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Northern Finlands Game Developers Will Make a Cluster

Media Forum - a cluster set up to develop content and media businesses of Northern Finland - held a Media Day in Oulu, Finland, which gained remarkable popularity among specialists. In the seminar and working groups held on Saturday, some 80 media-specialists examined the strengths and weaknesses of Northern Finland's media sector.

Oulu, Finland March 27, 2004 -- Media Forum - a cluster set up to develop content and media businesses of Northern Finland - held a Media Day in Oulu, Finland, which gained remarkable popularity among specialists. In the seminar and working groups held on Saturday, some 80 media-specialists examined the strengths and weaknesses of Northern Finland's media sector.

The active participants of the event let the Arctic winds blow as they took a jump start already in February in the promotion of suggested improvements, which were made by the three working groups that took part in the occasion.

Moreover, Media Forum was given a set of new rules then by which it should seek to combine the solid knowledge base of both businesses in the media sector as well as high technology companies.

The Oulu-region has traditionally been a cluster of strong media expertise, which is reflected among other ways by powerful national and regional newspapers in addition to television and radio functions. The working group, which concentrated on movie and television production, stressed in its follow-up meeting the strengths of the Oulu-region's capabilities, which reach the top in national comparison. The theme for the meeting was regional television commercial advertising, which has a very competitive price-to-quality ratio within the areas examined business. However, the participants felt that one regional problem was the fact that its customer base is thin and another that the budgets available are limited reducing, for instance, the ability produce high-quality television commercials.

The working group, which consisted of small content and service sector companies got together again at the end of February. During the meeting, the participating companies joined forces to strengthen network relations, which could enable even smaller sized firms to be able to participate in large and challenging regional projects.

In Northern Finland, there are numerous firms within the communications and advertising sector that are run by only one or two employees, but which have significant special knowledge and talent. By improving networking capacity, even these businesses could become credible partners that have the capability to perform even large international image and advertising campaigns, even for the toughest of clients.

Northern Finland's content and media companies' flexibility and ability to react fast is reflected in the plans to build a new research and development cluster for game developers in the Oulu region - an idea which was born during the Media Day event. The role of such center of knowledge will be to help boost commercial operations in the area of game content production.

During initial stages of the cluster's work, the core of it will be made up of companies that are located in the Oulu area, which focus on developing mobile software applications and games.

Another key contributor to such game development cluster could be the University of Oulu, which already has strong knowledge in the fields of game research and in analyzing and modeling business concepts.

The so-called LudoCraft unit - led by Master of Science and Technology Tony Manninen - has among other tasks been involved in game production during the past five years. The unit has for instance explored, planned, and carried out the development of new games and content solutions. It also offers further education in the area of game development, to those involved in the sector.