Finland attracts more and more international game businesses. The latest entrant in Greater Helsinki Area is Unity Technologies, an international game engine developer and provider that runs a brand new office in Espoo’s Keilaniemi. Having started in 2004 with nearly no funding, strongly visioned Unity is now a global actor with offices in 14–15 countries. It also co-operates with big Finnish game houses and brands, such as Rovio.
The office is led by Development Director Petri Nordlund who praises Helsinki, a home for more than 120 Finnish and foreign game companies, as start-up capital of the world.
–The principal reason we came to Helsinki is this incredible technical talent and active game development circles, accompanies Unity’s CEO and co-founder David Helgason and continues:
–Second reason for starting up here was the friendly Finnish atmosphere, with lots of low-level hacking and technologies such as graphic technology. One big reason, of course, for establishing a new office in Helsinki was finding a highly skilled team.
Advanced game technology contributes to Finnish success
The success of Unity is based on the idea of providing a ready-made game engine for mobile game developers. This saves resources, as the companies need not to code everything by themselves. Smaller companies, in special, save a lot of money. By providing a system that one can easily upload from the web, Unity also contributes to democratizing the game development. The newest version, Unity 4, was announced in June 2012.
–We strive to build a hi-quality Finnish team that will become an integral part of our global network. While being highly international, we also aim at making strong connections to Finnish game industry and encouraging people, since when they start up game companies, this creates jobs and increases Finnish export earnings, says Helgason.
Making Greater Helsinki Area even more desirable
Unity wants to be an important part of the Finnish application ecosystem by opening itself for local business and people. It also strengthens the local know-how network by having some of its employees teaching at Finnish universities.
–We are satisfied with our decision to invest in Finland. Besides amazing potential, Helsinki offers a safe business environment and is an attractive place to live in, says Helgason.
–It is also easy to get around here in Keilaniemi as many game places are within walking distance, for example Rovio just down the street. At the moment we employ six people, and the seventh is about to start this January, Nordlund continues.
–But if we find good people, we can offer an unlimited number of jobs. Thanks to iPhone – and especially Apple Store – smaller teams become more and more important in supplying tools for game developers, Helgason promises.
