FINLAND FOCUS | BETA
Ironstar Helsinki
Sauma Technologies
Recoil Games
Location: Helsinki Headcount: 6 IPs: MoiPal Specialty: Social networking
Location: Helsinki Headcount: 20 IPs: Hours of War Specialty: Strategy MMOs
Location: Helsinki Headcount: 30 Brands: Earth No More Specialty: Console/PC games
Based in a humble office neighbouring a tattoo parlour, in a secluded courtyard dominated by a huge classic car, it’s hard to imagine you’d find a thriving developer behind Ironstar’s front door. However, this young team – which chief executive officer Joakim Achrén admits is still in start-up mode – is busy establishing itself with an increasingly popular social gaming world. MoiPal combines social networking with task management gameplay, and already boasts 200,000 users despite the fact that Ironstar were only formed in 2006. Although a direct rival to Habbo Hotel, Ironstar has attracted brands such as EMI to create in-game spaces, and has secured several deals with celebrities and musicians that, in Finland at least, are exceedingly popular. Living in the shadow of the mighty Habbo Hotel of course has its downsides, but Ironstar has managed to make use of sharing the same city as Sulake. “Habbo of course get a lot of the talent as well as a great deal of the market share, and so we’ve even been recruiting from schools, but those people have been great, and have some very good, original ideas.” Ironstar has implemented an impressive monetisation model, a publically available developer API, and a trophy system – all of which are far more typical of a substantially more sizable and experienced team. www.ironstarhelsinki.com
Visiting Sauma’s modern office in Helsinki, you’re greeted by shelves piled high with military board games, WWII model kits, tomes listing statistics of army vehicles and pencil sketches of weaponclad men in uniform. It’s clear that the team is working on a fairly hardcore strategy game, but Sauma is also responsible for Stream Garden – a casual game based around creating flowers. “You could say we’re a little schizophrenic,” jokes the studio’s producer Miikka Lyytikainen, but there is currently a clear focus throughout the team on Hours of War. The game itself is an in-depth and rather complex looking combination of MMO, social network, turn-based strategy title and cross platform rich-media experience. Players can involve themselves at various levels of the battle, and ultimately the studio hopes to cater for both browser users and those with mobile phones. Despite the game’s conventional theme, Sauma CEO Andreas von Koskull is confident his team are creating something fresh: “The game business is certainly a creative space, but increasingly there is little innovation, which we wanted to move away from.” “Poor cross-platform mobile gaming and static browser-based strategy games are all too common, and we felt it’s time for a change. We’re proud to have secured funding for our game at the beginning of the year, and we’re looking at building two more related IPs on our platform.” www.saumatechnologies.com
Recoil is currently working on Earth No More, which was recently embroiled in a lawsuit that had sadly silenced the studio. However, now the developer is talking about the game again, on which it is working with 3D Realms’ offshoot IP factory Radar Group. A benefactor of the various Finnish and EU grants, details about Earth No More are still relatively sparse, but the game is nevertheless looking increasingly impressive. A visit to Recoil does offer an interesting insight into the inner workings of Finnish developers. Typical of most studios that have opened their doors to Develop in Finland, the office is silent, with heads buried in computers. “We like to work in silence here,” says Samuli Syvähuoko. “It’s just the way things are done. “We also believe very strongly in avoiding crunch. We don’t let people do that here that much. Sometimes, but only if it is really important. In Finland staff are given five weeks of holidays and other vacations on top of that, and we’ll always respect that. So when people are here, they work. And hiring is a vigorous process, as you can’t fire people in Finland.” Recoil continues to work on Earth No More, complete with its internally-developed renderer, and a currently confidential game engine – more is expected to emerge in the coming weeks. www.recoilgames.com