Part 1 of the Nordic Game Conference

Hello all!

First I’d like to appologize for my delayed blogpost! I have something very special for you however.
Today I will tell you about my first day at the Nordic Game Conference!

The story starts bright and early..

I arrive at Malmoe Station around 8 in the morning. I call Magnus to let him know that I’ve arrived. He was still eating breakfast so I tried to make my way to his hotel. What he didn’t tell me is the correct name of the hotel. So to me he lived in an “invisible hotel”.

 

Our beloved CEO

It was to early to be lost and confused mind you. I carried on to a place called “Slakthuset” where the conference was taking place. After picking up my badge, a few things stood out as I entered the general exhibit area. Little big planet for Ps Vita and Angry birds galore. I thought that angry birds would be passee by now, but to my surprise, they are still alive and kicking. A fem moments later I meet up with a semi lightly hungover Magnus. After briefing each other about what we were going to see and which lectures we will be attending. We made our way to the “welcome” speach. I was at this time where I was sorely regreting my choise of shoes, my feet..were..hurting!

As we enjoyed the welcome presentation, we found out a two very important things. That many were hungover from the Indie party the night before, which my pregnant toosh didn’t attend, and that the programs were printed but delayed. Good thing I had written down what I believed was important to attend in a notepad. Mrs Organized, I know. What stood out during the presentation, is the feeling that we are all working towards a common goal, to further the gaming culture. It unites us through borders, geneders, rases and so on.

 

 

I was early and sober

We were also given a few very interesting pointers about how to avoid getting caught  during a hit and run. This tip was given to us by Randy Pitchfork from Gearbox. He told us a story of his humble beginnings, from a simple 3 man business, to a 200 person hit an run organization. Loads of laughs were had, esp when me mentioned about a recent sex dream with Ingmar Bergman. There is something interesting going on with Texas evidently. By this hour, my hormones were raging and I was getting sleepy, not that the presentation was boring mind you, it was all hormones who haunted me throughout the day.  Randy continued to talk about company image, and partner image being as important. I can agree that it’s not the most intelligent thing to sell goat cheese when all your suppliers are ant farmers.

He gave us 3 keywords to live by:

1) Enterntainment -Because it’s our job to entertain.

2) Profit – Because we want to continue to do what we do.

3) Happiness and harmony- this goes without saying.

After the presentation I had a short break and had a little talk with Playa – Game Industry Hub is a community of game industry players in the region of South-Eastern Finland. The community consists of game developers, game equipment manufacturers, suppliers, educational institutes and other stakeholders. – http://www.playahub.com/

They are a part of the Nordic countries after all, whether they want to or not  I didn’t have to much time to talk to them unfortunately. But I did try out two of their games!

One created by Nitro games. It’s a casual portable shooter app for iOS. You are a pirate ship and you shoot other ships to defend “your booty”. The controls were very impressive actually. It had a virtual thumb stick on the left hand corner. It’s called “Pirates of the Black Cove”.

 

Onward towards my first lecture!

This was actually more of a lecture for Magnus, because it was about the implication that employees have on their companies image when using social media. There was a lot of talk about employee loyalty, but very little about employers loyalty to his/hers employees. I do understand that it is an employers market today, but I got the feeling that there were no real legal protection for employees, rather the employers and how they should cover their butts from reckless employees. I don’t like disloyal employees or employers. I learned many times as a supervisor/project leader/employer that there is always a rotten apple who rather act in the best interest of themselves, rather then the company. I think it’s all about incentive. You reward loyalty. If you think you can get loyalty of the bat, well it doesn’t work like that. Not in my experience. I have many interesting notes for Magnus to go through but at the end of the day, we will continue with business as usual.

 

I’d like to continue writing, but tomorrow is another day and I’ll have more to report on then. I still have many more developers and lectures to share with you. But it will have to be in the next blogpost!

Till then.

Anna

 

Originally posted on Triolith.com