Bigger, better, GDC 2023!

It was again time for the brave team of Apprien and PHZ Game Studios to put on the yellow hoodies and jump on a silver bird and fly over the big ocean to the wild west! This blabber means that Arto and Sasu geared up and headed to the yearly highlight of the game industry events GDC in San Francisco.

For me this presented to be the tenth GDC that I have participated. The event itself has changed a lot, at least by size, but the spirit has stayed pretty much the same: celebrating the game community and their achievements, getting together, no matter where and how far you are coming from and sharing the knowledge and best practices amongst the peers. All and all, I would say that GDC is much more than your regular business to business trade show – it’s state of mind: one week sheer gaming madness for the game industry peeps!

GDC 2023 San Francisco

This year GDC returned even stronger and larger than previous year, that was the first live event after the pandemic break out. Some 24.500 gaming industry professionals gathered in and around Moscone Center for the event. Some 5000 participants remained only online via digital GDC attendance. Also, some 3000 participant where attending Game Connection Americas 2023 in Oracle Park. This is purely a different event and not even a side event for GDC, but still utilizing the same week and the attendants that are in town. This double occupancy made the week bit hectic for our dynamic (prizing) duo Arto and Sasu since the events and meetings are happening in 2 different locations and in 3 different meeting system. Anyway we survived and had some 70 focused meetings and hundreds of run-in meetings during the week. We talked a lot about dynamic pricing solutions and how game studios can boost their sales with this simple and automated solution. We also met potential investors and publisher partners and some studios that were looking for WHF help for their current projects. I assume that some interesting new will be following these meetings during this spring – stay tuned 😉

Apprien & Zaibatsu Traditional drinks or cocktails in San Francisco

We also arranged our legendary Apprien drinks or cocktails at the famous Irish Bank bar in San Francisco. This year we organized it together with our friends from Jyväskylä Zaibatsu. We gathered some 90 friends and customers of our companies to hang out with us in a relaxed atmosphere on a #CalifornianStreetParty as we called it, since half of the people were roaming outside on the street and enjoying the only decent weather day for the week. All and all, GDC happened again, but we survived it! Onwards and upwards our dear game-heads and see you next year!

Yours in yellow hoodies, Arto & Sasu

Since we have a small representing office in Tallinn in Estonia, the Business Estonia and the Ambassador of Estonia and the Ambassador of Estonia in Finland, Mr. Sven Sakkov were kind enough to invite our CEO Mr. Arto Käyhkö to the Estonian Independence Day reception at the embassy in Helsinki. It was a very warm event, and we could see with our own eyes how large and vivid the economic cooperation between these two countries is!

We congratulate our Baltic friend for their success!

Arto

ICE, ICE Baby!

The brave CEO of Apprien, Mr. Arto Käyhkö hit the road again towards London and visited the world largest Gambling industry event ICE (International Casino & Entertainment) in exCel London. This was the first time for us and it was an experience, I tell you that! The huge expo was packed with casino, gambling and gaming companies and service provides. More that 180.000 visitors during the week. We were seeking new customers and seeing that what is hot and happening in the gambling and how those will affect the mobile gaming world. We also partneder up with Legal Gaming Ltd. from Finland to host a industry panel with the Finnish gambling and legal experts. I say that I have seen a lot of different kind of events, but this was unique! ICE ICE Baby as they said in London 😉

Always bet on black!

Arto

The Team Apprien at the PGC 2023 in London!

It was again the time of the year that the team Apprien packed up the roll-ups and travelled to the merry old London to participate the PGC 2023 event! It’s the start of the year event for the game industry peeps and oh boy! There was so many of you this year packed in THE Brewery corridors.

We also hosted in Finch’s bar our traditional Apprien x PGC drinks with our friends from PlugInDigital (PiD) and had + 100 of your dear friends visiting us – thanks so much!

Next up is the GDC 2023 in San Francisco! How many of you we will see there?

Cheers,

Arto, Antti and Jesse

The team Apprien and PHZ Game Studios Mr. Arto Käyhkö and Mr. Sasu Louke will be at the Paris Game Connection 2022 – if you happen to be in the city of love and champagne 😉 and interested about mobile games or dynamic IAP pricing, we are happy to meet you at the booth #26B between 3rd and 4th of November ! 

The team Apprien was again after the pandemic lockdown of Japan and most of Asia visiting the TOKYO GAME SHOW (TGS) in Tokyo (of-course). The event is still amazing, it´s the largest game industry event in the world and during the week it is visited by more than 255.000 people. 98 countries were represented and from Finland the business delegation was one of the largest ever. We participated the event with the kind help of the Baltic Explorers group and were accompanied by Finnish, Swedish and Baltic game companies and experts.

We had pretty successful event and met many investors, publishers and game companies that were thrilled about the dynamic pricing possibilities. We also held an cocktail event at the Finnish Embassy in Tokyo with Fingersoft, Business Finland and XAMK and also many of the local game media were represented there.

Once again it´s great to say Arigatō gozaimashita 🙏 TGS and we´ll be back definitely!

After the long absence of onsite physical gaming events, it´s our pleasure to announce that the Team Apprien and PHZ Games Studios are on the road again and YES! we are going also to Gamescom 2022 in Cologne to meet all you dear old and new friends, clients and partners live once again ! And we will be hosting our traditional “biergarten party again” 🙂 So stay tuned for more info and ping us if you want to set up meetings!

Shortly About gamescom
Gamescom is the world’s largest event for computer and video games and Europe’s largest business platform for the games industry. In 2022, gamescom will take place in Cologne and online from Tuesday, 23. August to Sunday, 28. August. gamescom 2022’s official partner country is this year Australia. gamescom is jointly organized by Koelnmesse and game – Verband der deutschen Games-Branche e.V..

After more than 500 exhibitors for gamescom 2022 it was announced at the beginning of July – including KRAFTON, Level Infinite (Tencent) and HoYoverse, some top international companies that will be present for the first time with a stand in the entertainment area . The proportion of foreign companies is over 70 percent, with 27 country pavilions now registered. More and more companies outside the games industry also want to use gamescom to present new partnerships with gaming brands and get in touch with the unique community. Exhibitors and sponsors include LEGO, McDonald’s Germany, MINI and Porsche & Puma. In the gamescom event arena, AMD, Funcom and ESL Gaming/ Qualcomm will each provide entertainment with their own diverse program on different days. Numerous creator agencies and hundreds of talents have already registered for gamescom.

To keep busy with the events and travelling the third and final event in May 2022 was Arctic Game 2022 and the role-play / cosplay event Nordsken in Skellefteå in Norther Sweden. Nordsken is a legend and largest onsite consumer games event in Sweden, but Arctic Games is a relatively new comer what comes to the business events, it’s the 5th year it was organised and two of those were only online during the pandemic.

Arto from the Team Apprien was brave enough to take the trip into the middle of now where in the Swedish tundra and meet the nordic developers! Also participated the Umeå guys, Turborilla, Mad Skill Motorcycles game 3 year party. Some 15 pre-set meetings and some tens of ad hoc meetings where set during the short two day trip and we made a lot of new friends of Apprien (thanks GTR guys from Germany) and old friends from Zordix, Turborilla and Raw Fury + Level8. Now we will take summer bit easier on travelling and pack our yellow hoodies again on August to participate GamesCom in Cologne in Germany!

The happy fellows in yellows – Arto Käyhkö (Apprien) and Sasu Louke (PHZ Game Studios) jumped into their yellow hoodies again and travelled (finally) to Malmö to participate in much awaited NORDIC GAMES 2022 conference. The conference that has always been good to us and many good deals, customers and found memories happened here!

This time the conference was organised in hybrid mode and some 2000 participants, both live at the Slagthusset in Malmö and over the web took part of the conference. Participants were mainly from Nordic countries, but also fair bit of international participants arrived in Malmö, Sweden. 

The 3 days of meetings and parties were great again. We mainly focused on meeting investors and publishers for our game studio and the new game concepts but also met a lot of old, current and hopefully new Apprien customers 🙂 Some 34 pre-arranged meetings, tens of ad-hoc meetings and happy coincidence meetings happened during the days. Two pilot agreements for Apprien were achieved and few interesting investor dialogues with Embracer Group and Amplifier Game Investment companies were also started. We also participated in fun parties with Invest in Skåne, Amazon-AWS and Xsolla just to mention few.  Hope to see all you again in other events and next year again in Malmö for sure!

In May 2022 the Team Apprien and PHZ Game Studios packed their bags again and jump in the iron bird to travel over the big ocean to States again. This time we landed in the State of Washington and in Seattle, jet city, as the locals used to call it, to participate the Pocket Games Connectors investors meet-up. Excitement was in the air when the yellow hoodies popped into the Hyatt hotel lobby at Monday morning on the beginning of the event!

Meetings with investors and publishers were lined up for the two days and some +500 participants where participating the event onsite and some couple of hundreds more over the web. We had interesting meetings with LVP, Andreessen Horowitz, Game Makers Fund, Amazon Game Tech, Pollen VC and Triple Dragon to talk about the future investment to our games and Apprien platform. More to come on the out comes of these conversations during the summer !