Veteran developers at Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics reflect on 25 years of changing practices

Developers at Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics in Helsinki trace 25 years of changing production practices. Early 2000s Nordic developers worked without schools or mentors, inside an open, uncluttered market. Today they need marketing, monetisation and entrepreneurship skills alongside core game design, panelists say. Playables.AI CEO Elina Arponen says viable development timelines compressed from two years to mere months.

Aalto University lecturer Jaakko Kemppainen says early 2000s Finland had no game schools or mentors.
His team learned monetisation and production pipelines by building TV games played via button-phone texting.
The absence of digital storefronts then left space for open, opportunistic experimentation, he says.
He now tells students that marketing, social media and entrepreneurship are required skills alongside design.
"There is a market for every game, but reaching the audience is the big question." - Jaakko Kemppainen, Lecturer, Aalto University

Karoliina Korppoo founded Sholf Development after roles at Rovio and Supercell.
She led the Cities: Skylines team at Colossal Order as a spiritual successor project.
The team weighed every design change against staying loyal to the genre's established conventions.
"Familiarity is a strength and especially in a genre that had not seen many games lately, it turned out to be a good strategy." - Karoliina Korppoo, Founder, Sholf Development

Elina Arponen co-founded and leads Playables.AI as CEO.
She says fundamentals like company culture and customer focus still hold true.
A two-year development plan, once fundable, is now considered far too slow.
"Now two years is a very long time and you have to plan to test the product with customers much faster." - Elina Arponen, CEO and co-founder, Playables.AI

Tatu Petersen-Jessen co-founded Odd Latent and serves as its CEO.
He says cheaper, faster tools let small teams attempt ambitious projects with lower financial risk.
A failed experiment no longer threatens a studio's survival, cutting pressure to repeat proven formulas.
He warns that identical tools now reach every competitor, raising oversaturation and commoditisation risk.
"You could finally make that game nobody would have funded, only to find that hardly anyone tries it." - Tatu Petersen-Jessen, Co-founder and CEO, Odd Latent

For Investors & VC: Tie seed tranches to live player-test milestones within the first production months.
For UA & Marketing: Shift budget into prototype-stage audience testing ahead of crowded, commoditised launch windows.
For Service Vendors: Pitch bundled playtesting and go-to-market packages to small AI-tooled studios lacking marketing staff.