by Anna Tikkanen

Attending DigiExpo – Finland’s largest exhibition of consumer home electronics – had been on my bucket list for a long time now, and thanks to TAMK, I was finally able to attend it this year. Not only does DigiExpo give a sneak peek to the latest hardware on the market and soon-to-be-released video games, but it also hosts several interesting discussion panels regarding the game industry.

On Friday I was able to sign up for a professional seminar about game design, where several industry specialists held their presentations about new and innovative design ideas. Although the seminar was aimed for people already in the field, it was open to anyone interested in games (or even animated movies) and the different ways of developing them.

What really caught my attention during this seminar was Mikko Pitkänen, the visual designer of the movie called Niko 2 – Lentäjäveljekset. He took us through a series of slides presenting how they went from a simple idea to the finished, 3D character. What was interesting in these processes was the fact that they did a lot of extra work that wasn’t necessarily needed in order to ensure that the characters became just how they had imagined them to be. For example, the moment Mikko read about the character “black wolf”, he instantly knew what the character would look like: wily, unproportionate and evil. After this he created the character on several different media: paper, clay and 3D to make sure no detail was left out. It was definitely interesting to get an insight to the stages of creation processes within companies that make video games and animation movies.

After a good dose of industry talk (as if it wasn’t enough), I headed out for the panel discussion about how to land a job in the gaming industry. Interestingly enough, all of the industry professionals sort of landed their jobs accidentally, and all of them seemed to agree that any job within the gaming industry is simply awesome. Not sure if saying that is just a conspiracy, but I’m sure that many wannabes happily choose to believe it.

This panel discussion gave me a lot of new information on how to proceed with what I’d like to do in the future as a profession. We’ll hopefully see if any of the tips given will actually work for me.

On Saturday I concentrated solely on the hardware and video games DigiExpo had to offer. Not only was I able to play the demos of two very anticipated games (Assassin’s Creed 3 and Dead Space 3), I also got to try out Nintendo Wii U, which, in my opinion, wasn’t that intriguing. The controller was HUGE and the constant eyeing between the screen and the controller got quite annoying. Obviously, eyeing the controller won’t pause the game, making any horror game even scarier as you can’t always be looking behind your shoulder, but other than that, I didn’t really experience the anticipated wow-effect. However, Wii U does now support high definition, meaning that Wii’s selection of games will most likely include a lot more games for older people (e.g. ZombieU and Assassin’s Creed 3).

While strolling around the area, I noticed a clear boom within video games: Majority of the games presented at DigiExpo used either Playstation Move, Xbox Kinect or some other “special controller”, such as wheel. I didn’t really see many games with regular controllers, other than few racing games and, of course, NHL and FIFA 13. I did try boxing and bowling on Kinect, as well as racing on Playstation Move. I was supposed to try out dancing as well, but after the Kinect workout I was so sore that I had to take a break from physical games.
Sunday was unfortunately the last day of this nerd heaven, and I chose to spend it checking out the latest Windows devices. Personally, I’m eagerly waiting for the new Nokia Lumia 920 phone (I even have it pre-ordered), so obviously I was very worried about whether I’ll like it or not. After testing it out for a good 5-10 minutes, I was convinced that this is definitely my kind of phone. The Nokia Navigation was very well implemented, and it looked really nice with its 3D models. City Lens also seemed pretty useful, I just really hope it works as well as I'm expecting. On top of that, Nokia Mix Radio found a lot of lesser-known artists, which I'm happy about. One of the most interesting features about this phone is the wireless charging, and according to the presenter, the power output is 80% out of the regular charging, which is not bad at all.

What comes to Samsung’s ATIV S, it’s pretty much the same as Lumia 920, except it has a larger screen (4,8”), brighter display and it’s slimmer as well as lighter. The problem with ATIV S is that it does not come with the laudable Nokia apps the Lumia 920 has, nor does it have such an amazing camera. Therefore I’m leaning towards Nokia.
I really enjoyed my time at DigiExpo and definitely hope to be able to attend next year as well.
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The author is a student of our International Media Programme
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the Media students
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