Finnish, Swedish Games Heavily Favored At International Mobile Gaming Awards
This year Barcelona is playing host to the eighth International Mobile Gaming Awards as part of the Mobile World Congress. Almost 500 games in total were submitted for review, and the list has been whittled down to 30 games in 6 categories. We noticed the Nordics and Baltics were heavily favored on the list, and includes 5 games from Finland, 3 from Sweden, and one game from Lithuania.
Minecraft And Shadow Cities Victorious At GDC Online
The annual Game Developer Conference Online is on its way on the new continent. Every year the conference also looks at the gaming scene to award the best online games out there. This year, Mojang with their Minecraft game and Grey Area with their Shadow Cities mobile game were victorious and won their categories. Mojang actually took home two awards (little over 6 months ago they took home 5 awards at GDC).
The conference is probably amongst the more reputable ones out there. It's attended by thousands of people and the top gaming companies of the world. Therefore it's a great place to be winning.
Should You Join a Startup? The Answer Is Increasingly Yes!
This article has two purposes. 1) Communicate the fact that a startup is handsdown the best choice for an ambitious developer, designer or an artist who wants to ship a beautiful product to the market, and 2) to get all the crazy talented people to join Grey Area or other local startups. Let me elaborate!
In the immediate aftermath of Shadow Cities success we are growing fast at Grey Area and we have been lately hiring a lot of new talent to our team. As a result I have thought a lot about how can I convince talented people with plenty of options to choose from to join a young fast growing startup instead of a mature established company. Let me break my thinking down so you can see that the answer to that question really is increasingly 'hell yes I should join a startup!' and not just of my dreaming.
Shadow Cities Hit Europe
Not so long ago we wrote about Grey Area launching their first MMO game, Shadow Cities, in the US. Today the company surprised us with another big launch, this time in Europe. From now on the game can be downloaded for free in local AppStores in 13 European countries: Italy, France, Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark and Norway. This follows-ups company's earlier promise to open up new big markets already in June.
Grey Area Launched Shadow Cities In The US
After a successful launch in Finland and Sweden, Grey Area brought their Shadow Cities app to the AppStore in US. Users can download the game for free for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Shadow Cities is one of the first massively multiplayer online games that is location-based. User's location data is emlpoyed to create augmented reality where players can be part of real-time large-scale combat with friends and other gamers. As the company puts it themselves: Shadow cities turns players into mage and streets into game.
Shadow Cities Launches In Sweden, Eyes Global Launch
The Helsinki, Finland based mobile gaming company Grey Area announced the expansion of their Shadow Cities game to Sweden today. You can download the game from the Swedish App Store (here). This has been an anticipated move as there were leaks (and tweets) about such a launch already earlier this year. Sweden is the second, so called, test market for Shadow Cities before it plans to launch the game globally. Together with the announcement of the opening of Sweden for the game, Grey Area has updated the game client with lots of tweaks and improvements based on customer feedback.
Disney Acquires Finnish Rocket Pack
Disney's Matthew Grossman has confirmed to Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that they have acquired the Finnish gaming company Rocket Pack. There was no confirmation or disclosure of any other details of the deal. First rumours of this began to surface last night on Twitter, but they were hard to confirm. The company was acquired relatively quickly, just a year from its founding.
Four Reasons Index Ventures Invested In Grey Area
Earlier this week Grey Area announced a whopping 1.9 million euro series A round from Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital. This is one of the largest single rounds into the Finnish gaming companies in the recent years for sure. What makes this all the better for the whole country and Northern Europe for that matter, is that the financing came from overseas from globally respected investors. Ben Holmes from Index Ventures outlined four reasons why they invested in Grey Area. I think this is a good read for all entrepreneurs to keep in mind if they are looking for venture capital.
Grey Area Closes € 1.9m in Series A
I'm excited to tell you that we at Grey Area have closed a € 1.9m in Series A from a really great set of investors, namely Index Ventures, London Venture Partners and Initial Capital. These guys really understand the game space and how we want to create an entirely new category of games. Could not be happier to have them with us along with Lifeline Ventures, who have been with us ever since we raised a Seed round in 2010.
Now we're gearing up for the US launch. We hope to have Shadow Cities available on iTunes App Store in the next couple of months. We're also growing really strong, moving into new offices here in Helsinki and hiring a lot new talent to the team.
I will write a longer piece on our future plans soon, but wanted to give you the news right away. I pasted the press release below and am happy to answer any questions and discuss with you guys (Full disclosure: I'm a co-founder at ArcticStartup as well as the CEO at Grey Area)
Real Shuts Down Mr. Goodliving - Fires 44
Real Networks, who bought Mr. Goodliving back in 2005, has decided to shut down the company. In doing so, it will have to fire the 44 people currently employed there. The news come to us through Dome.fi. The news came pretty suddenly as the chief of the gaming division at Real had flown to Finland two days ago to announce the shut down of the company at 6pm on Tuesday.
Shadow Cities Launches And Hits Top Spot In App Store
A new Finnish iPhone game called Shadow Cities developed by Grey Area launched today with a whopping success. The game was available in the Finnish App Store in the morning and by 1.30pm, it was already the third most grossing app in terms of sales. Mind you, the app is free itself. Later last night the game was already the most grossing app in the App Store. The last time it happened, the game in question was Angry Birds.
New Trailer & Screen Shots Of Upcoming Location-Based iPhone MMORPG Shadow Cities
Grey Area, a new Finnish iPhone gaming startup (see our previous coverage), has been operating silently the past months, but now the firm has released a new teaser trailer and screenshots of their upcoming location-based MMORPG for iPhone called Shadow Cities. The game transforms the neighborhoods and familiar streets as part of the game world, visible to the player through iPhone. The tagline is "Your city is a game." The company promises the game will be available on the iTunes App Store in late 2010.
The Future Just Arrived - Grey Area Is Developing A New Kind Of Mobile Gaming Genre From The Ground Up
Grey Area, a small startup operating in stealth mode, is gearing up to change the cityscape for everybody. I get back to how they are going to do this later in the post, but the story of how this startup came to be is equally interesting.
I first met the guys back in OpenCoffee Helsinki what must be more than a year ago. I remember Mikko Hämäläinen telling me how they were exploring possibilities to set up a company with two of his friends, Andreas Karlsson and Teemu Tuulari, from Ericsson. All three had started at Ericsson in 2003-2004 and met when they were put in the small team with the task of developing an Ericsson network node.
Asmo Halinen Officially Announcing The Move To One Did It
Asmo Halinen, one of the original three Apaja founders, officially announced that he's taking the over the CEO role at One Did It. One Did It is a Finnish startup specialized in eco-social networking.
Halinen has been busy after his announcement to leave Apaja. I still can't make out what One Did Its business model is (previous blog post here), but there probably is one based on the rather long line of investors they have, which include a digital marketing agency Nitro FX, a govenment investment vehicle Veraventure, Kari Rannila, Vesa Puttonen and Esko Reininpoika Alanko.
In addition to acting as a CEO of One Did It, Halinen has also joined to Board of Direcotors or as an Advisory Board member (he does not specify which) to Grey Area Labs and Eat.fi. Both of these startups, Great Area Labs and Eat.fi, are good choices for Halinen. The guys at Grey Area Labs just quit their jobs at Ericsson and decided to start working on their passion, alternative reality games with a serious twist. Similarly, Eat.fi is only getting better. Just recently the leading Finnish restaurant site added an option to filter for vegetarian and children friendly restaurants in Helsinki. Eat.fi is a prime example of a web service done right and for example Dopplr should put in on their site as the first thing you see when you add a trip to Helsinki.
If this would not be enough, Halinen has also joined the Board of Directors at BrainAlliance, A Finnish PHP software house, along with Taneli Tikka, who is also very active on the Board level in Finnish startups.
Eat.fi Shows Strong Traction in Visitors
Eat.fi, the Helsinki based restaurant review site, has shown strong traction in the last months, according to their blog. Although the figures aren't that high compared to international web services, 10k uniques a week is relatively good - especialy if you look at the growth rate, they have doubled the uniques in a matter of 2 months.
Oindex.fi statistics for Eat.fi
The uniques have been increasing fairly steadily after they redesigned their site and made the service a lot more usable with new features. The biggest obstacles to overcome in my opinion is for them to create a truly scalable service that does not require them to manually insert all restaurants in each city. The service itself has also a lot of potential to grow in other terms for example, adding menus on to the site and enabling users to specifically rate individual foods - something not many restaurant review sites do.
Eat.fi has also attracted other kind of traction. Tina Aspiala, the founder of the company has taken Asmo Halinen of Apaja fame on board as an advisor. Asmo has also joined the ranks of Grey Area as an advisor.
