mika makkonen

Finland's game industry. My perspective on the good, the bad, and the ugly from 3,400 km / 2,100 miles away. Neogames Finland ry has published its annual report, filled with character art and positive vibes. But between the lines, you could read the structural challenges in what used to be an undeniable ecosystem. The Good 1️⃣ There are more studios and employees than ever before 2️⃣ The quality of talent is good, while the wages are low 3️⃣ Finland offers high living standards for the average person The Bad 1️⃣ Revenues are rapidly declining. Blaming the "market downturn" is a copout. Overall revenues are up on a global scale. 2️⃣ Increasing dependency on Supercell. One company accounts for well over half of the revenues and is also sucking up all the talent. 3️⃣ Investors don't find fundable studios in Finland. How long will the newly spawned studios last? And what does this tell us about the new wave of founders? The Ugly 1️⃣ Exited founders (Supercell, Seriously, Reworks, Small Giant, Rovio...), apart from a few, have not set up new gaming companies. The generation that built this world-class ecosystem has mostly retired. 2️⃣ We lost our winning formula. Turks blast puzzle games. Montreal develops AAA. Tel Aviv ships casino and tech... sticking to Supercell's "small teams, big dreams" formula for too long made us fall behind. 3️⃣ Unforgiving climate, extremely high taxes (stock options included), and very high living costs make the country unattractive for world-class talent. How to turn this slide into growth? Get the generational builders out of (full) retirement. Build fundable companies. Not passion projects. And whatever you do, don't get sucked into "the Supercell playbook". What worked then will not work now.

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Helldivers 2 studio CEO says the "vast majority" of people "silently play" the game, which means the devs can't just look at what streamers are saying for feedback. "This is a challenge for all games". The silent majority is very real. Most players enjoy a game quietly, without weighing in on social media. That creates a challenge for developers, because if they only pay attention to what streamers are saying, they risk making decisions that cater to a small fraction of their audience. This is something I’ve noticed across the industry. What the loud minority pushes for does not always reflect the behavior of the larger player base. It's a balancing act. Developers cannot dismiss passionate players outright, since these voices often highlight real issues or inspire improvements. But over-indexing on them can alienate the majority who just want to play. The healthiest approach is to ground decisions in hard data. Metrics like character choice, playtime, completion rates, and drop-off points reveal what the silent majority is actually doing. Combining this with qualitative feedback lets developers filter the noise and see where minority concerns align with broader patterns. The truth is that both sides matter. The vocal minority provides early warning signals and creative ideas. The silent majority provides the real foundation of a game’s success. Juggling the two requires careful listening, but also disciplined analysis. Developers who recognize this dynamic and use data to guide their decisions stand the best chance of keeping both groups engaged without losing sight of the game’s core vision.

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Last week I sat down with the genius Jonas Tyroller to talk about Indie game development and the culture around it. According to Jonas, "It is less about technical mastery and more about creative problem-solving and smart planning." "Success emerges when you prioritize what feels meaningful, learn from mistakes and stay open to feedback." "Instead of striving for perfection, focus on refining ideas and working mindfully to avoid common pitfalls." Jonas emphasizes keeping things simple and scope manageable. Start with appealing concepts, test early and don’t be afraid to cut unnecessary features. Sustainable progress comes from short, focused workdays and always centering your project around what players truly enjoy. Some key highlights: ✅ Prototype broadly, let quantity lead you to quality. ✅ Playtest as soon as possible to guide real improvements. ✅ True indie success is about having the freedom to keep creating. ✅ Collaborating with experienced creators can amplify your reach far beyond just building your own channel. ✅ Feature creep and burnout are common traps, keep teams small and maintain work-life balance for healthier progress. Watch the full episode, you will love it. Link in the first comment below 👇 #IndieGameDev #gamedev #entrepreneurship #storytelling

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One of the most underrated skills in AI is having good taste. AI makes it cheap and easy to generate tons of output in any domain. What hasn’t changed as much is knowing what’s actually good and worth using. Models make this even trickier because they’re sycophantic and will happily validate whatever you put in front of them. That means you’re not just evaluating the model’s output, but also whether your own idea is worth pursuing in the first place. Prompt engineering has gotten plenty of attention as a critical AI skill, but the real differentiator is what comes after. You need to be able to look at something rough and refine it into something valuable and unique from all the other AI-generated content out there. At Decagon, we look for this skill across every team. For example, tools like Cursor can crank out massive amounts of code, but our eng team needs to know how to step in, apply judgment, and turn it into something shippable. AI leveled the playing field on output, so the real edge now is knowing what high-quality looks like. #AIinWork

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Quick trick to cut the bandwidth usage of your online game by 87% when sending status effects ("Poisoned, stunned, etc.."): Store all status effects in a bitmask instead of using a boolean for each of them. "bool stunned", "bool slowed", "bool poisoned" -> take 1 byte each. "byte statusEffects" -> takes 1 byte in total [0000 0000], each bit represents a specific status effect (up to 8) If the value of the bit is "1", you are affected by that state. For example: "Poisoned" is the right-most bit -> its integer value is "1" "Slowed" is the bit before it-> its integer value is "2" You're Poisoned and Slowed? then your statusEffects' value is 3 => [0000 0011] in binary Want to know if you're Poisoned? Just use a bitwise AND with the value of the status: If (statusEffects & 1) == 1 --> you're slowed If (statusEffects & 2) == 1 --> you're poisoned If your game has up to 8 status effects, this trick will save you up to 7 bytes on each character/npc instance, which makes a lot of difference at scale (you pay 87% less for bandwidth, and encoding/decoding packages requires less CPU!) #JustDevIt  #gamedevelopment #multiplayer #netcode #optimization

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As a freelance rigger, I need to make sure my builds have a lot of flexibility. So I've recently reworked my lid modules to add variable joint counts. By utilizing a curve-based output I can changed the amount of joints used based on the needs of the project. Higher joint counts for fidelity and control, lower counts for simplicity and optimization. Or I can test and iterate to find a happy middle ground. So animators using my rigs on film or game projects can enjoy the same features, such as: - Automated lid follow with eye movement - Main controls to position the lids through translation and sculpt the curvature with rotation/scale  - Secondary controls for finer detail (If there are enough joints to support it) - Manual or automated blinking. Animate controls, or activate the automated meet point between your posed lids for a perfect seal I've been using iterations of this system over my last few projects, both commercials and games. The core elements of this system have been floating around in my head since 2018, so it's been great to finally put it to the test. 

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If you don't know these Unity Component Communication hacks then what are you doing?! Here are 5 Component Communication hacks that separate professional Unity developers from beginners: 📸 MH 1: Replace SendMessage with Interface-Based Communication ❌ Common Mistake: Using SendMessage() for inter-component communication. This reflection-based approach is slower than direct calls and fails silently on typos. Every SendMessage call searches through all components using string comparison, causing frame drops in complex scenes. ✅ Best Practice: Define interfaces as contracts between components. Use TryGetComponent() for type-safe, direct method calls that the compiler can optimize and validate. 📸 MH 2: Use ScriptableObject Events Instead of Singleton Managers ❌ Common Mistake: Creating a GameManager singleton that handles all events. This creates tight coupling where every system depends on the manager, making unit testing impossible and causing null reference exceptions during scene transitions. ✅ Best Practice: Create ScriptableObject Event Channels that decouple publishers from subscribers. UI systems, audio managers, and gameplay mechanics can communicate without knowing about each other. 📸 MH 3: Use Generic GetComponent Over String-Based Lookups ❌ Common Mistake: Using GetComponent("Rigidbody") with explicit casting. This legacy approach uses string hash lookups and boxing allocations, causing garbage collection spikes during physics-heavy gameplay. ✅ Best Practice: Always use GetComponent() for direct type resolution. The compiler pre-calculates type information, eliminating runtime string comparisons and casting overhead. 📸 MH 4: Implement Child Registration Instead of Hierarchical Searches ❌ Common Mistake: Using GetComponentsInChildren() to collect enemy references. This traverses the entire hierarchy every time, causing frame stutters when spawning enemy waves or activating UI panels with many children. ✅ Best Practice: Implement self-registration patterns where children register with parent managers during Awake(). This inverts control and creates explicit, trackable relationships. 📸 MH 5: Use TryGetComponent for Conditional Component Logic ❌ Common Mistake: Calling GetComponent() followed by null checks. This creates unnecessary temporary variables and managed allocations when components don't exist, impacting garbage collection during gameplay. ✅ Best Practice: Use TryGetComponent(out var component) to combine existence checking and retrieval in a single, optimized operation that avoids allocations on failure. These patterns will eliminate performance bottlenecks, reduce coupling, and make your Unity projects maintainable at scale. Senior developers who implement these architectures ship games with stable performance and bug-free component interactions. What other component communication hacks do you use in your projects? 🔗 Get the complete breakdown of each hack: lnkd.in/gQ3Kwjc9 *** #gamedev #Unity

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