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Tim Spaninks Lead DesignerCritical Force Entertainment
February 6th, 2017 - 12:00pm
By Matt Suckley , Features Editor
There have been a number of efforts to nail the FPS genre on mobile, but the Counter-Strike-inspired Critical Ops seems well-positioned to finally do it. Its Finnish developer Critical Force has raised capital  and set its sights firmly on mobile eSports, partnering with fellow Finns Reforged Studios. And in November 2016, Critical Force hit 10 million downloads - despite not being available worldwide. There's no shortage of appetite for the game, then, but how is Critical Force planning to leverage this growing community to make Critical Ops a successful mobile eSport? And what does a successful mobile eSport look like anyway? To find out, PocketGamer.biz reached out to Critical Force Lead Designer Tim Spaninks and Head of Community and eSports Juri Juskevits . PocketGamer.biz: Counter-Strike was an obvious inspiration in the development of Critical Ops, but what were the biggest adaptations you made for the mobile platform? Tim Spaninks: I’d say the biggest change is the pacing. Mobile games tend to have shorter session lengths, and of course the controls are vastly different from the typical mouse and keyboard set-up. Therefore, map layouts, character handling and most importantly the gun handling has been tweaked to be a perfect fit for the platform. Because of this, Critical Ops feels more intuitive and fast-paced and ‘running and gunning’ is possible, though careful positioning and controlled fire is still very rewarding. Have you noticed a difference in the way players are engaging with Critical Ops compared to other mobile games? Tim Spaninks: Absolutely, the sense of community in Critical Ops feels enormous compared to what I’ve seen in other mobile games. People actively look on social media for other players to form clans with. Tim Spaninks
People actively look on social media for other players to form clans or have challenges with. As we’re planning to introduce more social features within the actual game we expect the interaction and cooperation of our players to increase even more. Do you see a competitive scene emerging around the game already? If so, what are you doing to encourage this? Juri Juskevits: During the last year, along with our partners we have arranged several tournaments to test the waters of the competitive scene of Critical Ops. This year will continue to increase the number of competitive events, combat any cheating or hacking methods that emerge, improve the view experience by providing better spectating tools and of course introduce the long-awaited ranked mode. Do you foresee a time when mobile eSports are as popular and lucrative as PC counterparts? What are the obstacles? Tim Spaninks: I think one of the obstacles has always been the technical limitations of mobile devices. That’s a problem that’s starting to fade away completely, giving a huge boost to the hardcore gaming scene on mobile, which in turn leads to bigger audiences and more viability of an active eSports scene. Eventually everyone will have an eSports capable device in their pocket, which makes the market potential a lot bigger than that of PC and consoles. Will mobile eSports be as reliant on tournaments in physical locations, or are the online battlefields more important? Juri Juskevits: It makes sense to start arranging competitive events on the internet and grow the number of competing teams and viewers online before moving to offline locations. I am sure we will see a lot of offline mobile tournaments in the future. Juri Juskevits
I am sure we will see a lot of offline mobile tournaments in the future. Do you feel that dominant eSports genres on PC such as MOBA and FPS will also prove big in mobile eSports? Or is a fresh approach for the platform needed? Tim Spaninks: It’s a different platform and a different way to control a game, so I’m sure we’ll see some new genres and approaches to gameplay emerging from the mobile platform. However, initially I expect the dominant genres on PC to migrate to the mobile space as they’re proven to generate a large audience and are therefore a safer bet financially for game publishers and investors. A big part in creating a thriving eSport is not just the players, but the spectators. Are you seeing positive signs in this area? Juri Juskevits: We do see our spectating numbers improving as well as number of people streaming or making videos of our game. But we do have a lot to improve in this area. This year, we will be adding a news section into our game where you can see when the most important events and streams are happening and I have already mentioned an improved spectating client that is being designed with casters needs in mind. Is monetisation a key focus right now, or is building a competitive community more important to your long-term strategy? Tim Spaninks: Improving the game and supporting the competitive community is by far the most important thing. We do have several things planned to introduce to the community that could provide us with extra revenue, but mostly that will come in the form of more cool content. One of the things we’ll be working on is giving the players more options to customise. Tim Spaninks
One of the things we’ll be working on is giving the players more options to customise, for which items can be earned and/or bought from the in-game shop. Juri Juskevits: Building a strong and vibrant community is our focus. On the development side we will release the long anticipated social features as well as ranked mode. On the community side we will keep growing our competitive offering as well as introduce content creator and tournament organiser programs. What can we expect from Critical Force and Critical Ops in 2017? Tim Spaninks: You can expect us to introduce some very important new features to the game such as friend lists, chatting, clan support and ranked games (including matchmaking). More content is always being worked on in the form of skins, game modes, maps and much more. And there’s definitely more in store for the competitive scene of the game. Tags:

Critical Force on building Critical Ops as a mobile eSport

Veli-Pekka Piirainen Founder/CEOCritical Force Entertainment
Veli-Pekka is CEO and founder of Critical Force Entertainment Ltd, a Finnish startup game studio established in 2012. He is a former studio manager of Supercell North, as well as a lecturer and head of Kajak Game Development Lab. Veli-Pekka is also co-founder of NMP Games Ltd.
November 29th, 2016 - 10:30am
By Ric Cowley , News Editor
Finnish developers Critical Force and Reforged Studios have entered a strategic partnership to help boost the profiles of both companies in the mobile eSports world. The two will look to share resources and knowledge in order to help each other grow their games and companies. There is also scope for cross-promotion, tournament organisation and beyond. Big plans
"We are both developing games and services for mobile eSports, but our two games are not in direct competition," said Veli-Pekka Piirainen , CEO of Critical Force. "Working together allows us to explore a whole new range of possibilities never seen before in the gaming industry. "
"Our ambition is to share valuable resources, such as services and tools, office spaces and even key personnel to build solutions to shared problems," he goes on. "We are expecting synergies in sharing know-how in recruitment, the development process and community management among other areas. "
Strong foundation
Critical Force is known for its mobile FPS Critical Ops, which recently surpassed ten million downloads in soft launch. Reforged has yet to launch its first title, which has been in development since the company founded in 2015 . "[Critical Force's] excellence in community management has brought in great results and they have the right attitude," said Teemu Vilén , CEO of Reforged Studios. "Mobile eSports is an open door to a new gaming frontier. Hardcore gamers are eagerly waiting for better content for their smartphones and tablets, and mobile devices bring competitive gaming to an increasingly larger and broader gamer audience. "Joining forces is a win to both our player bases.”
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Finnish devs Critical Force and Reforged Studios partner to rise up in the world of mobile eSports

The Next Battle Ground For Game Companies
Nov 1, 2016
Eva Yoo
Finland is home to notable game companies like Rovio , Remedy , and Supercell . After these companies received global attention beginning in 2009, new game companies have mushroomed in Finland adding their own share of excitement. With a population of 5.4 million people, Finnish startups target global market from day one. China is a go-to market for Finland VR companies, thanks to its widespread VR arcades and huge population. As a case in point, Finnish game developer Reforged Studios scooped $2.5 million USD from Chinese technology company NetEase in October 2015. TechNode interviewed four Finnish VR startup CEOs at a  Slush Shanghai  event held Monday in Shanghai to find out more about the VR scene in Finland. Kaarlo Kananen, founder and CEO of Vizor
Trying to Create a VR platform
“Finland is one of the most active VR centric countries,” Kaarlo Kananen, founder and CEO of Vizor told TechNode. “Many companies only focus in VR. Finland has talent from game industries thanks to a heritage of Nokia.”
Mr. Kananen himself hails from the game industry, developing content creation tools. “I started the business because I believe VR will be the future. We want mass numbers of people to create VR content, and we want to keep it simple as possible.”
Founded in 2015, Vizor is a platform for exploring, creating, and publishing VR on the web. Mr. Kananen says a few thousand projects are published on Vizor VR platform every month. One of its flagship products is ThreeSixty , a URL creator for VR photos. After taking a 360 degree photo, the user can drop the photo on the ThreeSixty website to get a URL of the photo that can be embedded into any website. “I believe VR will be largely web-based. The advantage of a web-based VR platform is the accessibility. You don’t have to download the app to enjoy VR, but simply embed VR into web-based content like real estate, travel, journalism,etc. ” he says. Lasse Liljedahl, CEO and co-founder of Iceflake Studios
VR game companies struggle for monetization
“Virtual Reality in Finland is growing very fast,” Lasse Liljedahl, CEO and co-founder of Iceflake Studios says. “The companies are implementing VR to traditional sectors in addition to gaming.”
Iceflake Studios makes VR console games, mobile games and PC games. They can be played with or without a VR headset, so that they do not exclude players who don’t own a headset. Ice Lakes, one of the most successful paid games published by the company, has 50,000 users both on iOS and Steam. Mr. Liljedahl says the company earns 250K USD in revenues a year. “Finland has Android phones, Windows phones, and iPhones, and today the Android market is the most popular. Oculus was the dominating VR headset in Finland, but now HTC Vive is growing more rapidly,” he says. The 33-year-old CEO started developing games as a hobby in late 1990. Founding the company in 2007, the company has made 16 games so far, claiming 25 million users worldwide, mostly via Apple and Windows phones. “In 2007 there were 100 game companies, there are now like 3400 people in the industry. However, it’s hard to make a VR gaming company profitable,” he says. “We are one of the few game companies in Finland that can pay salary for all employees.”
Aleksis Karme, co-founder and CSO of Teatime Research Ltd
B2B is the market
Teatime Research is working with medical imaging and provides 3D medical analysis for doctors. After with CT scanning images, MRI data and all types of 3D data, doctors can look at patient’s bone parts in VR. The team is building a new technology that will enable live segmentation and separation of body into layers of muscles, tissues, and bones. “Smart VR companies target 2B customers. If it’s not a high-end VR content, it’s hard to make profit worldwide. Now with a half a million high-end headsets sold, that’s not too many B2C users in the market. 2B is a choice for VR companies. B2C market wont’t be lucrative until 1 or 2 years,” Aleksis Karme, co-founder and CSO of Teatime Research Ltd says. The Teatime Research team consists of architects, UX experts, and scientists. The 36-year-old Mr. Karme is a data analytics scientist who has been in 3D modeling for 22 years and paleontology in China for 11 years. The company also provides an apartment sales tool for construction projects in Finland and internationally. The users can plan the project, monitor phases during construction and marketing and after purchase, they can increase added sales. Their customers are mostly based in Finland, US, Europe and China. “There are home buyers who have already signed the contract to purchase the apartment based on a VR experience. It’s a good business.”
Carl-Anthon Kranck, 3D game artist at Lollihop
VR developers need to flock together
Organizers who worked to gather together the VR developers is FIVR (Finnish Virtual Reality Association). Startups in FIVR collaborate and help each other, give feedback to support and promote VR and AR technology development and implementation in Finland. Lollihop, one of the teams in FIVR, is started by a 24-year-old university student who is studying video game development. “VR companies in FIVR get access to free office space and equipment, and receive help applying for grants supported by the government. The students get basic support funds from the government,” Carl-Anthon Kranck, 3D game artist at Lollihop told TechNode. “Lollihop game is still in development stages, but is getting positive feedback from the users. I’m still in university and now here in China to study the market.”
“Most VR companies in Finland are relatively early stage and are still introducing VR to customers, and businesses to raise awareness,” he says. “Also, there aren’t many VR hardware startups in Finland. The market will get bigger with the second generation of headsets when more headsets are available in Finland.”
Image Credit: TechNode

Why VR in Finland? The Next Battle Ground For Game Companies

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Thomas Ohr
Finnland is the home country of Supercell, the Angry Birds creator Rovio, and of many other big success stories in the recent history of online and mobile games. The land of a thousand lakes is definitely one of the most exciting startup nations in Europe – not only regarding the gaming sector. Helsinki is one of Europe’s major startup hubs , and also the birthplace of Slush – a leading startup event, which connects thousands of startups, investors, tech and media folks on an annual basis. In the beginning of this year, we took a close look at the Finnish startup scene and created a list of 10 promising startups to watch in 2016. All of the startups we’re mentioning below entered the market within the last two years and each of the them has something special to add to the games, tech and/or business world in 2016. 1. Funzi : An Espoo-based startup which creates a mobile learning and information service with an initial focus on emerging markets. Funzi’s services develop new skills and empower co-creation and collaboration between mobile users and experts. The promising startup was founded in 2014 and secured about €500K in seed funding. 2. Apped : Founded in 2015, Apped started with the goal to set free the information workers of the world. No more clocking in, no more tiring routines or syntax errors from ancient legacy systems. Apped creates mobile apps that connect directly to corporate systems and are safe and easy to use. With the help of Apped, companies can allow employees and partners to use the devices they like and get the services and information they seek instantly. In the summer of 2015, Apped raised roughly €500K in seed funding. 3. Flashnode : The Helsinki-based startup Flashnode connects your SaaS and business apps. Whenever you need to get your business apps to communicate automatically, Flashnode might be a great solution. Founded in 2014, Flashnode helps you to get rid of frustrating and error-prone manual work. Flashnode makes sure the data you need is always there where you need it. In November of 2015, Flashnode secured about €600K in seed funding. 4. Reforged Studios : Founded in 2015, the vision of Reforged Studios is to empower creativity and to make the very best games in the world through artistic freedom and innovation of design. The Helsinki-based game studio aims to create world-class core games with strong mainstream appeal and AAA production values. In total, the promising company scored roughly $2.5 million of venture capital. 5. Wolt : The mobile payments software Wolt gives people a fast and simple way to handle physical-world payments on their mobile phone. Wolt enables its users to skip production queues and waiting in restaurants, bars and cafeterias. The Helsinki-based startup was founded in 2014 and raised about €2.4 million of venture capital. 6. Koukoi Games : The Oulu-based startup Koukoi Games was founded in 2015 by an ambitious team of game developers who share the vision of creating a sustainable games company together. Their goal is to develop memorable mobile games with high production value. Koukoi Games started in 2015 and secured a seed investment of about $1 million. 7. Valossa : Founded in 2015, Valossa is a leading player in automated video analysis technologies, specialising on launching commercially viable applications of deep content solutions. Valossa develops an AI-powered video search technology. In December of 2015, the Oulu-based tech company secured a $650K seed investment from Butterfly Ventures. 8. Futurefly : The Helsinki-based startup Futurefly approaches non-game app categories with addictive game ingredients in mind. This way, Futurefly makes them more fun, with increased retention and monetisation. Currently Futurefly is working on a gamified mobile messenger app which will be released soon. In September of 2015, Futurefly raised roughly $3 million in a big seed financing round. 9. Gizlo : A Helsinki-based startup with the bold vision to become the global standard for giving feedback. Launched in 2014, the Gizlo app basically offers a feedback channel connecting people and businesses. With Gizlo, companies revceive real time feedback from their customers. So far, the young company raised a seed investment of about $770K. 10. Kontena : Founded in 2015, Kontena provides an open-source toolset for organizations to deploy, manage, scale and monitor containerized applications on any cloud infrastructure. Kontena’s mission is to deliver application container technology for the masses. The Helsinki-based technology startup seems to have raised no venture capital yet.

10 Finnish startups to look out for in 2016

Aggregated Source: ChinaTechNews.com
NetEase has invested USD25 million in a Finnish gaming start-up named Reforged Studios, which has not yet officially published any product. According to reports in Chinese local media, NetEase said in a report that they implemented the investment via NetEase Capital Venture; however, the company did not reveal its equity stake.

NetEase Invests USD25 Million In Finnish Gaming Start-up

Critical Force is a mobile gaming company that focuses on developing multiplayer games within the gaming industry. The company's main offering is the tactical shooter game, Critical Ops. The company works towards building a player community and establishing infrastructure for online multiplayer gaming. It was founded in 2012 and is based in Kajaani, Finland.

Critical Force

Finnish developers Critical Force and Reforged Studios have entered a strategic partnership to help boost the profiles of both companies in the mobile eSports world .

Gaming companies are defined as those developing technologies for the PC, console, mobile, and/or AR/VR video gaming market. 

Gaming

Seed VC

Reforged Studios is a Helsinki, Finland-based game studio. The company's vision is to empower creativity and to make the very best games in the world through artistic freedom and innovation of design.

Date	10/27/2015
Round	Seed VC
Amount	$2.5M
Investors	NetEase Capital
Valuation	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined
Sources	1

First funding	10/27/2015
Last Funding	10/27/2015
Investor	NetEase Capital
Rounds	1 Seed VC
Board Seats
Type	Corporate Venture
Location	China

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Reforged Studios

Total Raised

Investors Count

Funding, Valuation & Revenue

Reforged Studios Investors