Region Specific: Finland – overview

When writer William Goldman pronounced that nobody knows anything, he was talking about the movie industry, but it feels increasingly applicable to the world of videogames. When Apple launched its App Store, for example, no one projected that the company would pay revenues of $10 billion to developers of iOS software in 2014. Before Palmer Luckey emerged from his workshop with a working Oculus Rift prototype, no one talked about the game industry...

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Region Specific: Finland – Fingersoft profile

Founded 2012 Employees 14 URL www.fingersoft.net (publishing enquiries: publishing@fingersoft.net)Selected softography Hill Climb Racing, I Hate FishCurrent projects Planet Racer (working title), Free Racing (working title), plus TBAStarting out with novelty camera apps, Fingersoft enjoyed steady success until the release of Hill Climb Racing, at which point it shifted into a different gear. With installations of its Android/iOS games now beyond...

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Region Specific: Finland – Small Giant Games profile

Founded 2013 Employees 10 URL http://ift.tt/1gg37bUCurrent project Oddwings EscapeHaving worked at Habbo Hotel during its boom years, Timo Soininen knows his way around a successful brand. Today, he’s heading up a new studio looking to build hits of its own, starting with Oddwings Escape.How did Small Giant get started?The company was founded in early 2013 by a bunch of Habbo Hotel veterans, including Otto Nieminen and Markus Halttunen. After...

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Region Specific: Finland – PlayRaven profile

Founded 2013 Employees 16 URL www.playraven.comSelected softography Spymaster Current projects Convoy Commander, NanoOnce the head of the Alan Wake team at Remedy, and with experience dating back to 1998, Lasse Seppänen is a relatively old hand on the Finnish development scene, with countless projects under his belt. Having shipped Spymaster in 2013, his ambitions for PlayRaven are gathering steam.When we previously visited, you were about to...

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Region Specific: Finland – Supercell profile

Founded 2010 Employees 150 URL www.supercell.comSelected softography Hay Day, Clash Of Clans, Boom BeachCurrent projects TBA The free-to-play mobile strategy game market is hardly short of options, but few match up to the biggest hitters in the genre, which Supercell has the handy knack of supplying. Clash Of Clans man Jonas Collaros tells us how the company keeps its games at the top of the charts.Clash Of Clans has been an incredible success,...

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Edge is moving to GamesRadar+

In late February, Edge is moving to GamesRadar+. We’ll be joining CVG, Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Xbox Magazine and GameMaster to create the most comprehensive gaming website in the world.Articles from the Edge archive will be available alongside new interviews, opinion and features and the best content from the website will be migrated over to our new GR+ homepage. Our print and digital editions will remain unchanged, as will our...

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4J Studios scoops Game Of The Year prize for Minecraft at TIGA Games Industry Awards

4J Studios picked up the Game Of The Year award for its console versions of Minecraft at last night’s TIGA Games Industry Awards. The UK trade body held the event at the OXO 2 building in London.The GOTY award, which is voted for by the public, exceeded last year’s record with just under 12,000 votes submitted.“Huge congratulations to all of tonight’s winners as well as everyone that made it on to the shortlist,” said TIGA CEO Dr. Richard Wilson.“It...

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Region Specific: Berlin – overview

Berlin is a city defined by unification. This year it celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a barrier that separated East from West Berlin for nearly 30 years, and in the time since the city has become an international hub for European trade, finance and politics. The videogame industry here, meanwhile, is leading the way when it comes to integrating traditional and new business models, as veteran studios rub shoulders...

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Region Specific: Berlin – roundtable

The most striking aspect of the offices of Berlin Partner For Business And Technology, the location for today’s roundtable discussion, are the elevators that move between the floors in the building’s large glass atrium. Constructed of brushed steel and wood, with a hint of simplified Art Deco to their shape and design, they suggest that we’re about to descend to Rapture. With no plasmids to hand, however, we rely on coffee to fuel the discussion....

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Region Specific: Berlin – King

King’s Berlin studio held its opening party just a few days before our visit, as evidenced by the balloons that still decorate its work spaces. Not that they feel particularly out of place: the office’s most striking feature is the slide that wraps around its spiral staircase. After a couple of tests of that feature – for investigative journalism reasons, of course – we talk to head of studio Gabriel Hacker about King’s new expansion.What does...

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Region Specific: Berlin – Kabam

Kabam has grown from a handful of people creating games above a dim sum restaurant in Mountain View, California, to a global operation with more than 800 employees worldwide. Perhaps even more impressively, it has done so in the space of five years. Its recently opened Berlin office is headed up by Kenneth Go, and handles live operations, player experience, localisation, quality assurance and marketing. We ask him to describe how Kabam does business...

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TIGA’s 2014 game industry awards open

Game industry network TIGA has opened entries for its third annual awards, aimed at recognising achievements in creativity and technical innovation throughout the UK across big and small companies alike.This year’s awards feature a total of 31 categories and include Edge/TIGA’s Game Of The Year, which will be chosen by the UK development community via a public vote, and a Special Recognition award. New categories for this year include the TIGA...

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Abertay’s ProtoPlay gears up to showcase the brightest new videogame talent

Dare To Be Digital, Abertay University’s annual student coding competition, kicked off in June and will see 15 teams of five students attempt to create a game prototype in just nine weeks. The results of their work will be showcased at ProtoPlay, under a large marquee in Dundee’s City Square, which is taking place August 7–10. ProtoPlay also allows more established indie developers to show their games for free (interested parties can apply at...

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When will the game industry’s representation of women change?

It’s curious what can happen when you don’t write something. There are obvious things, like you don’t get paid, and nobody reads it, but sometimes, as in the case I’m about to describe, the thing you didn’t write gets more interesting for not having been written; as though it’s silently accruing wisdom while shuffling through magazines in the gloomy waiting room of pre-existence.All of which is, of course, a grasping overcompensation aimed at convincing...

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A history of videogame hardware: Sony PSP

Year: 2004 Manufacturer: Sony Original Cost: ¥19,800Much of the PlayStation 2’s ubiquitous success could be attributed, not to its games or graphics, but to the fact that the machine doubled as an inexpensive and stylish DVD player. In 2004 convergence was the new slogan in video game hardware manufacturing and marketing. Games? Games were no longer enough, so the story went. As such, Ken Kutaragi’s focus when developing the PlayStation Portable...

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A history of videogame hardware: Nintendo DS

Year: 2004 Manufacturer: Nintendo Original Cost: ¥15,000For a while it appeared as though Japan’s booming video game business was immune to the country’s drawn-out economic bust. As Japan slumped into a deep recession, the industry flew an inverse trajectory, reaching a dizzying peak in 1997 thanks to the invigorating success of Sony’s PlayStation. But soon enough the long winding lines of consumers that greeted each new high-profile game release...

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Retrospective: Virtua Tennis 3

Format: Various Publisher: Sega Developer: In-house/Sumo Reviewed: E174The last few years have seen developers of sports games become increasingly obsessed with the notion of realism. Despite the annual FIFA game outselling nearest rival Pro Evolution Soccer every year, licence-guzzling giant EA talks openly about trying to emulate the realism that its closest rival offers. So it’s ironic that Virtua Tennis 3 – a sports title that flaunts its arcade...

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A history of videogame hardware: Xbox

Year: 2001 Manufacturer: Microsoft Original Cost: $299When Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, took to the main stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California on 10 March 2000 to announce the company’s long-rumoured entry to the home video game console market, he was full of hyperbolic promise. The X-box (as it was written at the time) was to be a system three times as powerful as Sony’s PlayStation 2, transforming the way in which...

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Grid: Autosport review

Publisher/developer: Codemasters Format: 360, PC, PS3 Release: Out nowWe’re in the middle of the pack on the second lap of a touring car race when something other than our shunt-happy opponents hits us: this feels like TOCA again. With its continual reinvention of cherished series, Codemasters has been nothing if not brave, but the UK studio has returned to its roots for Autosport, stripping away the glitzy distractions of its recent releases...

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