Myllyrinne, Matias (Remedy Entertainment Ltd)

Thema: Hearts and Minds in Game Development (Project Alan Wake)

As one of the key figures behind the company's success, Matias is responsible for heading Remedy. Since joining the company in 1999, he has helped build Remedy into one of the world's leading independent game developers.

Remedy is best known for their work on “Max Payne”. Remedy’s “Alan Wake” is the new psychological action thriller coming to Xbox in Spring 2010. It follows the writer Alan Wake as he battles dark forces against him as he unravels the mystery behind his wife’s disappearance. Matias holds an MBA from the Helsinki School of Economics. When he's not playing or working on the company's next business move, Matias can be found travelling with his wife and two sons.

Summary of presentation:

Matias will explore how Remedy, an intensely creative team renowned for pushing the boundaries in game development, uses smart research and data gathering to make calculated risks within their creative processes. Design by focus group is a Hollywood nightmare that no self respecting creative force wants to see happen. Nevertheless, intelligently applying data measures, as well as user and market research have certainly gained ground in the games industry as AAA titles get larger.  Research and data are often great servants but poor masters for a creative team. Traditionally Remedy, and the industry as a whole have relied predominantly on brute instinct and creative vision to drive the design and development of games.  Alan Wake is Remedy's next big thing, an eagerly anticipated psychological action thriller published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. As projects in the video game industry get larger and more complex we need to be able to juggle the use of logic and reason with our instincts and hearts, to guide and justify our choices in design.  While building new IP and being innovative one must be prepared to take risks and offer freedom to the team's visions without endangering the company's business. Matias will explore how you can use research and data gathering to help the creative process.  Matias will be exploring how various tools and methods can benefit the process from pre to post production. Following your heart and creative vision are still the core, but some simple practices can help us all to create better, more polished and successful games.