Practical experience of setting up game studio from scratch in Finland

1. Rovio © 2016 Confidential. All rights reserved.

2. Rovio © 2016 Confidential. All rights reserved.
Setting up a game studio in
Finland
Cyril Barrow
VP operations - Rovio

3. From Hardware...
Who is
Cyril Barrow ?
to... Free to Play....
20 years, leading people, products and processes.
Helsinki

4. Jan 2014
March 2014
Feb 2015
May 2014
Company
established
1st employee
• GM
Full team hired
(Producer & AD hired)
Team of 17:
• 1 GM
• 3 Design
• 6 Engineers
• 2 Admin
• 3 art
• Producer
• AD
Moved into the office with
3 employees:
• GM
• Eng
• Tech office manager
Helsinki

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The office

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- Office for 25 people: 7 500€ / Month
- Hot seat in Helsinki: 500 € / pers / Month
- Office contract negotiations was hard and slow.
- We got an amazing office.
- Proper internet set up was slow. We ran on 4G for 2 months
- Lots of second hand office shops around.

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The recruitment

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Relocations needed:
- Russian living in Czech Republic
- Ukraine
- Canada
- Turkey
Other nationalities in the team:
- China
- UK
- France
- Bulgaria
- India
- Efficient and fast visa application
- Game industry head hunter -> low yield (high competition)
- Hires came from Network, LinkedIn scooting and ads.
- Artists were the ardest to find
- Attrition: 4 people (20%) during year 1
- Applicants expect to be paid for doing recruitment tests (growing trend)

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Expected perks in finland:
- Free mobile phone
- Phone bill paid by company
- Lunch vouchers
- Sport vouchers
- Home internet
- Free drinks/snacks at the office
- Game room
- Cool office
- 9-17 office hours
- stock options
- Bonus
- Growing trend: Recreational creative freedom

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The services

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- Law firm
- Auditor
- Accounting
- Pay roll + taxes
- Office cleaning
Employment tax:
24% on estimated yearly salaries.

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The game(s)

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- There was a very high hope put on the Helsinki studio
- The team had to gain the trust of HQ + project manager
- The team had to discover (guess) and adapt to the company’s production frame
Recommendations:
- set expectations early
- acknowledge roles and responsibilities
- schedule milestones and reviews
- give freedom between milestones
- don’t assume all game studios work the same way

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What did we learn?

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Fully staffed run rate (17 people) : 100k€/Month
1st year cost: 850k€
Don’t assume your GM will also be the
product owner
producer
HR manager
Get a native office assistant and office tech.
Tekes money not that easily available.
R&D loan
Marketing grant
Young innovative company support

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What went well

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- Office setup
- Law firm, accounting, Payroll set up
- Advertising jobs is efficient (networking is better)
- We were integrated to the game community quickly (IGDA)
- Our office assistant was helping the families to settle in Finland
- We opened our office to the families

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What was difficult

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- Office contract negotiations
- Taylor made financial reporting
- Internet set up
- Find artists, art director and free to play specialist.
- Understand the company’s culture
- Understand the company’s production framework
- Align roles and responsibilities
- Stand the pressure of expectations

20. Thank you.