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Wednesday 7 May 2014

Mini Trip to Helsinki

Yesterday after work I jumped on a train and headed to Helsinki. The main reason for the trip was that Bassoradio had invited me to do an interview on my job. I work as a game designer, and games industry is very hot right now. They are doing a series to help young people get to know what working actually is an presenting them different occupations.

To avoid waking up super early, I travelled the 200 or so kilometres on the previous day and stayed at my parents' place for the night. Once in Helsinki I absolutely had to visit some shops that my home city does not have. I stopped by an Inglot store to buy a few of their brightly coloured gel liners and went to check out the MAC counter. I ended up not buying anything from MAC, but everything looked so pretty and the newest collection had cute plastic packaging imitating drops of water on the surface.


In the morning I noticed I'm in luck since the tramline that goes past my parents' place went straight to the Bassoradio office, so it was very easy to find my way there. They had an awesome office in an old building with mismatched lamps on the ceiling.

Lamps in all shapes and sizes.
 Ina, who did the interview was such a nice person, we hit off immediately! We liked the same kind of shoes and that's a sure thing to help ladies bond ;D The interview went out live, but you can listen to it on Bassoradio's Souncloud. It's in Finnish only, sorry! I hope some youngsters might have now gotten a tiny bit better picture of what working in the game industry is :) Here's also their news article on the interview. They chose an excellent sentence for the headline, the fact that I'm actually not a very good player! It's true ;D My reflexes are not very quick, I'm not very motivated to win and get frustrated quickly. People often think that people who are good at playing games are also good at designing games. I personally think these things are not connected. Since I fail often, I am very well aware of how important it is for games to also take into account players who don't instantly master the game, and how they can be gently ushered into making better choices and gradually learning the game. It's actually a very rewarding experience to first suck at a game and slowly learn to master it.

I play many types of games, many slow paced variants like puzzles, adventure games, city builders, god games and casual games, and then sometimes fast paced games like the new Diablo or World of Warcraft. Naturally when it is my job I need to look at many different genres and play different games, but I still love playing. When I finish this text I'll be off to kill demons in Diablo 3 ;P

Me and Ina.
After the interview I hopped on a train and diligently went straight to work, because the game we are working on won't finish itself!

5 comments:

  1. I agree with everything you've said about gamers and designers. I have logged over 200 hours on D3 alone (I don't even know how to begin estimating for WoW or anything other game lol), but if someone were to ask me to design a game... uhhh, I'd be completely lost. I have a ton of respect for game designers!

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    1. Do you have the expansion for Diablo? I love it, it looks so gorgeous I could just run around and stare at pretty things ;D Don't ever check how many hours you've spend on WoW. I'm not sure if the game even tells you any more, but the numbers are huge! I've been playing since vanilla, but stopped after WotLK and haven't bought the panda expansion.

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    2. Yeah, I've been playing the new xpac for D3-- I would be down for a few rifts if you want someday! =P
      I have also been playing WoW since vanilla! I haven't met another OG WoW player other than a couple that I game with lol. That time played would be mighty large number I bet lol.
      I played a bit of Pandaria only because my brother had bought me the expansion and a month of game time... it's easily the worst game play I have ever experienced, and WoW holds a special place in my heart, as being the game I met my hubby on-- it's so overly simplified, so it's not easy for me to say that. I like my complicated numbers and boss mechanics when playing =P

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  2. Totally know how you feel, because i don't play games very often, and when i do, i don't know how to play it right away, it takes some time for me to get used to the game. My BF laughs of me all the time :( But currently i'm addicted to WoW!
    You should show us the things you've bought from Inglot, i would love to know about those eyeliners!

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    1. If only tutorials could help with other people laughing! Learning a new game takes time, and it's part of the satisfaction to learn and see how you can start doing more complex things. I've prepared a post of the gel liners I bought, sadly one was missing the seal and had dried out a bit. I sent Inglot an email about it and am waiting for their response so I can also write about their customer service.

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