2019 Year in Review
Hi friends! We hope you’ve had a great holiday season and we wish you all a fantastic 2020! 🎉
A Year in Review
Thank you all for your continued support and participation in our events in 2019. We had a great year with you all! In 2019, Game Makers Iceland hosted 10 events. We also participated in sponsoring and organizing the second installation of Isle of Games which took place in Iðnó.
In March, we hosted an event with RÍSÍ (The Icelandic Esports Association). The association was founded in late 2018 to promote esports as a serious pastime and valid professional career — one that, if practiced correctly and in balance with a healthy lifestyle, can provide numerous benefits for the practitioner. This was RÍSÍ’s first full year of operation. Among many impressive milestones they reached in 2019, was gaining support from Reykjavík municipality to found an official e-sports league. A sister organization called Rafíþróttaskólinn (The E-Sport School) was founded and has started supporting sports clubs in founding their e-sports tracks. Some of the participating clubs are over one hundred years old and seeing them adapt to this new era has been really inspiring. Thank you Fylkir, KR, Ármann, FH and the board of RÍSÍ.
In June, we hosted an event featuring a talk by our good friend Dr. David Thue. David talked about his journey to Iceland and how he’d seen the local game making community transform. David had spent the last 5 years teaching game development at Reykjavík University before moving back to his native Canada in June of this year. We are deeply grateful to David for all that he has done to advance game development in Iceland.
In July, the second Isle of Games event took place in Iðnó. We are incredibly proud and grateful for the opportunity to support and help organize this fantastic event. Isle of Games is an art game collective founded in 2017. The collective consists of a diverse group of people with the common goal of making and exhibiting video games and their extended family in Iceland, in collaboration with local poets, novelists, musicians and artists of all kinds. These events are one-of-a-kind in the Icelandic games and art scenes, and we are very excited to participate in more events with Isle of Games.
In September, we had a Game Makers Iceland booth at Midgard, the first all-inclusive fan convention in Iceland. We invited local game makers to co-host the booth with us to showcase and beta-test their games. Very special thanks to Porcelain Fortress, Joon, Tasty Rook, Teatime Games and Owen Hindley for co-hosting with us!
2019 was not just a great year for Game Makers Iceland, it was an eventful and fruitful year for the Icelandic games industry and surrounding communities. Some highlights:
- Menntaskólinn við Ásbrú, a junior college in Reykjanesbær, started teaching game development. The minister of education, Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, was present for commencement. Demand for a program of this kind clearly exists, as the school received more than double the applications than they could accept
- CCP Games launched two expansions to their epic space MMO EVE Online, whose community celebrated its 16th anniversary in 2019. They launched an open beta for EVE Echoes, a mobile sandbox MMO set in a parallel universe to EVE Online’s New Eden. The studio collaborated with Hadean on EVE: Aether Wars, a tech demo which through multiple playtests showcased the capabilities of Hadean’s Aether engine sustaining large-scale multiplayer simulation. Additionally, EVE Online was released for the Korean market in November
- Mainframe Industries was founded by industry veterans from Iceland and Finland. Their first title will be a social MMO for cloud-based platforms
- 1939 Games released an ambitious expansion to their early access title, KARDS. They are expected to launch the game in 2020
- Porcelain Fortress released their debut title No Time To Relax
- Teatime Games released a mobile word puzzle game called One Word
- Solid Clouds released their last Starborne: Sovereign Space alpha, expecting to launch into Open Beta in Q1 2020.
- Mussila received recognition for their work on the Mussila Music School. The game was awarded the Parents’ Choice Award Gold as a ‘Best App For Parents’ and the prestigious Nordic Edtech Awards
- Myrkur Games built a state of the art motion capture studio to facilitate content creation for their first title The Darken
- Aldin released Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition, a paid version that expanded on the pioneering VR experience originally launched in 2016. Later in the year, they also released an update to Waltz of the Wizard as well as launching the title on Oculus Quest
- The Icelandic Game Industry released a State of the Industry report. It covers the last 10 years in the industry and where it could grow from here
The Brand New Year
Going into 2020, we have big plans! As most of you know, since the inception of Game Makers Iceland back in 2016, it has only been a four-person operation behind the scenes. Although of course, we could never have achieved all we did without the support and help from friends and community members — thank you all! To be able to achieve bigger and better things next year, we decided we needed a little more help and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome Eydís to the team!
Eydís is the lead animator at Myrkur Games where she specializes in cutscenes and performance capture. She looks forward to joining full force and helping the community grow in the coming years.
Now, there is a lot of game making talent in Iceland. But, we have yet to establish a stable roster of indie studios. So, starting this year, we will be inviting indie veterans from all over the world to Iceland! We believe having access to their wealth of experience will help our incredible community make the next leap.
We are incredibly excited that the first game makers to visit will be Søren and Mikkel of Ghost Ship Games, the creators of the incredible Deep Rock Galactic. Mark your calendar for February 11th, it’s going to be a blast!
Thank you all for a great year and here’s to a growing, diverse games community in Iceland!
– Alexandra, Eydís, Haukur, Jói & Torfi
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