Games Now! Community

Games Now! is an open lecture series on the dominant topics and emerging trends in games.  Since 2016, the lecture series have covered most trending topics around the video game industry, research, and education – and what will happen in the near future. Our guest speakers are industry leaders and inspiring individuals providing their insights and advice for students and practitioners.

The goals of the Games Now! Community is to make the lecture series more communal and social — a center of wider game development learning community at the Aalto University campus. Due to the ongoing pandemic situation, in 2020, we have developed Games Now! lecture series fully online, and bringing more viewers from different disciplines together within and beyond Aalto campus. Games Now! Lectures are streamed live on Twitch.tv, and later available on YouTube. The live stream of Games Now! draw 50-100 viewers each, with 850+ accumulated viewers on YouTube between September – December 2020. Our Games Now! YouTube channel have approximately 600+ subscribers as of December 2020. The upcoming lectures in Games Now! Can be found in the official website: http://gamesnow.aalto.fi/

Games Now! Community involves two major components:

• Games Now! Production Team (henceforth “GNPT”) is a group of students who help bring Games Now! open lecture series into life. GNPT 2020-21 are Aalto students from all around discipline, including Aalto school of arts, business, and science. Students are responsible for creating and managing visual and audio graphics of Games Now! brand. They are also engaged with promoting the lecture through social media, student groups and organizations, engaged with a playful and gamified approach to imitate the social and networked nature of Finnish game development learning communities. Through the student-driven activities of the production team, we will establish a stronger interdisciplinary game community at Aalto University. The communication between GNPT is happening at Games Now Discord server: https://discord.gg/YsgagHX
• Games Now! Online Jams (henceforth “GNOJ”) is a teaching experiment with a series of online game jams organized by Aalto University Games Now! lecture series. Jams are open for anyone interested to participate. In 2020, three GNOJ sessions were conducted from March until October 2020 The goal was to study how online game jams with a Twitch.tv live stream can be utilized in university teaching. For the purposes of the project, all jammers participating in the jams are asked to fill in a short survey after submitting their game. The official itch.io page of GNOJ is here: https://gamesnowaaltofi.itch.io/

Games Now! Teachers

Annakaisa Kultima, annakaisa.kultima@aalto.fi

Annakaisa Kultima is a game scholar at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland. She has been teaching and studying game design and development since 2006 in several universities in Finland and Sweden as well as toured as a visiting lecturer around the world including universities in the US, China, Denmark, South Korea, and Japan. Her research is concentrating on game development cultures, creativity, game industry trends, and game jams.

(Dr. Kultima is on maternity leave until 31.12.2020)

Ville Kankainen, ville.kankainen@aalto.fi

Ville Kankainen is a game researcher at Aalto University, Department of Media, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland. His research interests are focused in tabletop-gaming cultures, hybrid play, post-digital play, game jams, design research, game based learning and game design. Kankainen is also a game designer, and design educator with experience in board game and educational game design. Further, he is an active member on Finnish game jam scene and a member of board in Finnish Game Jam association.

Solip Park, solip.park@aalto.fi

Solip Park is a Ph.D. candidate at Aalto University, Department of Media. Her research interest is focused on digital game production culture and immigrants/expats game creators. Prior to her academic career, Solip worked as one of the founding members of Nexon Computer Museum – the first permanent museum in East Asia dedicated to the history of computer and video games. She also worked at game companies and startup scenes in the USA, South Korea, and Finland, focusing on project management and international relations.

Games Now! Production Team students

• Prabhav Bhatnagar, prabhav.bhatnagar@aalto.fi
• Toni Gröndahl, toni.grondahl@aalto.fi
• Ngoc Hoang, ngoc.hoang@aalto.fi
• Abhishek Jaiswal, abhishek.jaiswal@aalto.fi
• Emeline Jouvencel
• Leonidas Karavanas Papadimos, leonidas.karavanas@aalto.fi
• Juhana “Keksi” Kekoni, juhana.kekoni@aalto.fi
• Boeun Kim, boeun.kim@aalto.fi
• Kaan Ünlü, kaan.unlu@aalto.fi
• Virpi Väinölä, virpi.vainola@aalto.fi
• Xuehao Zhang, xuehao.zhang@aalto.fi

More Information
Games Now! Facebook page: fb.com/gamesnowaaltofi

Games Now! Instagram page: @gamesnowaaltofi

Games Now! Online Jam itch.io page: https://gamesnowaaltofi.itch.io/

Games Now! official Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/gamesnowaaltofi

Games Now! official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/gamesnowaaltofi

Meet the Creators
Would you like to hear more and talk to the creators of this project? Join the group on Discord after the presentations!