Pocket Gamer Connects

At PGC Nordics, our Aurora Awards celebrated five women whose leadership, craft, and support for others are making games a more welcoming home for all of us: ▶️ Emmi Kuusikko (Head of Product, GameHouse): Shows that leading major products doesn't mean leaving empathy and care for your team behind. ▶️ Jenny Brusk (Innovation Manager, Sweden Game Arena / Donna): Has spent 30 years building DONNA and making sure women and non-binary developers have a community when they start out. ▶️ Jessica Nylund 🔜 G-STAR CON (Development Director, Reaktor): Works with some of the biggest publishers in games while always making time to lift up other women in the industry. ▶️ Mathilde Garreau (Lead Concept Artist, SYBO): Creates art enjoyed by 150 million players every month, while leading and mentoring an all-female concept art team. ▶️ Parker Barry (Founder, Head of Studio, Mugwort Studios AB): Started her own studio to make games for players who don't always see themselves in traditional titles. Seeing their work recognized is a reminder of why representation matters so deeply. Leave some love, support, and congratulations for these five incredible women in the comments! ♥️

UK Games Fund grants now run from £20k (Starter Fund) to £250k (Content Fund), with Prototype grants of up to £100k in between. Grants are one route - investors, publishers and platforms are the others, and each looks for something different from your studio. Ukie's The Funding Formula puts all of them in one London room, with 20+ speakers including people from BFI, Inngot, Sketchbook Games and Plus Accounting. Three tracks of talks cover: ▪️ Investment: what funding partners look for, plus pitching and investment readiness ▪️ Sustainable growth: operations, retention, ethical monetisation and data-led decisions ▪️ New revenue: brand partnerships, licensing, transmedia and studios that have grown beyond game sales Between sessions you can meet investors and experts directly, and breakfast and lunch are included. 📍 Glaziers Hall, London | 🗓 Tuesday, November 10 | Organised by Ukie, get your ticket here:

Most games industry deals done in Q1 start with meetings booked in January. At PG Connects London 2027, 3,000+ delegates and 68% senior decision-makers come together across two days of scheduled meetings, expo demos, and 27 focused content tracks. Swipe through the carousel for the 5 reasons studios, publishers, and investors make London their first stop of the year. Use code SPOO-KEE for an extra 10% OFF: https://lnkd.in/dn-GMvD7

Two intensive days at Pocket Gamer Connects 🎮 Lots of talented people, CV and portfolio reviews, and conversations about what comes next. The games industry is going through a difficult time. 💔 Layoffs. 💔 Studio closures. 💔 Uncertainty about what comes next. Layoffs, studio closures, and uncertainty are affecting many people in our community. And behind every headline, there are real people looking for their next opportunity. At Careers Zone, we did our best to help. We reviewed CVs and portfolios, shared tips, and connected talent with opportunities. A big thank you Dave Bradley, Chris James, Poppy Schjerve and the whole Pocket Gamer Connects team for supporting the industry during these turbulent times 🙏 And thanks to everyone who stopped by Careers Zone and shared these two days with us. We’ll keep doing what we do best at Games Factory Talents: connecting talent and opportunities. One meaningful connection at a time ❤️ https://lnkd.in/d3jz8pQs #GamesIndustry #GameJobs #Finland #PGC #GamesFactoryTalents

Last year, players voted Netmarble’s Seven Knights Re:BIRTH our Game of the Year, ahead of Pokémon TCG Pocket and Umamusume: Pretty Derby. That’s because players decide the Pocket Gamer Awards, and nominations for this year are now open. Any game or update launched between October 1st, 2025 and September 30th, 2026 is eligible. Four categories are about the industry side: Best Developer, Best Indie Developer, Best Publisher and Best Webshop. There are also genre awards like Best Puzzle Game and Best Roblox Game, plus Game of the Year. Get nominating before November 15th: https://lnkd.in/eABb3Yrg

So the 12th Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics (née PGC Helsinki) and 3rd Finnish Games Week are in the books. It wasn't our biggest ever (although 1,100+ attendees from 44 countries is hardly shabby!), but in many respects it was our best yet! Perhaps after all these years I'm finally learning that the best measure of an event isn't how many people turn up, but what happens when they do. The vibes in Helsinki were just spot on, and judging by the response on these pages, it wasn't just us who felt that way! So, in honour of our 12th outing, here are 12 highlights: i) We DID connect the Nordics! From a sizeable Swedish posse (thanks Jana Palm, Dataspelsbranschen / Swedish Games Industry, Embark Studios, Stillfront and James Newnorth 🔜 PG Connects Nordics in particular) to Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and our Finnish hosts, the region showed up in force. ii) The Finns were Fanntastic! Supercell, Josema Roig 🔜 Stardom, Next Games, A Netflix Game Studio, Fingersoft, Suvi Latva & KooPee Hiltunen of Neogames, plus hundreds more devs, pubs, indies, investors and students all supported, some after nine hour bus journeys! Even the Deputy Mayor popped in! iii) The halls looked fabulous! From Xsolla's bold entrance to the Netflix Games Couch Party. Huge thanks to Jez Bridgeman and the awesome events team. iv) 100s of talks delivered! Great insights and debate throughout. 'Charming' Charlie Scowen worked his content planning magic, the SM team weighed in, and I even hosted two panels! v) Indie energy was high! 35 showcase tables and two cracking Big Indie Pitches, the latter overseen by SM newcomer Michael Eardley vi) The Pocket Jammers were simply heroes! Five teams made genuinely impressive games in just 36 hours! vii) The food was great. And the coffee too! ☕ viii) After-hours events were something special! From Xsolla Connect to the PG Party, via mixers, dinners, karaoke and Fingersoft's night-two send-off. Helsinki knows how to party! ix) The AI Game Changers Summit was exceptional! Standing room only, all led by our in-house automaton Dave Bradley. x) Roundtables rocked! Our evolved format sparked brilliant off-the-record discussions. xi) The community stepped up to support! IGDA and Oleg Paliy's Career Corner provided much-needed assistance. xii) Connections were made! Thousands of meetings and accidental encounters sparked new ideas, friendships and future business. And ultimately, that is the name of the game! PLUS: A Wonderful Wider Week! Even more of the same energy was served up at the IGDA Finland Leadership Summit before and the W Love Games event that ended the week. Kudos to Natasha Skult, PhD and Christopher Hamilton for that, and everything they did! More about that here: https://lnkd.in/p/egHgsgNe Huge thanks to our partners, speakers, exhibitors, delegates and especially the incredible Steel Media Ltd team both in Finland and back home. Kiitos to all who came to Helsinki. You were Finntastic! 🇫🇮❤️

It's Friday, so here's the update on the DIRGA cloning experiment that I was worried about. It has a problem. The company lost track of which one is the original. It's supposed to be only 5 stage appearances with a 47% chance being a clone. But the records counted only 1 original. Also, the side events should have no clones/original, but someone said there's appearance of my clone. Weird. Big Thanks to IGDA Finland, Pocket Gamer Connects and W Love Games for letting someone who may not be real on stage. Some helped take the photos for evidence. Only one occasion in these pothos is the real me. Guess which one? Warning: a new experiment has gone missing, last seen trying finding a way to another event.

“44 countries to our home from home.” that’s how Dave Bradley described PG Connects Nordics, and it’s hard to put it better. It was our 11th time in Helsinki, and 1,100+ of you came from 450+ companies - it really did feel like home. Helsinki’s Deputy Mayor for Culture & Leisure opened the show on day one. Neil Houari from Embark Studios took us behind the scenes of scaling the art team behind Arc Raiders. The Latin America panel with Eliana Russi, Carlos Estigarribia and Dr. Pedro Santoro Zambon made us want to pay a lot more attention to that region. And Miikka Luotio from Appcharge reminded everyone that “D2C doesn’t always need to start with a webstore.” On day two, the AI Gamechangers Summit was standing room only. Luke Dicken opened with how to survive the hype cycle, then Jari Pauna, Markus Hjort and Mikael Gummerus talked about what’s actually working when using AI in game development. Then there’s the Big Indie Pitch - Deadhead Departure (Frantic Ego) only got a slot because another team fell ill, and they won the PC & Console edition. Big congrats to Hella Games Studio too, who came third with The Cinderling. We also had our biggest Big Indie Zone in Helsinki yet, and launched off-the-record round tables, and the first “Ask me Anything” sessions at the IGDA Chat Corner. Evenings were the PGC Mixer, the Top 50 Supper Club with Appcharge, and karaoke that went on until 4am - we won’t name names 😉 A huge thank you to our sponsors: Xsolla, FastSpring, Epic Games, Tebex, SuperScale and Meta, Next Games, A Netflix Game Studio, AppSamurai, Bidease, Reactional Music, AppFollow, Fingersoft, HyprMX Mobile, LLC, Nazara Technologies Limited, adjoe, BIGO Ads, justtrack, KAZIMI, Dataspelsbranschen / Swedish Games Industry, Nordic Game, Games Factory Talents 🤝Connecting Talent, Omdia, UndrAds, Murksa Digital, DANTE.Ai and to our Steel Media Ltd team, speakers, exhibitors and volunteers - we couldn’t do it without you 🩵 See you soon in Jordan on 7–8 November, or in Montreal at MIGS on 10 November. Full #PGCNordics recap in the comments 👇

Wrapping up my two day pitching Grandpa's bee haven on Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics with Mihkel Ansper. From marketing to new platforms, AI in practice and Quality analysis. In this everyone can make games era. Glad to see so many awesome ideas turning into products. https://lnkd.in/da85gzyn