A game development conference Northern Game Summit is taking place this week on 6th and 7th October in Finland, in beautiful and autumn colored city of Kajaani. During the conference many additional events are organized for attending game developers and other professionals.
Day Zero is an exclusive part of the NGS this year. It is held on Wednesday 5th October at Kajaani University of Applied Sciences. It includes painfully realistic talks from industry veterans and a panel discussion with the participants as well as networking with others. One of the panellist is Ilari Kuittinen, CEO of Housemarque. In the end the six semi-finalists of Nordic Game Discovery Contest go on the stage and will pitch their games in front of an expert panel.
Wednesday will culminate in NGS Business Mixer which brings together professionals from the game, film, TV, music, and comics industries. The evening is hosted by IGDA Kajaani Hub. The Mixer is held in a Kulma bar in the heart of Kajaani city centre. It offers live music, self-made food, all kinds of beers and drinks, billiard, and overall pleasant atmosphere. The Mixer is a place where you can make plans for the future and deals for today to bring these industries closer together.
Thursday 6th October kick starts the Northern Game Summit. The doors will open at 9:00 AM for the registration at the movie theatre BioRex. A keynote speech by Tsahi Liberman will open the NGS 2016.
The speaker tracks of the Day 1 are Design, Tech and Business. Thursday’s speakers include interesting names such as Brie Code, Jukka Nousiainen and Walid O. El Cheikh. The epic presentations of our speakers is followed by a VIP Dinner which the mayor of Kajaani Jari Tolonen opens.
In the evening is time to mix pleasure with business and head to the nightclub Club 96 for the evening party Bonus Stage Party. The party is once again hosted by, the one and only, Fingersoft.
Day 2 starts at 10:00 AM on Friday 7th October at BioRex. Friday’s speaker tracks are Art, Business and Virtual Reality. Probably the most anticipated speaker of the NGS 2016 is Jim Jiang from Blizzard Entertainment. He speaks about his experiences during the development of the Overwatch game.
Also city of Kajaani and our University of Applied Sciences are well represented when Samuli Jääskeläinen, a graduate from KUAS, tells about virtual reality games.
Northern Game Summit will end on panel discussion. This year’s panel is about publishers and what they can do for the games industry. The panelists are Mikael Haveri, Veli-Pekka Piirainen, Juhana Virtanen and Jason Garber. Especially game developers who are thinking about having a publisher should really hear these guys out!
This is the Northern Game Summit’s fifth year. Master of the Ceremonies is Johan Toresson from Sweden. He made a lasting impression last year on NGS 2015 by his presentation called Fuck Advertising – Do Something. He is back, and we are excited to see if he is wearing socks this time.
More detailed information, schedule, all the speakers and tracks can be found from www.northerngamesummit.org.
Main contact person for media inquiries: Suvi-Pauliina Peräsarka, suvi-pauliinaperasarka@kamk.fi or Twitter @NGS_2016
Photos and logo can be downloaded from here: http://bit.ly/2bOkObo