FINLAND FOCUS | BETA
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o the casual visitor passing through, Scandinavia’s Russian neighbour certainly feels like a quiet and peaceful country. With only 5.3 million people calling Finland home, the huge expanse of northern Europe is the continent’s second least densely populated country – something apparent as you stroll Helsinki’s hushed, spacious streets. KooPee Hiltunen, director of Finland’s Neogames organisation, which promotes the nation’s games industry, jokes that the population of his homeland thrive in the silence that other Europeans find so uncomfortable. Despite his jovial tone, there’s certainly a modesty to Finnish culture, and a happily tranquil work ethic that veils a feverishly productive creative sector. The country is of course the home to mobile phone giant Nokia, and the phenomenally popular game-based social network Habbo Hotel, but its tech industry output doesn’t stop with a duo of high-profile examples. Finland has a long established tradition of game making, in part thanks to a healthy hobbyist scene. Making rolling demos to showcase technical skill on platforms new and old continues to prove exceedingly popular in DEVELOPMAG.COM
Scandinavia, and the festivals and events that celebrate Finland’s ‘demoscene’ output provide a fertile and talented pool of young developers for studios looking to recruit as they expand. “The games industry has developed fast here in the past ten years,” enthuses Hiltunen. “In 1999 there were only a dozen game companies in Finalnd, or perhaps less than that. Now we have more than 50 companies. This week alone I am meeting with two new start ups, and I have had discussions with seven or eight start-ups already this year, so there’s quite a fast pace here.” As impressive as that growth may be, Hiltunen’s statistical description is perhaps another example of Finnish modesty and understatement. In fact, the country’s game development industry is now delivering one of the nation’s biggest cultural exports, according to Neogame’s weighty report on the region’s industry in 2008. With the industry centred in Helsinki, the sales of Finnish-made games are dominated by the export business, which has recently delivered as much as 87 per cent of the sector’s total turnover. “Our industry is indeed mainly exports, and the reason for that is of course because Finland
has quite a small domestic market,” says Hiltunen, who later reveals that in 2007 the Finnish games industry exports reached around €69 million, and €75 million in 2008. “When we talk about our cultural exports, we can say that games are the most significant in Finland, money-wise.” After an early boom in mobile content, most of Finland’s studios now produce console and PC games, which usually find their way to the US and European markets. While games like Max Payne are among the Scandinavian territory’s most famous exports, Bugbear’s Flatout 2 offers a more typical example of the distribution of the country’s games across the globe. While as few as 14,000 copies of the destructive racer sold domestically, global sales totalled almost one million units, meaning 98.6 per cent of sales took place overseas. With a healthy export business, and as a home to companys like Helsinki-based Habbo Hotel developer Sulake – valued at $1.25 billion and listed as the ninth most successful digital start-up in the world – it’s clear that Finland is enjoying a boom in game development. It’s a little less obvious why, but looking a little closer at the culture and industry of the country that bought the world Formula One
Above left: Neogames’ KooPee Hiltunen Above right: Tekes’ Mari Isbom
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