The Finnish Game Awards is organised by the Finnish Game Developers’ Association and Neogames Finland and sponsored by Finnish Game Developer Studios.
According to data gathered by Neogames Finland, an association representing the interests of the Finnish game industry, 2019 was the sixth consecutive year when the Finnish game industry reached a turnover of more than 2 billion Euros. The annual turnover in 2019 was 2.2 billion Euros, a 5 % increase in comparison to the previous year. 2019 was a successful year for the industry also in other ways, as both Small Giant Games and Seriously grew their business and joined Supercell and Rovio in reaching an annual turnover of more than 100 million Euros.
"The 5 % growth shows that the Finnish game industry is on a solid footing and the group of successful companies is larger than ever before,” says KooPee Hiltunen, Director of Neogames Finland. "Fewer entirely new games are published, as games are now more like services with a longer lifespan rather than single titles. The number of newly founded game companies has also gone down, but the founders of new companies are now more experienced than they used to be.”
The Finnish game industry traces its history back to the founding of the game studios Housemarque and Remedy 25 years ago in 1995. A lot of game development had already been done in Finland before that, but it had mostly been the work of single developers and hobbyists only.
2020 has been an exceptional 25th anniversary year in many ways, and therefore the annual ceremony of The Finnish Game Awards is celebrated completely differently than before. In an invitation-only digital event on 18th August, starting at 18:45, awards are given, with Finnish Game of the Year award as the ultimate highlight of the evening. The shortlists for the awards can be viewed here.
The live stream of the Finnish Game Awards Gala starts at 18:45 pm. ETT, or you can follow the event on social media via #fga20.
The ceremony will feature new types of programme not seen before at The Finnish Game Awards. In addition to the award ceremony on the main stage, the event will consist of interviews with game industry luminaries and a newsroom featuring highlights from over the past quarter of a century. The evening will be opened by the Finnish orchestra Game Music Collective, and hosted by Katja Ståhl.
Sponsoring The Finnish Game Awards 2020 are the brightest stars in the firmament of Finnish games: Housemarque, Remedy Entertainment, Colossal Order, Rovio Entertainment, Supercell, Ubisoft RedLynx, Small Giant Games, Fingersoft, Seriously, Next Games, Futureplay Games and Unity.
The latest Finnish game industry report by Neogames was published in 2019, and the next will come out in 2021. For the first time, at the end of 2018, the amount of people employed in the Finnish game industry exceeded 3000, and out of that number 27 % came from outside Finland. Globally, Finland is a very attractive game industry hub.