Finnish gaming companies come in large numbers
Asmo Halinen, Co-founder of Apaja, has compiled a listing of Finnish gaming companies into a rather comprehensive list. You can find the list here, and the original blog post about the project here (in Finnish).
Asmo started the list way back in 2005, but has updated it along the way, the latest update being from 16 July 2008. The list has 38 gaming companies altogether, a number which in itself amazes me. I'd be very interested about the ratio of 'other startups' vs. gaming startups in Finland, if anyone wants to compile such a ratio. And if that is not challenging enough I'd love to see the ratios from all the Nordic countries. I have yet to figure out why Finland has relatively such high numbers of gaming firms. Any ideas on this would be warmly welcomed.
Let us and Asmo know (via comments) if he's missing anybody from his list.
I think there's a fairly obvious, if surprising (to some), reason. The demoscene. A very large portion of game developers in Finland come from this digital sub-culture. In many ways it's a natural progression, for all the talents involved. With games you get to apply those same skills on a commercial scale and the demoscene is particularly strong in Finland, compared to many other countries.
I guess you could then question why that is so. I can't immediately think of anything besides the almost mythical "long dark wintery nights" theory, but the strong tradition does go back quite a lot.
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It would be nice to include the latest financial figures for each company to the list (as here in Finland such data is public, whether the company is stock market listed or not). Would give quite good insight on the industry as a whole in Finland in terms of revenue, profitability, etc.
Kristoffer,
The 'long dark wintery nights' is an interesting point. If that's so I wonder what other effects it might have.
I wish someone would come up with the game like interface to develop new business-viable concepts and then include the most appropriate monetization model from a ready made set of alternatives. A game of a type. This happens we'd see extremely asymmetric statistics for startup births based on the seasons.
Dee,
What says team Asmo?
Thanks for posting about my modest list, Ville.
Besides getting feedback if there's something missing from the list I'd also be happy to get information if there're any totally dead companies on the list (I have some silent ones on my monitoring already, but I have been rather cautious on deleting stuff from the list, since some businesses can sometimes be on silent mode for a long time anyway).
Kristoffer is indeed right about the demo scene effect. And, Dee, collecting financial data from the public sources is a good idea. I might do it if I just happen to have enough spare time some day. :)
Apart from the reasons listed I guess games are instantly possible to globalise. The great ideal is that anyone, coding for a few weeks in a bedroom, could come up with a wonderful idea for a game that just spreads everywhere around the world. The reality is somewhat different, but this is still that aspect of "If I enjoy the game, people around the world will too".
Having said that the game industry is a cut throat one. Difficult sometimes to get by, let alone create huge personal wealth. Plus it is one seemingly controlled by an ever narrowing bunch of giants.