Greater Helsinki Promotion and the Finnish game companies work closely together to promote the industry and to attract investments to it.
The game industry might just be the future gem of the Finnish economic life. The game companies established in Finland are born global – meaning they have to be interested in and direct operations to the global game markets from day one.
GHP is an active partner in the Finnish game industry. By supporting the industry’s international networks and relations in the international game events, GHP helps to lift up the profile of Finnish companies in the eyes of international audiences. GHP also strives to bring out new companies and innovations in order to raise interest towards acquisitions or investing in R&D.
Long history
Finland has expertise in the technological and graphic know-how as well as in immersion studies that survey the factors that create the feeling of being carried away by a game. The technological know-how has a long history in Finland. The first Finnish development projects started 20 years ago.
The Finnish game companies are typically small, employing 3–4 persons on average. About 1.800 people work in the field in Finland as a whole. The small scale brings benefits: The companies are well networked and borrowing programmers and designers from one company to another is a part of their every day operations. A normal life cycle of a Finnish game company is that it is formed around a specific theme or expertise and it is acquired by or merged into a bigger or an international game company later on.
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) held on March 23–29 in San Francisco, brings together the game developers, designers, programmers, investors and other professionals as well as companies such as Nokia, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, in the world’s largest and most important game industry event. The event attracts over 18.000 visitors annually. In addition to show cases, the conference is a trade fair with matchmaking and meetings between companies and investors and launches of new games. There are show cases as well as launches of new games.
GHP will attend the upcoming event along with 20–30 professionals from the Finnish gaming industry. The goal for this year is to meet with the key game publishers and 10–20 important companies with a possible interest in coming to Finland. A third essential objective is to raise the foreign investors’ interest in the Finnish game industry as a possible investment target.
