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Video games in Finland

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Video gaming in Finland consists of a video game industry which includes 260 active video game developer studios,[1] roughly a dozen professional players[2] and countless enthusiastic amateurs.

Video game industry

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The most successful companies include Supercell, Rovio, Remedy Entertainment, Sulake, RedLynx, Frozenbyte and Housemarque. The most important games developed in Finland include Stardust, Max Payne, Rally Trophy, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Cities: Skylines, Brawl Stars and Control.

The oldest existing studios were established in 1995. There is a large number of startups among the studios. The industry is concentrated in Helsinki Metropolitan area. During 2011–2014, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes) has invested €30 million in the Finnish game industry, mainly through R&D projects. In 2014 the turnover of the industry was approx. €1.8 billion. In 2016, the Finnish gaming industry set a record-high turnover of 2.5 billion euros[3] and decreased to 2.1 billion euros in 2018.[4] Finnish game industry currently employs around 2,500 industry professionals. There are now over 20 educational institutions providing game education at all educational levels.[1]

The revenue of video game industry core (development and game services) in 2014 was 2,400 million euros. This equals 25% of revenue of ICT sector and 20% of added value of culture sector.[5]

Professional players make their living in tournament prizes and sponsoring. Most of them have other sources of income, though.[2]

Many organizations look after game developers’ well-being and legal rights. These include entities such as Neogames,[6] Game Makers of Finland[7] and We in Games Finland.[8][9]

Video game consumption

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Finnish Games and Multimedia Association has published statistics of the most sold games (physically sold games, not including digital purchases). The top ten in 2014 were:[10]

  1. NHL 15 (Electronic Arts)
  2. FIFA 15 (Electronic Arts)
  3. Minecraft (Sony CEE / Microsoft)
  4. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Activision-Blizzard)
  5. Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft)
  6. Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)
  7. SingStar Suomibileet (Sony CEE)
  8. Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games)
  9. The Lego Movie Videogame (Warner)
  10. Destiny (Activision-Blizzard)

History

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Telmac 1800, microcomputer
 
Finnish video games in the Finnish Games Then and Now exhibition in Rupriikki Media Museum. (VTech Laser 200)

The history of the video game industry in Finland began in 1979, when a chess-game for the Telmac was published.[11]

1979–1989: Heroes and amateurs

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In early 1980s, computer game development in Finland was a pure hobby. Commodore was the most popular home computer. Source codes, usually in BASIC, were distributed on pages of home computing magazines such as MikroBitti. MikroBitti paid an award of 500-1000 FIM for "Program of the month".[12] Nintendo was selling consoles, but Finnish developers were not interested in consoles, partially because the licence fees were too high for amateurs.[13]

The first ever video game made in Finland, a chess-game called Chesmac for the Telmac, had been published in 1979.[11] Larger scale game publishing started in 1984, when AmerSoft (software branch of Amer conglomerate) published four games for Commodore devices: Mehulinja, Myyräjahti, Herkkusuu and Raharuhtimas. The games' user interface was in Finnish, and there were no plans to market them internationally. In addition to AmerSoft, TrioSoft and Teknopiste sold games. In addition to Commodore, games were published for ZX Spectrum, Spectravideo computers and MSX.[13]

Two developers from the early years were particularly famous: Stavros Fasoulas and Jukka Tapanimäki.[13][14]

1990–1999: Demoscene and the first game studios

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In 1990s the more complicated platforms, Amiga and PC, were taking over the status of Commodore. Game development for them needed a team instead of solo hero.[15]

Demoscene brings developers together

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Emerging Demoscene brought developers together. An important event has been the Assembly, organised since 1992. Assembly is the world's largest gathering of demo programmers.[16] The Assembly was a gathering of amateurs, who created short demonstrations to show off their programming skills. Pirates was an important factor in development of the demoscene: people who wanted to get games for free, learned how to break the copy protection. The different cracker groups were competing in this, and to get fame they added their own introduction to the cracked games. The intro development and pirates started gradually to develop their own paths, and the visual quality of the intros became the subject of competition. According to Jussi Laakkonen, the coordinator of the Assembly, an important factor in emerging demoscene were the parents who bought their children home computers, not game consoles, because with a computer you can program your own intros and other demos.[17]

First game studios

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The first Finnish video game enterprises, Terramarque and Bloodhouse, started in 1993. In 1995 they merged to form Housemarque. Both Terramarque and Bloodhouse were video game developers for Amiga, but the new company, Housemarque, targeted the evolving PC game market.[18]

Samuli Syvähuoko started a company called Remedy Entertainment in his parents' garage with people he knew from the demoscene. Their first rally game was a success, they moved to a real office and started to develop a third person shooting game which later got the name Max Payne.[19]

The 1996 top-down racing game for DOS, Fatal Fumes, was the first project of a small Finnish group composed of four people. The team was branded as Mediamond for their subsequent projects.[20]

The Worms-like game on MS-DOS, Liero, was first released by Finnish programmer Joosa Riekkinen in 1998. It is real-time, unlike the old, side-scrolling Worms titles.

First steps of mobile phone games

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Nokia 3310, playing Snake

A variant of arcade game Snake was preloaded on Nokia mobile phones. Graphics consisted of black squares, and it had 4 directions. It was programmed in 1997 by Taneli Armanto, a design engineer in Nokia and introduced on the Nokia 6110.[21] A few other games were included in the Nokia phones, but Snake was the only success.

2000–2004: Max Payne and mobile game studios

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First mobile game studios

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When Nokia introduced a primitive mobile web called WAP, some games were developed for that environment. WAP technology was supposed to bring internet to mobile devices, but the usability was poor and data transfer was expensive. Internet enthusiasm brought investor money for mobile game developers. Among the first one were Springtoys, a spring off of Housemarque, and Riot-E. International corporate giants invested 20 million euros in venture capital into Riot-E. Within a few years, Riot-E went bankrupt. The mobile games started to look more attractive, when phones with colour displays and Java became more common. Distribution of the games still needed contracts with individual tele operators who run their own application stores. As there were no big hardware standards, each game had to be modified to several different phone types.[22]

Max Payne conquers the world

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Max Payne was finally released in 2001, and it became the most sold Finnish game of the era During the first 10 years the Max Payne franchise sold over 7.5 million copies.[23]

Habbo

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August 2000 saw the opening of first version of Habbo - a social networking service and online community aimed at teenagers. The service allows users to create their own Habbo character and design hotel rooms, meet new friends, chat with other players, organize parties, look after virtual pets, create and play games and complete quests.[24] Creators of the Habbo Hotel, Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä had earlier made an avatar application for the website of a band called mobile, and a snowballs game for marketing purposes of a tele operator. The first version of the hotel concept was called Hotelli Kultakala (Hotel Goldfish). International versions, now under name Habbo Hotel, started from United Kingdom. As largest, the new virtual world had versions in 11 languages and users from more than a hundred countries. It was free to play Habbo, but revenue was made with micropayment. Users had their own hotel rooms they could furnish with items they could order and pay with SMSes. Later the SMS payment was replaced with digital tokens.[25]

2005–2007: Digital distribution

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Digital distribution was a revolution in game development. Valve launched Steam in 2003. The Steam platform is considered to be the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, and was estimated by Screen Digest to have 75% of the market space in October 2013.[26]

In traditional model, game developer is a subcontractor, and distribution is expensive due to costs of marketing, materials and shipping. Developer gets around 10%. In digital delivery, distribute takes only 30% share of the income. This allows Indie game developers to bring their product to the market.[27]

2008–2011: Apple takes over; Angry Birds is a hit

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In 2008 revenue of video game industry in Finland was 87 million euros, and it employed more than a thousand people.[5]

Apple launched AppStore in 2008. That was the turning point of success of mobile games. Nokia tried with its own marketplace, but the user interface of their Symbian phones was inferior to Apple's iPhones. Less than 50 games were launched for N-Gage, and each of them was 5-10 euros, while in the AppStore you could buy games for less than a euro.[28]

Rovio entertainment, which had started 2003 as Relude, decided to concentrate on iPhone games only. Their big success was Angry Birds. As of July 2015, the series’ games have been downloaded more than three billion times collectively,[29] making it the most downloaded freemium game series of all time. It has been the most successful iOS app.[30]

Remedy launched Alan Wake, a successor of Max Payne, in 2010.[31] They had a contract with Microsoft, and the game was launched solely for Xbox 360.[32]

2012–: Era of free-to-play and indie games

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Digital distribution encouraged small startup companies since 2011. During 2001-2014 total of 179 new game studios started, and 1,26 billion euros foreign money was invested in video game industry in Finland. After Angry Birds success, the Free-to-play games have become the most popular models. In them, the revenue comes from micropayment. Supercell launched three very popular free-to-play games: Hay Day and Clash of Clans in 2012 and Boom Beach in 2014.[33]

Supercell's revenue in 2013 was 672 million euros. Majority of its shares were sold to Japanese SoftBank and GungHo in 2013. When SoftBank increased its stake in the company, valuation of Supercell grew to US$5.5 billion. This puts Supercell to be likely the most valuable mobile game studio in the world.[34]

The revenue of video game industry core (development and game services) in 2014 was 2400 million euros. This equals 25% of revenue of ICT sector and 20% of added value of culture sector.[5]

Video Game Development

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See also: Category:Video game companies of Finland
See also: Category:Video gaming in Finland

Game developers from Finland

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Misc Games

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  • Simucube (Sim racing gear)
  • Surrogate.tv (RC robotics & gaming platform)
  • Yousician (Interactive & educational music service)

Online games

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  • Mainframe Industries (Helsinki HQ. Other studios in Reykjavík and Paris. Setup by former CCP Games, Remedy Entertainment, & Next Games vets.)
  • Vaki Games

Mobile games

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Co-development Services

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  • Aniway Oy (Mobile, online, core, VR/AR games, advergames, web)
  • Kuuasema (Primarily mobile games)

Defunct video game companies of Finland

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  • Fragment Production (Founded 2012. Defunct 2016.)
  • Futuremark (Founded 1997. Defunct 2018.)
  • Ninai Games, Inc. (Ex-Detonium Interactive, Ltd in 1998-1999. Founded 1998. Inactive after 2005. Website down after 2009. Dev & former publisher.)[35] (FI wiki)
  • NonStop Games (HQ in Singapore. Founded 2011. Defunct 2016.)
  • Secret Exit Ltd (Founded 2006. Inactive after 2019. Ex-Skinflake Games & tAAt in 2000's.)
  • Shipyard Games (Founded 2017. Defunct 2024. Mobile game.)
  • Universomo (Founded 2002. Defunct 2010.)

Video game publishers of Finland

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  • Bonus Stage Publishing
  • Nuclear Maniacs

Publisher & developer firms

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  • 3rd Eye Studios (VR games)
  • 10tons Entertainment (Games)
  • AcroGames
  • Act Normal Games
  • Almost Human Games
  • Amistech Games (Sims)
  • Bugbyte Ltd.
  • Ctrl Alt Ninja Ltd. (Former members of 'Almost Human Games')
  • Ebonscale Games
  • Enormous Elk (Valtava Hirvi in Finnish)
  • FRACTiLE Games
  • HypeHype Inc. (Ex-Frogmind Games in 2012 to 2021. Primarily mobile games.)
  • Instant Kingdom
  • Korppi Games Ltd
  • Lapioware
  • Loiste Interactive[36]
  • Mediamond
  • Moonmana LLC (Also co-dev)
  • Mountain Sheep Games
  • Oversteer Studios Oy
  • Platonic Partnership Oy
  • Random Potion Oy
  • Redbeak Games
  • Redhill Games (Online games)
  • Road to Vostok
  • Rovio Entertainment (Primarily mobile games)
  • Skydome Entertainment Oy
  • Strangelet Games
  • SUBSYSTEM GAMES INC
  • System Erasure
  • Valkeala Software
  • YrdVaab

Defunct game publishers from Finland

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  • Action Squad Studios (Publisher & dev. Founded 2015. Officially closed 2023. Informally continuing on 1 title.)
  • Amo Oy (Video games distributor in 1999 to 2013.)[b] (FI wiki)
  • Elävät Kirjat Oy (Founded 1993. Defunct 2004.)
  • Errorfree (Ex-"Error Free Productions" (1995-2004). Publisher & dev. Founded 1995. Inactive after 2007. Website down in 2011.)[37]
  • Fathammer (Publisher & dev. Founded 2000. Closed after 2006?)
  • Mr.Goodliving (Publisher & dev. Founded 1999. Defunct 2011.)
  • MythPeople (Founded 2003? Inactive after 2013.)
  • PLAN 1 Oy (Distributor of games & multimedia software. Founded 1990. Inactive after 2012. Website down late 2013.)[38]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Gamelion's founder changed firm's name to Huuuge & set up many offices in pricey cities worldwide.
  2. ^ Original company name of toys & games importer, "Amo Oy", before merger with subsidiary Agerex Oy was "Lelumyynti Oy". (1962-2002).

References

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  1. ^ a b "The Game Industry in finland 2014" (PDF). Neogames. 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  2. ^ a b "Tämä peli ei vetele" (in Finnish). Ainolehti. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  3. ^ "Helsinki Times". Helsinki Times.
  4. ^ "Finland: video game industry turnover 2008-2018". Statista.
  5. ^ a b c "Tietoa toimialasta". Neogames (in Finnish). 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  6. ^ "Home". Neogames. Retrieved 2022-09-18.
  7. ^ "Peliala.fi » Parhaat käytännöt pelialalle!". peliala.fi. Retrieved 2022-09-18.
  8. ^ "We in Games Finland". We in Games Finland. Retrieved 2022-09-18.
  9. ^ "We In Games Finland". Twitter. Retrieved 2022-09-18.
  10. ^ "Voi nyyh – tässä vuoden myydyimmät pelit". Taloussanomat (in Finnish). Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  11. ^ a b "Ensimmäinen suomalainen tietokonepeli". V2 (in Finnish). 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  12. ^ Saarikoski, Petri (2004). Koneen lumo. Mikrotietokoneharrastus Suomessa 1970-luvulta 1990-luvun puoliväliin [The lure of the machine. Micro computer hobby in Finland from 1970s to mid-1990s.] (in Finnish). Jyväskylän yliopisto. p. 263. ISBN 951-39-1948-X.
  13. ^ a b c Kuorikoski, Juho (2004). Sinivalkoinen pelikirja – Suomen pelialan kronikka 1984–2014 [The Blue and White Game Book - Chronicles of game industry in Finland 1984–2014..] (in Finnish). Fobos. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-952-67937-1-9.
  14. ^ "Voi niitä aikoja: kun pelitkin piti naputella ihan itse – Jukka Tapanimäki ja Minidium". Dome (in Finnish). 2010. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  15. ^ Kuorikoski p. 36
  16. ^ "Girls Dig Demos Too" by Steve Kettmann of Wired magazine. (August 3, 2001)
  17. ^ Kuorikoski, p. 37
  18. ^ "Housemarque Ltd. overview". Mobygames. 30 December 2005. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  19. ^ Kuorikoski p. 41
  20. ^ "MobyGames page for Fatal Fumes". MobyGames. Atari SA. Retrieved January 13, 2024.
  21. ^ "Taneli Armanto: Snake Creator Receives Special Recognition". Dexigner. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  22. ^ Kuorikoski p.64, 72-73
  23. ^ Orland, Kyle (September 14, 2011). "Grand Theft Auto IV Passes 22M Shipped, Franchise Above 114M". Gamasutra. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  24. ^ "What is Habbo?". Habbo. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  25. ^ Kuorikoski p. 74-75
  26. ^ Edwards, Cliff (November 4, 2013). "Valve Lines Up Console Partners in Challenge to Microsoft, Sony". Bloomberg. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  27. ^ "Why Indie Game Devs Thrive Without Big Publishers". Mashable. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  28. ^ Kuorikoski p. 136-137
  29. ^ "'Angry Birds 2' Arrives 6 Years And 3 Billion Downloads After First Game". Forbes. 16 July 2015. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  30. ^ "Angry Birds has dominated the App Store rankings longer than any other paid app". QZ. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  31. ^ "Alan Wake, inside the reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  32. ^ Kuorikoski s. 138
  33. ^ "Rovio ei pysy enää kilpailijoiden vauhdissa". Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). 2014. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  34. ^ "At $5.5 billion, Supercell likely the most valuable mobile game studio". Gamasutra. 2015. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  35. ^ "Ninai Games' official website". www.ninai.com. Archived from the original on December 28, 2009. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  36. ^ CitadelCore (September 14, 2011). "Stalburg Wiki for Loiste Interactive's story-rich games". Stalburg Wiki. Creative Commons license. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
  37. ^ "Errorfree's official website". www.errorfree.eu.org. July 2, 2007. Archived from the original on March 17, 2011. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  38. ^ "PLAN 1 Oy's official website". www.plan1.fi (in Finnish). Archived from the original on September 1, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2024.

Further reading

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  • Kuorikoski, Juho (2015). Finnish Video Games: A History and Catalog. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786499625.
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  • About the Industry page from Neogames, umbrella organisation of the Finnish game industry (Latest report can be downloaded there, and tabulated list of game companies with clear categories of game types can be found in that page. Over 200 Finnish game companies exist.)
  • Table of Contents from Play Finland website for Finnish Game Industry reports. Has a smaller selection of studio profiles. But the Neogames association's website is much more in-depth.
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