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W Love Games 2021
In 2021, even with still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the conference grew into a two-day-event fully online!
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We hosted:
💗 8 Tracks with 24 sessions
🧡 4 Keynote speakers
💛 6 Workshops
💚 Portfolio and CV reviews
💙 Showroom – 10 booths for devs
💜 IGDA Finland Mentor Cafe
Recordings of the talks and panel discussions will be available in our LIBRARY in Autumn 2022
Speakers
Nacho Lasheras / Supercell
Nacho is a programmer at Supercell. Since joining 6 years ago, he has spent most of his time working on Hay Day, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2022. Native of Barcelona, he started in the games industry working on a game for the N-Gage at Digital Legends, where he spent many years working on a good deal of different platforms, before coming to Finland to work at Remedy, seduced by the cabins and the excellent heavy metal.
Wanda O Rly / Psyon Games
Wanda O Rly a.k.a. Valtteri Lahti is the COO of Psyon Games Oy, the chairman of the game business cooperative EXPA, IDGA hub lead of Jyväskylä, and a passionate drag artist and science communicator. For the past 5 years Wanda has been at Psyon Games working on a new line of business fusing together the game industry and the life science industry by creating digital health awareness strategies based on gamified information.
Marina Díez (she/her) is a Spanish award-winning game designer based in London, UK. She's the CEO and Creative Director at Three of Cups Games, a games studio based in London; and works for different games studios around the world: currently part of Dordogne as their lead game designer. Marina is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree and a BAFTA Crew member.
Zsuzsa is the Special Advisor for video games & esports at the Consulate General of Finland in LA and is responsible for trade promotion activities on the West Coast of the US. As part of the Team Finland network, she advises Finnish companies on their market entry efforts and promote the Finnish video games & esports industries in the US.
Amandine Flachs / WildMeta
Amandine founded WildMeta in late 2019 after supporting startup founders for more than 10 years in France, the USA and the UK.
Over the years, she has helped transform technical solutions into understandable commercial offers, launch new innovative products, build communities, and bring technical & non-technical teams together to kickstart new projects and approach new markets.
Milica Todorovic
Women in Games
Milica Todorović has been working in the game dev industry for almost ten years across different genres and different roles. Starting off as a graphic designer, she also worked as a UI artist, digital painter and creative director at one point. The beginning of her career was mostly focused on art, until she discovered the production and leadership aspect of the industry.
Henri Lindgren / Lightneer
Team leader with over 10 years of game industry experience. Currently leading the hyper awesome Lightneer as their CEO. Previously Head of Studio at Veikkaus Game Studio, before that worked as an Executive Producer at Nitro Games.
Henri believes in empowering people and self-organized teams. By growing our people we grow our business.
Nickie Harper Williams & Chris Goodyear / Many Cats Studios
Nickie is a Community Manager from the UK, enjoys painting and music with a side of accessibility in gaming. Chris is a Producer, passionate about supporting disabled and neurodiverse people in the games industry.
Together at Many Cats Studios they champion inclusive spaces for disabilities, representation and making games accessible.
Marja Konttinen
Lockwood publishing
Marja Konttinen is mobile games marketing professional from Finland with 10+ years of experience in games and advertising industries. She works from early concept testing to liveops marketing, from user research driven ideation to multi-channel campaign execution.
Kristina Janković / SGA
Kristina is the Executive Manager of the Serbian Games Association. She is in charge of member relations, ecosystem building, programs, as well as events and initiatives. Kris is there to network with relevant stakeholders and provide all information about Serbia's growing gaming ecosystem.
Toiya Kristen Finley
Game Narrative Designer
Nashville native Toiya Kristen Finley is a writer, editor, game designer, and narrative designer/game writer. She holds a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from Binghamton University. With nearly 70 published works, she has over 20 years of experience writing in a range of genres.
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Avinash Kumar
Quicksand Design
Avinash is a media artist, researcher and entrepreneur based in India. He is a co-founder of Quicksand Design, a pioneering innovation consultancy operating since 2004; Antariksha Studio - a video game studio focused on cultural games from India; and UnBox Festival - an interdisciplinary arts platform that produces global festivals and residencies.
Relja Bobic / SGA
Relja Bobic is a Program Director at Serbian Games Association (SGA), a non-profit organization focused on developing the Serbian national gaming industry, and the ecosystem at large. The members of SGA are teams, companies, and individuals from Serbia that develop video games or other content and services for the currently most developed entertainment industry in the world.
Taina Myöhänen
We in Games Finland
A researcher who has worked in project, people and business management in the ICT industry since 1999, and in the games industry since 2006. In We in Games Finland, my ultimate goal is to make the gaming industry the best place to work for everyone.
Lassi Puolakka
BitByByte Creations
Lassi Puolakka is a serious game and gamification professional who has worked in the field for five years. He has worked with a great deal of different things in game development including design, project management, sales and marketing. Being able to create meaningful apps and services that do good is what drives and motivates him in the field. Currently he is working with this goal at BitByByte Creations and MiTale, a Turku based games companies.
Vesa Raudasoja
City of Helsinki
Vesa is a game industry consultant and ecosystem developer based in Finland. He works for the City of Helsinki as a Business Advisor supporting game companies. He has over a decade of experience in the industry in various positions, from startups to AAA. He has been a leader with IGDA Finland for almost 15 years and an enthusiastic Game Jam organizer at Finnish Game Jam scene since 2010.
Zoja is a passionate HR person who thinks providing an amazing and unique employee experience is critical for attracting and retaining top global talent. She is a part of an amazing HR team at Nordeus that partners with leads across the organization to support the business needs, our employees, and their growth with a personalized approach.
Elena is a co-founder of the Lingonerds translation team that has over 10 years of experience in the videogames localization industry. She particularly enjoys translating the creative bits, like dialogues, and loves the challenge of a game set in a different era!
Fabricio Leotti / Sigma Designs
Eevi Korhonen / Housemarque
Joni Finne / Finnish Game Jam
Joni Finne is game industry active who has been volunteering in almost every possible junction. Currently works as a teacher in Kouvola Area Vocational School and guides youngsters closer to games industry. Does volunteer mainly with Finnish Game Jam and IGDA Finland.
Tanya X. Short / KitFox Games
A hardworking, self-motivated designer that produces only the highest-quality results on demanding schedules. Learns tools, scripting languages, and content creation pipelines quickly and independently. A true team player with a passion for fun gameplay and memorable experiences through inspired world creation and creative scripting.
Licia Prehn is a blind, non-binary PX Specialist and accessibility advocate from Finland. They have held various roles in the Finnish game industry over the last six years, but currently do Player Experience at Next Games.
Gregory Pellechi is a freelance game writer and narrative designer based in Helsinki, Finland. He was a cofounder of the VR game studio Critical Charm. He's been a journalist, communications consultant and aid worker before getting into games. He's also a third culture kid, rugby player, and a Swedish-speaking Finnish American. Try to grok that.
Marija Ilic / SGA
Marija Ilić is one of the co-founders of Two Desperados, a mobile video games development studio based in Belgrade. Video games are her passion and important part of her life since Commodore 64, so being in the game dev and working with great people is what drives her forward.
Emilia Machuca
We in Games Finland
Emilia is the Co-Founder of We in Games Finland and currently runs the projects for the NGO. She first joined this amazing community of the Finnish games industry six years ago when she worked at Neogames Finland. She is currently working at Rovio in comms and with the internal community.
Aino Hiltunen / National Council of Women of Finland
Aino works as a Project Coordinator at the National Council of Women of Finland, where her desk is filled with projects where gender equality, technology, media and leadership intertwine. She holds a Master’s degree in World Politics from University of Helsinki. Aino gets excited about kickboxing, spending time with her rescue puppy and working towards a more just world one step at a time.
Lea Kalenius / Harhama games
Lea Kalenius is a lead narrative designer with a MA in Literature. She has published two poetry books, worked in various artistic writing collectives, as an publishing editor and directed theatre plays.
Miia Seppänen is an indie producer, with previous experience in academic research as well as arts and culture projects. She has a Ph.D. in psychology, and a doctoral training in cognitive neuroscience, and she has been working as a psychologist.
Workshop Facilitators
Johanna Verhiö
Hyvän mielen talo
Known to the gaming communities as Hörhiö, Johanna is spreading the love in different gaming platforms. They believe that games can change the world by empowering the player. After 20 years of designing and making larps Johanna ventured to the world of digital games and made an edu game about emotions (Pintaa Syvemmälle, currently used in youth-work in Finland). But returned soon back to larps as a funded game artist.
Silviu Ivascu / Augmented Arts
Silviu Ivascu has been working in the gamedev industry for almost six years as a programmer and sound designer and as a university teacher for 3 years. He is currently the owner of Augmented Arts, a startup based in Romania.
A Jack of all trades and master of sound design. He likes creating sound and experiences starting from the menu click to the head related transfer function that simulates sound passing through a human head to the auditory system.
Tracey McGarrigan
Polystream
A specialist in producing communications and events designed to genuinely engage audiences and influencers, Tracey has over 20 years of senior leadership and executive level roles under her belt.
Currently enjoing herself as Interim CMO of Polystream, as CEO and founder of Ansible PR & Communications.
Emma Varjo / Frozenbyte
Emma Varjo is the UX Lead at Frozenbyte. She champions for all players regardless of demographics, experience levels, or abilities. Through her knowledge of psychology and Human Computer Interactions as well as through research done on the game with real players, she ensures the player's viewpoint is considered holistically throughout all stages of game development. She is the director of GRUX Online - an online conference focusing on UX design and user research in games.
Solip Park is a doctoral student at Aalto University. Her research interest is focused on digital game development culture and immigrants/expats game creators.
She is also the creator of “Game Expats Story” web-comic series
WIG Fi, Fantasy & Duty - Socially Conscious Game Design
What drives our designs? Our conceptions of sexuality, gender roles, power and society can serve as a great source of fantasy. But when our designs reach thousands and millions of people we must ask ourselves what exactly are we communicating and normalizing.
by Wanda O Rly, We in Games Finland
