Baltic explorers

The summer was magic – and now the world is open for new ventures

Summer in Finland 2021 was absolutely magic, with wonderful weather, sunshine, and happiness. Still, we have been a bit disappointed not to join a trip to San Fransico to visit the world’s famous Game Development Conference (GDC), but there is another possibility, and it will be in March 2022. The world is open up again and will show us new opportunities; for our teams, this is an important time, as the area of being completely ONLINE is coming to an end. Catching deals, such as publishing deals or investor deals, have been challenging during the pandemic. Keeping teams motivated and inspired to continue working on their projects has been difficult but not impossible. Communication needed to be improved dramatically and adapted to a complete digital area. These improvements have been beneficial; many might still focus on different things, which is why Baltic Explorers supports them in keeping business flowing.

Startups faced difficulties during Covid-19.

Startups play a key role in the economy, as growing and involving companies are significant to any economic growth. Unfortunately, results tell that startups have faced significant challenges, not only the fight for survival and a slow growth rate. It was also hindering them in their creativity and the creation of new job possibilities. Nevertheless, some innovative startups have reacted fast and flexibly by helping many countries shift towards full digitalization. (Source: VOXEU.org)

During the pandemic, fewer startups were created, challenging survival and, as mentioned, limitation in growth. At a time marked by significant economic uncertainty and revenues affected by containment measures, and a significant drop in demand, start-ups become even more financially fragile. They need support for their short-term liquidity needs, critical for their survival. The challenge of catching deals on bigger markets such as the US market or the Asian market is the most difficult task to tackle.

The gaming industry instead did not face any significant challenges, a slight decrease in growth in 2021. This does not mean that the gaming industry is a place where you are safe while creating your gaming venture. The industry is the most competitive and challenging place to be ever; the market gets over-flowed by daily launched games, which comes to the question, how do smaller Indie companies survive.

It is possible, and there are many successful indie developers on the market; the answer to that and the most important factors are to have a solid business model and a decent marketing strategy ready.

What will happen at Baltic Explorers in autumn 2021

As the borders for traveling are getting open, we are more than happy to meet with all our project partners; the first occasion for this will be at the GAME WAVE Festival event in Jurmala/Latvia. The Game Wave Festival is organized by our project partner, the Latvian Technological Center, for the first time, and it will be a continuation for the upcoming years to come.

The BE BIG program itself will continue. A new BATCH of teams will join us; the accelerator program will continue to be online, but we definitely will attend important game conferences and conventions shortly, onsite. Autumn will be an exciting time, with new mentoring program solutions and the possibility to attend live events, for our gaming teams an essential possibility to represent their games and their companies and catch those important deals.

The new Baltic Explorers Roadmap will be as follows:

We will participate in certain events during autumn, but we will mostly focus on the game business development to make our teams market fit. The direction we are heading is most definitely to join the biggest game development conference in San Fransico next March. Only those teams that have all their necessary components ready will be considered to join the Baltic Explorers venture.

What is needed to get the tickets to join the Baltic Explorers venture:

• The game should be ready and (partly) playable
• Have ready teasers and visuals of your game
• Know your audience
• Business and marketing strategy ready
• The business case in your game company should be well defined
• Pitch decks and one-pagers for publisher deals and investor deals need to be ready
• Pitch perfect – tell about your game but also know your business
• Do your research
• TEAM
• You should know to whom you will pitch your company. Be aware of what projects publishers or investors already have backed up.
• Be prepared
• Be ready to pitch at any time but still be aware of the right timing

Those are maybe just viewpoints that need to be ready, to join Baltic Explorers ventures. Most of our gaming teams already have all those essential questions covered, but still, have the great opportunity to polish their pitch decks and practice pitching to become perfect.

For more information please contact:

www.balticexplorers.eu

sabine.suorsa@xamk.fi

Recap on spring term 2021 – What happened and what will happen next?

There is a strong belief that the pandemic is under a certain control, and the possibilities to meet and enjoy life in a different way will come once again. However, we need to be realistic; the old normal will not return; a new normal will appear and teach us new ways of doing business and negotiations. The digital environment has been growing dramatically, and new tools to communicate and project management has been increased. At some point, the variety of new tools was partly overwhelming, as we did not have other options as to have our accelerator program completely online; we needed to react. Gaming is strongly involved in the tool named DISCORD; that was also the good reason why we selected that tools. As gamers are familiar with the tool, it helped us be safe sometimes, and we could basically start straight up.

We had great support from the team around Pocket Gamers Connect; one of their DISCORD wizard Sally Kevan helped us out dramatically to have a good server and a good structure.

The Kickoff in March (25.3.-28.3.2021) was a great success; a good range of participants joined to get insights into the game business development. Baltic Explorers offers full support to in-game business development issues and will boost gaming companies to catch needed deals to succeed in the business. Most game developers have strong knowledge and skills in creating the game, finding a solution to all technical matters, but mostly the game business side might not catch up decently enough.

According to Investopedia.com (2021), “The game industry has always been about innovation. New technology, new controls, and new experiences are to be expected. As the world moves more and more to time spent on their mobile phones, streaming services and mobile phone game playing will become an important arena for revenues. Large tech companies will look to leverage their current framework to get involved.”

With Baltic Explorers, we strongly believe that we are in the right direction, and we are supporting our teams with decent insights into the gaming.biz industry.

Supporting companies to grow and to catch the deal

In our BE BIG program, we have approx 50 gaming companies involved; our Discord server has already grown into a community of 130 active participants. Our programs have a good variation of everything, board games, video games, console games, mobile games, VR games, and serious games. The level of our teams are different; we have so-called one-band teams with us, and the task will be to connect them to the right team members. We have been less selective for the first batch as we wanted to figure out first how many are interested in our approach.

Our direction is to catch valuable investment or publishing deals during autumn 2021 and the year 2022. In which we hope to participate in on-site events in the US or Asia. For that reason, we will be more selective in Autumn; only those who improved and obviously grew during our program will catch tickets for such opportunities. This will be a competition and also the first challenges of some younger teams; we want to emphasize and support their abilities to make it happen, we are not stopping supporting those which might not yet ready, the opposite, we believe that those will be the next generation and they will get our full attention.

Thanks to Insanto Game Studio from Sweden for this wonderful picture of their bright future with Baltic Explorers. Those are examples of our teams that already appreciate the value we provide for their company.

The program has teams from Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia, with different targets and goals. With our mentoring program, we hope to fulfil all their needs and demands.

How the mentoring “BE BIG” mentoring program works?

The whole mentoring program runs throughout DISCORD; all the communication and meetings are held on the server. Discord have different function such as chat rooms and also video calls possibilities. Each team has its OWN PRIVATE, confidential channels – to which only certain people have access. They should introduce their company and their games for mentors and staff members to check out and leave comments for improvement. Their channel is also available for more detailed communication with mentors.

BE BIG community also has more open channels; those are great for open conversation with everybody and if you need certain help with difficult challenges. For that reason, we opened a decent peer2peer support for game development – here, teams can post questions and receive help from mentors or staff members and other teams. Very often, challenges will get a completely new viewpoint and even solved. Another feature of our server is the LAW CORNER – many of our teams have difficulties with these questions. When we are heading towards the autumn – trade show season, many of our teams need to have agreements in order and also have a certain understanding of how it works.

When choosing your valuable mentor in need, the system is easy; we asked all mentors to develop a profile with their expertise and what they could support our teams with. Based on this introduction, teams have the possibility to choose from over 15 mentors, which will be the most valuable for their teams.

With a booking system, the teams can set up their mentoring sessions completely on their own, according to their schedule and the available time-slots that mentors have been offering us. As soon as they had the first sessions, they also can choose one mentor to be their permanent adviser. With this solution, we can improve their growth and make them decent ready for the market; we also have specialists in, e.g. pitching in our program. These skills are essential, and during autumn, we will focus strongly on this approach.

Reality is laying on self-learning and self-improvement.

All partners in the Baltic Explorers project are aware that not all teams will get the most out of our program; some of them would need more or less support. However, as the program is very much self-learning, we also want to see the motivation and commitment teams have. Therefore, mentors have intituled not to so-called “SUGAR-COAT” any advice or opinions they give; they can be realistic, honest, and decently critical for our teams. Prepare them for the most horrible but exciting challenge; the gaming industry is one of the fastest-growing ones, and up to 1000 games/day are flowing the market.

The competition is dangerous and very tough, so we emphasize that we want to make our teams aware of it. By telling the truth, we are not keen on destroying dreams or crashing hopes; we want to transfer them into reality. Therefore, bringing them most definitely out of their comfort zone and being ready for their life’s pitch is partly what we offer, besides lots of courage that we demand. So when it comes to the selection process, we will evaluate commitment, motivation, and process and evaluate if they are really ready; we will select very carefully which platform will be suitable for them to shine and succeed.

We are looking into an inspiring upcoming autumn 2021 – new mentors will join us – new viewpoints and new challenges with the main goal to succeed and have a new venture ahead.

Baltic Explorers and its team wishing everybody

**Happy Summer**

and see you on stage

The first step in the right direction has been done

Baltic Explorers project started last year on April 1st, 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, with an open-end date. In the beginning, we all thought this is a short-time experience. We need to go through, and soonish we will be ready to travel and boost our teams to new exciting levels. Now, 1 year later and we are still on the ground, waiting for an opportunity.

If you start an international project in the middle of a pandemic, you need to figure out quite fast and intensive how you will communicate with your partners and how to build up functional communication as well. Our project’s most important issue is that each of us is on the same page and understands the direction. Flexibility in the project is highly recommended, and also to react fast, the pandemic taught us to expect the unexpected.

It is necessary to keep the project goals in mind; the biggest challenge was implementing our goals into a digital environment; this might sound curious in a gaming project, but the most important gaming industry assets are networking. The gaming industry is like a family – everybody knows each other and supports each other – this is essential in the business. In 2020 in the mobile game industry, 77.2 billion US$ revenue, and there are no signs of slowing down in 2021. In that sense, the industry is one of the faster-growing ones – and more as 1000 games/day are getting spread out into the market. There is a great need for networking, gaining feedback, showing-case your game, and attending trade shows to be present and experience the latest trends on the market.

Baltic Explorers supports growing companies to grow and to achieve their goals

During the last couple of month, we created a new way of accelerating programs. We figured out that there are such programs like sand on the see on the market, all with approx. The same goals, and not that much program with complete flexibility of both party; in the meaning of participants and mentors. It allows participating teams to explore the possibilities and not depending on mentors to achieve their success. Facilitators are supporting the teams by softly but steady pushing them in the right direction.

It is the team’s responsibility to know their needs and try to define them clearly. Most of them know it – but is it the right path – probably not. It is an easy explanation, a target in the industry is to get funding and publisher deals; those are not easy to catch, as the market is very much competitive. If you are seeking such goals; there is also the need of being ready and prepared, and there is mostly coming to the game business side in action.

This is why Baltic Explorers is differentiating slightly from others – our focus is mainly on the business side of the story – you can have a killer game on your hand, but you still need to know where and how to place it right.

BE BIG Kick-off 25.3. – 26.3.2021

Our partner from Latvia Ints Viksna came up with the amazing event name of BE BIG – as we thought something new needs to be done. In the gaming industry, “transnational event” or acceleration program might not be an excellent unique selling point.

The Kick-off was organized fully virtually and streamed in all our partner country and beyond. We had great amount of participants available. We decided that our topics should be open and also general, so suitable for a more wider audience. To have an event completely online, can be challenging, the technical matters are more of challenging as the human ones. As our project is running entirely remotely, we found a good communication. The background of our team-members is also very valuable; cause if they are familiar with certain gadgets, that helps a lot and gives the event already a security.

At the end we need to say that we have been really happy with the outcome, a good wide audience, topics have been highly appreciated and we got a good start in to our program. It general, it is very beneficial for a public seminar to have suitable topics for everybody, no matter which part of the gaming industry, and level of development. Game Business is an interesting topic, we know already that during the pandemic the gaming industry was growing massively. This means also the competition growth is also massively, you can have a killer game on your hand, but the business side needs to be developed as well.

In Finland there are couple of great opportunities to seek for funding one can be Business Finland ;those funding can be used for testing of the business concept, exploring new markets and achieve feedback from potential customers.

Baltic Explorers is supporting teams to seek for funding, projects and publisher deals

One of our targets is to support gaming companies in their path of development and to get them their where they should to seriously achieve the goal.

Our BE BIG program started in beginning of April and we have now approx. 40 teams with us, from Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. We arrange that the program will be flexible and custom-designed. This means we have a good amount of mentor-ship available, teams are in charge of booking and also to prepare. We created at Discord a BE BIG community, here our teams and participants can improve their games and also seek for valuable advice. Our mentors are professionals in all fields of game business, they will give them the sharp reality of how important it is to have all parts of the game in order.

Baltic Explorers will offer teams participation in valuable events like e.g. PGCD#6 which is in the moment ongoing, some events in the Nordic and of course events in the US and in Asia. In the moment, it might be those tickets will be available online – but the future is already opening slowly but steady; we hope we will be soon part of on-sight participation.

Those tickets to new dimensions will be open for those team with the potential to catch deals and to succeed on the market; it does not mean that other teams are not valuable, it means that they need more time for development and procedure. For that reasons we are focusing to keep those teams in the funnel and continue our support.

If you want to part of Baltic Explorers – contact us and we are ready to support you and bring you to the next level

Baltic Explorers – the creation of a new version of the accelerator program with a twist

On the picture above, it is clear to see that the gaming environment is a strong growth industry. The gaming industry is an environment that is growing at an exponential rate. The COVID-19 pandemic seems not to affect the industry as hard as others. The explanation and justification for this matter are the reason for its boost since years gaming is a trend, and many companies are developing more exciting and challenging games.

The technology is arising strongly; it is believed that many VR-tools have been under the Christmas tree in the year 2020. The gaming industry impacts other industries like retailing, entertainment, and film. When you look at those kinds of stats, it makes the gaming industry the fifth largest globally, and the biggest in places like Europe as a whole. Technology development is a critical fact in the chain; it is easy to use when downloading a game to your devices.

In 2020 the Finnish gaming industry celebrated its 25th anniversary. A lot has been changed in these years, platforms, technology, and the business environment around gaming. The significant change has been in improving game developers and their teams’ professionalism. There have been more than 600 companies; the most active year was 2014 with 260 active studios. However, that number has dropped since then. In 2019, the industry broke €2 billion.

The gaming industry is considered one of the most exciting tech industries because of its importance to culture, entertainment and technological improvement. According to Business insider magazine (10/2019), The gaming industry encourages innovation by continually pushing the borders of what is thinkable, driving companies like Google and Microsoft to create new technology to serve the billions of gamers worldwide. In fact, according to Microsoft, there are more than two billion gamers around the world. (https://www.businessinsider.com)

All these facts show the growth is a continuation in the future; gaming is a sustainable and successful business, many opportunities ahead, and possibilities to catch a deal are high, cause of the Finnish gaming industry’s outstanding reputation.

With that knowledge and network, the Baltic Explorers project is designed to develop the Central Baltic gaming cluster to a more competitive and sustainable institution for the future.

BE BIG – An accelerator program

The program will be developed to fulfil all the requirements needed in all four partner countries. The end target will be to make them ready to catch deals at the US and Asian Market.

The Baltic Explorers project organizes an international event hosted in 4 different Baltic Sea Region counties for two days. It will be a hybrid event and organized in all partner countries simultaneously. The event’s uniqueness will allow us to fully customize the content for our gaming companies’ needs and demands. Previous research gave us the idea of which topics will be necessary; each partner country has different application requirements. We will also focus on the gaming company level; we will create a valuable service chain for our clients with these methods.

We provide our participants with:

– business development support

– pitch deck development support

– pitching support

– game development support

– a wide range of international mentors

– finding additional team members (if needed and wished) support

– tickets to larger events in the US and Asian markets

The project target by the end of 2022 will be the achievement of 5-7 deals on the international market; and a contribution rate in events organized by Baltic Explorers of 110 gaming companies participation.

More Information:

Sabine Suorsa

Project Manager

South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk)

Digital Economy

+358 44 7028901

sabine.suorsa@xamk.fi

www.balticexplorers.eu

Sources:
Text info: Neogames  http://www.neogames.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FGIR-2018-Report.pdf

Figure1: NewZoo, 2020
Figure2: Roadmap – Sabine Suorsa, 2021

Baltic Explorers – Exploring new markets for Central Baltic Game Industry

Getting games out to new markets can be challenging and oftentimes requires novel skills, contacts and a suitable platform to promote sales and to make new deals. Baltic Explorers supports participating countries, such as Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia – game companies to localize their products and internationalize. By supporting companies in establishing business development practices and implement trade missions to market areas outside the EU, namely Asia and North-America. The objective of the project is to strengthen the game industry cluster in the Central Baltic Region, by supporting the companies in their internationalization activities and promote the region at international B2B events.

We will visit in the future events such as e.g. Game Developers Conference (US), Tokyo game Show and G-Star (South-Korea), in the meanwhile we are participating online most of those events. For now, we are preparing teams to be ready for those challenges. The gaming industry is a pool of global networks; almost everybody knows each other and is partly willing to support others and connect them with valuable people.

Gaming Industry is growing dramatically in the year 2020

Since approx. 25 years the Finnish games industry is active and also rapidly growing, 600 companies are already a good number, but in 2019 Finnish games industry turnover by €2 billion. At the beginning of 2004 a drastic increase in the mobile games market, until 2007 the first bigger mobile games studios took shape. A huge turning point of the industry was the beginning of the App Store area, and by 2012 already many international investors invested in Finnish gaming companies. Not only the success of Angry Birds in 2009 or Clash of Clans in 2012 by Supercell are the primary driver of success, but the number of gaming studies is also continually growing, and not only in the Helsinki area.

Gaming Cluster Kymenlaakso

Game Studios like Nitro Games or Kukouri Mobile Entertainment are already a merger player in the industry. Plus they are not located in Helsinki. They are local gaming companies in KOTKA. In the project, one main factor is to support and emphasize the growth of gaming studios in the Kymenlaakso area as well as the area of the project partner LAB in Lahti. There is no need to move to Helsinki to expect growth, game studios in our area will profit from projects and support of ours. They will get full support from specialists. During the pandemic COVID-19, in particular, the gaming industry was growing by 20% in the first two quarters of the year. The Finnish gaming industry is having a big piece of the pie in that direction.

At some point, mobile games can be a bit controversial, topics as cyber-sick are coming more and more to the ground. The new digital age and generation are now growing drastically, and we need to be aware of it and to be ready for all the new existing solutions on the market.

Why are games good for everybody?

The controversial topic in gaming is something we should be aware of it. The prejudice of gaming is extreme, and mostly cause people to assume it can make addicted. Which is partly a fact and also can be seen as proven, but there are different points in that statement as well. Researcher´s and scientists have discovered and proven that playing video games can help improve the quality of life, in particular those with disabilities and mental illness.

According to the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité in Berlin, Germany, found that “playing video games increases grey matter (the size of your brain) and helps refine learned and hardwired skills. Playing games directly affects and impacts regions of the brain responsible for memory, spatial orientation, information organizations, and fine motor skills.” Nevertheless, it looks like that playing for 30 min a day can improve your life for the better.

Games also can help and even teach in problem-solving and strategy, which is very supportive for young adults and also for kids. Many different games for that purpose are on the market, such as Minecraft, SimCity etc., those help kids to think and be strategic, which is a highly valuable tool for the future. For adults there are the games which increase your fitness level from home, those are now strongly in use during the time of our pandemic with COVID-19. Fitness-centres are not available, lockdowns are in place, and in some countries, people are allowed, to exercise outside no longer than 20 min.

Still, we need to emphasize, in particular with children involved; there should be moderation. Playing the whole night, and doing it every day, maybe fight with monsters and zombies might be not the best thing to do for young adults.

Another beneficial aspect of gaming

Participating in a judging panel for a game jam (=hackathon, 48h or 72h challenge to create a solution for a problem) the other, made me realize that in particular in the field of game development (in Xamk KOTKA) and game design (in Xamk KOUVOLA) our university is having to maximize the availability of extremely talented students. The impression a 19 years old game-development student left on us was mind-blowing, 48h time and the student had a playable game done, surrounded by a topic given. All necessary details and beyond were there, and even it might not look like yet visible suitable, the outcome was awe-inspiring. This is the solution to in having the benefit of gaming; you can develop the skills to create your own, which can be the next project participating at BALTIC EXPLORERS or catching the next lucrative job or internship.

Gaming is beyond possibilities, and it is opening doors and horizons, mostly it is in the moment one of the most growing industry, that is another reason by our Baltic Explorers project will Boost Games to New Markets and beyond.