The keynote for "You, Me, User – Conference on User-Generated Culture" in Helsinki Friday 25, May, 2012.

1. Finnish Fantasies: From Consumer to
Pirate to Producer in Finnish Gaming
Cultures
Frans Mäyrä
Professor, PhD
Information Studies & Interactive Media
frans.mayra@uta.fi

2. Outline
• Games, creativity, participation: variations
• Game cultures in Finland
• Demo scene
• Birth of an industry
• Fantasies: imaginary and real in Finnish game
development
• Tensions of ownership, cultural character
• Conclusions

3. Participation in Games
• Digital games belong to interactive media, but
media is not central to all games
• Playing games requires participation that goes
beyond reception
• Involvement & reconfiguration of the pre-
designed contents within the gaming framework
• But also: interpretation, construction (Raessens
2005)
• Inter-activity in multiple different levels

4. Steps of Player Creativity
1. Personal playing style, original strategies
2. Creative uses of in-game resources
3. Modifications of single game elements
4. Level designs, full modifications
5. Game designs

5. Personal
strategies
• Rocket jumping
(Quake 3)
• ”Proximity mine
climbing” exploit
(Deus Ex)
• Some games are designed for emergence
(Juul 2002)
• Steinkuehler (2006): games are a ’mangle’
or production & consumption; of human
intentions, material constraints and
affordances, evolving sociocultural practices
and brute chance

6. Creative Uses of Resources
Minecraft
Farmville

7. From Mods to Game Designs
• Player-created content that
ranges from small patches and
add-ons to ‘total conversions’
• E.g. Counter-Strike, originally a
Half-Life total conversion (scifi
adventure  tactical shooter)
• Ambiguous role: copyright
infringement, free labour or
participatory culture? (Postigo
2004)

8. Curve of involvement?
• Active agency tends to get positive
valuation in research
• Cf. Ito et al (2010): ‘hanging out’, ‘messing
around’ and ‘geeking out’ represent
trajectories of deepening involvement
• Our study of Finnish gamers points that
majority of game players are ‘non-
intensive’ (casual) and primarily motivated
by conditions social and personal life

9. A heuristic model of gaming mentalities:
Intensity, Sociability, Games (InSoGa)
Social Mentality Profiles
Gaming with Kids Gaming with Mates Gaming for Company
Casual Mentality Profiles
Killing Time Filling Gaps Relaxing
Committed Mentality
Profiles
Having Fun Entertaining Immersing
Kallio, Kirsi Pauliina, Frans Mäyrä, and Kirsikka Kaipainen.
2011. “At Least Nine Ways to Play: Approaching Gamer
Mentalities.” Games and Culture 6 (4): 327–353.

10. Changes in gaming landscape
Four
decades:

11. Game cultures in Finland
• History in Finnish folk culture, riddles,
traditional games, oral and social
playfulness
• During 1970s the first electronic games
arrived to Finland
• In 1980s home computers (e.g.
Commodore 64) and video game
consoles (e.g. Nintendo NES)
stimulated growth in digital game
cultures
• Involved ‘consumer culture’, ‘computer
subculture’, ‘hacker culture’ and
cultures that grew around certain game
genres, gaming devices and gaming
magazines

12. Demoscene
• Already in the 1980s
computer game hobbyists
were actively
communicating, sometimes
gathering together
• Particularly the shady activity
of breaking copy-protection
of commercial games and
distributing them contributed
to the sense of community
• The practice of inserting
personalized messages,
‘crack intros’ to cracked
copies evolved into demo • Thousands of young people have gained
scene, subculture of recognition for their skills in gaming and
computer (game) art programming first in this subculture
• Since 1992 there has been • “Game culture” is notable as a social
one of the largest computer phenomenon in Finland, often mixing with
festivals, Assembly, organised the active science fiction and fantasy
annually in Finland fandom

13. Early game industry in Finland
• Early games published as printed program code in computer
hobbyist magazines
• Games of the time could be designed, programmed and
composed as one-man efforts (invitation for individual
creativity – with significant personal risks)
• Example: Jukka Tapanimäki (student of literature in University
of Tampere), one of the earliest commercial game developers
in Finland, self-trained while living on unemployment benefit
• His games, e.g. Octapolis (1987), Netherworld (1988) can be
read as transmedial game texts
• Synthesis of space opera, science fiction cinema, and gameplay
formulas/genre models from earlier video and computer
games

14. Octapolis (1987)
• By the year 3897, the Galactic Imperium was
mightier than ever… They kidnapped innocent
space pilots, and sent them inside the zone, and
hoped that somehow, somewhere, they could find
one who has immune to the immense mental
power of Octapolis. If they could only reduce it just
a little, then a gallant battle cruiser could get
close enough to wipe out the planet. It took GIA
200 years to find such a pilot - YOU are that pilot!!
• Gameplay: a hybrid of space-themed shooter
game with platform jump game
• An ambitious attempt to emulate, combine and
surpass earlier games (e.g. the shoot’em’up
Sanxion)
• Fantasy: multi-mode space opera style science
fiction – be a lonely space warrior, engaged in
ambiguous task of destruction / survival struggle
• Metaphor for the struggling lone developer?

15. Conflicts of commerce and culture
• Games of Tapanimäki & co were popular, but mostly
commercial failures
• Both Tapanimäki and Stavros Fasoulas were
forced/decided to leave game development
• Continuous problems in marketing, distribution and
monetization of Finnish games
• Often the games were heavily pirated even before
commercially available
• Crack and demo scenes started to suggest refraining
from copying “colleagues’” games only later in the
1990s

16. Finnish game fantasies
• ‘Fantasy’ signifies both a pool of genre
conventions, as well as an impulse, pursuit of
transgression & otherworldliness (cf. Jackson
1981; Mendlesohn 2008)
• Finnish games embody both dimensions:
attempts to ‘escape the everyday’, as well as
conformity to established conventions
• Information technology in general is loaded with
‘fantastic’ promise (e.g. Sherry Turkle (1984) has
recorded experiences of computers as windows
to ‘other worlds’)

17. 1990s: demoscene-based
industry
• The form of digital game has evolved
fast
• Combinations of wide-ranging visual,
auditive and interactive art quickly
required extensive teams of artists
to collaborate
• Professionalization linked with specialization (yet even today formal
design training background is rare in game industry)
• Distribution of games became the bottleneck for small countries: how to
reach global audiences?
• The first Finnish game companies were established in 1993 by
demoscene ‘producer-consumers’ (Bloodhouse, Terramarque; cf.
Saarikoski & Suominen 2009)
• In 1999 Housemarque published the first Finnish digital game to surpass
one million in sales: Supreme Snowboarding

18. Supreme
Snowboarding (1999)
• A snowboard simulation, aimed to
showcase the technical and artistic
excellence of Finnish developers
• Winter sports game that is focused on
technical virtuosity
• Theme and the graphics exploited certain
Nordic exoticism
• Fantasy: become a master snowboarder,
reach a spectacular skill level – but as a
virtual simulation (relation to real
snowboarding skills ambiguous)
• Theme of virtuosity is mirrored in the
game being chosen as the showcase for a
3D accelerator card manufacturer

19. Habbo Hotel (Sulake, 2000)
• Internet applied to gaming, user
creativity, online social playground
• Habbo by Sulake became a
successful social virtual world with
retro, 8-bit style visual identity
• Play on sub-cultural sensibilities
that had become mainstream
fashion statements for the young
• Focused on chats, small games, user
created rooms and playful activities
• Fantasy: participate in real human
interactions in a ‘toy version’ of a
fantasy hotel (ambiguous release
from ‘real identity’, as well as an
extension of it)

20. Max Payne (Remedy
Entertainment,
2001)
• A film-noire styled third-person
shooter game with a storytelling
emphasis (graphic novel cut scenes)
• Cultural influences include Hong
Kong action films (for the bullet
time special game mode), hard
boiled detective novels and Norse
mythology
• Fantasy: become a hero/victim in an
‘interactive action movie’ (storytelling and
gameplay in ambiguous tension)
• Reflects how digital games have become
situated within global popular culture,
competing and interlinking with novels,
comics and cinema

21. Angry Birds
(Rovio Entertainment, 2009)
• Skill-based physics puzzle game where
player slings birds on top of the various
fortifications the green pigs have built
• Direct digital download has allowed the
game to spread fast (over one billion
downloads so far)
• Fantasy: master the skills needed to
bring down buildings of class and stone
alike (humour that involves skilful
release of aggression, infantile pleasure
of breaking)
• Tensions in franchising, e.g. ‘Angry Birds’
amusement parks (unofficial in China,
vs. official in Finland), pirated
merchandise etc.
• Not taking legal action, as piracy is seen
to grow the fanbase

22. Tensions in ownership
• As games have expanded into social arenas,
creative work within games has grown
• Chinese gold farmers create a secondary market
inside/alongside gaming fantasy
• User-created levels form the mainstream of
content for many games that are open for
editing and sharing
• Calls for democratization of ownership meets
the views of rejectionists, reformers & radicals
(Coleman & Dyer-Witheford 2007)

23. Tensions of global and
local
• Finnish game industry aims for global acceptance
and generally avoids culturally specific references (cf.
e.g. the indie game Heroes of Kalevala)
• Search for specific ‘Finnish’ sensibility in games may
lead to the use of myths, humour, technical
virtuosity, mixtures of multiple genres…
• Professionalism has eradicated much of the cultural
distinctions, the ‘demo skills’ function in high
abstraction level
• In contrast, the low-tech, non-commercial culture of
(live) role-playing games holds more subversive
themes, experiments drawing from drama and
Nordic cultural references are thriving
• The book, Nordic Larp (Stenros & Montola, eds.,
2010) showcases some of this artistic work

24. Conclusions
• Agency related to game cultures is complex, and partially
deconstructs the user/producer distinction of media
industry
• Several tensions nevertheless remain: within shifting
commercial, social, expressive rationales, allegiances
change
• Games as ‘endogenous systems of meaning’ (Costikyan
2002) live as embedded and challenged within other
frames (of the mundane everyday, of commercial
production, etc.)
• Game cultures are open for examining the conditions for
gaming fantasy/reality, agency, and their multi-layered
interaction

25. Literature
• Coleman, Sarah, and Nick Dyer-Witheford. 2007. “Playing on the Digital Commons: Collectivities, Capital
and Contestation in Videogame Culture.” Media Culture & Society 29 (6): 934–953.
• Costikyan, Greg. 2002. “I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games”
presented at the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference, Tampere.
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05164.51146.pdf.
• Itō, Mizuko, ed. 2010. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with
New Media. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
• Juul. 2002. “The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression.” Computer
Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings. http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05164.10096.pdf.
• Kallio, Kirsi Pauliina, Frans Mäyrä, and Kirsikka Kaipainen. 2011. “At Least Nine Ways to Play: Approaching
Gamer Mentalities.” Games and Culture 6 (4): 327–353.
• Postigo, Hector. 2010. “Modding to the Big Leagues: Exploring the Space Between Modders and the
Game Industry.” First Monday 15 (5).
• Raessens, Joost. 2005. “Computer Games as Participatory Media Culture.” In Handbook of Computer
Game Studies, ed. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein, 373–388. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Saarikoski, Petri, and Jaakko Suominen. 2009. “Computer Hobbyists and the Gaming Industry in Finland.”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31 (3): 20–33.
• Steinkuehler, Constance. 2006. “The Mangle of Play.” Games and Culture 1 (3): 199–213.
• Stenros, Jaakko, and Markus Montola, eds. 2010. Nordic Larp. Stockholm: Fea Livia.