In Rovio And Supercell’s Wake, Finland’s Gaming Scene Sees A Renaissance

Somehow, 2013 marked the year that Helsinki became a global gaming capital in its own right. Maybe it was because Supercell, a humble gaming studio that started back in 2010, blossomed into a $3 billion company in less than a year. Or maybe it was when Rovio announced the two billionth download for Angry Birds with a dubstep dance on-stage from the Finnish National Ballet. Or maybe it was because even Japan’s most influential gaming entrepreneurs like widely respected DeNA founder Tomoko Namba and billionaire and GungHo co-founder Taizo Son showed up for Finland’s flagship startup conference Slush last month. Even global VC firms like Accel, Atomico and Index held competing dinners all on the same night to scout for their next hit-maker. Or maybe it was just the naked Finns shamelessly running around during the conference after-party between the freezing ocean and the sauna at 2 a.m. in the morning. In any case, this Nordic critical mass is no fluke. Supercell and Rovio’s wake has left a generation of local game designers and developers invigorated and hungry to prove themselves on the world’s stage. There are 180 gaming studios across the country, up threefold from 2010, according to statistics from Neogames and IGDA Finland. “The main difference is that the companies now believe in themselves. They know they can do anything,” asserted Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio (pictured below). A New Wave of Emerging Games Studios In 2009, you could have said it was interesting that Angry Birds originated from Finland of all places. Last year, it raised eyebrows that there were two, not one, gaming phenoms out of the country. Now there are dozens of studios waiting in the wings like Grand Cru, Next Games, Boomlagoon, Playraven, Seriously, Frogmind, Fingersoft and others. Grand Cru, the most watched up-and-coming team out of the region, has been polishing its Minecraft-inspired title Supernauts for well over a year and is set to launch in a few days in Finland in timing with the country’s independence day. Staffed with alums from earlier gaming predecessors like Digital Chocolate, Max Payne-developer Remedy and Redlynx, Finland’s studios aren’t novice game makers. Many of them come with more than a decade of experience in a community that traces its roots back more than 20 years into the early 1990s Demoscene, where thousands of developers would huddle around glowing computer screens hacking at mega-conferences