsinki at the start of September, you may want to check this out! Games Helsinki, a free gaming industry networking event supported by the city, is taking place on September 1st in City Hall.
Throughout the day, attendees will be able to check out panels, attend mentor events, and connect with the networking after-party. The schedule looks incredible, with Remedy's Juha Vainio kicking off the presentations with "Staying in Control - Years following the acclaimed AAA game" at 10:20 EEST.
Talk Description:
"In his talk "Keeping CONTROL" at Games Helsinki 2019, Juha talked about the challenges of a full-scale high-profile AAA production. That was about 7 months before actually shipping Control. "Staying in Control" picks up right where the 2019 talk left off, kicking off with insights on the actual shipping of the game, followed by what has happened in the Control Franchise during the years after. Juha will also highlight some of the not-so-obvious production tools that have been useful during and after Control."
Speaker Bio:
"Juha Vainio is an Executive Producer and the Head of the Control Franchise at Remedy Entertainment. He has over twenty years of management experience in software development and over ten years of production experience in the games industry. As the head of the Control Franchise he is currently e.g. overseeing the development of two Control projects. On the original Control he was the Lead Producer heading the production and shipping the game. At Rovio he worked on big mobile titles such as the original Angry Birds and Angry Birds Star Wars, and as the CEO of Epic Owl he shipped the still-profitable free-to-play mobile game Space Arena: Build and Fight with virtually no budget."
Following Juha's presentation, Mariina Hallikainen (CEO at Colossal Order) is set to talk about "10 More Years of Cities", before a lunch sponsored by Housemarque and Epic Games and the IGDA Mentor Cage.
After lunch, Harry Kruger (Game Director at Housemarque) will talk about "Breaking the Cycle: The Making of Returnal" at 13:00, before Natasha Skult's (Founder and CEO at MiTale) lecture on "Indie to the Core - The Unconventional Approaches to GameDev Success at 13:50.
Just before a thirty-minute break, Miloš Jeřábek is scheduled to take to the stage to talk about "Honest Postmortem: A Game Studio's Journey to Redemption" at 14:40. Currently the Executive Producer and Co-Founder at Redhill Games, Miloš had previously worked at Remedy on Quantum Break as the Production Director. He's also a cool cookie.
Wrapping up the event, Joni Lappalainen (CEO at Dreamloop Games) is due to talk about "From Binary to Branching - How Danganronpa's Linear Storytelling Inspired a Possibility-filled [Visual Novel]" at 16:00.
The final talk of the night is by Ari Arnbjörnsson (Unreal Engine Evangelist at Epic Games) on "Epic Games and Unreal Engine in 2023". The event closes with the Official Games Helsinki afterparty sponsored by Game Makers of Finland.
Find out more and get your tickets on the Games Helsinki 2023 website, HERE. And if you're attending, let us know; it's going to be baby's first professional networking event being on the other side of the industry.
