Menu

«Previous post | Next post»

Press release:
Kajaani, Finland, April 27th 2017 – Critical Force, The Finnish Game Developer of the Year 2016, will open its own academy in collaboration with the Kajaani University of Applied Sciences. The game studio wants to introduce its own solution regarding Finnish game industry’s labour shortage. The Critical Force Academy is a groundbreaking new initiative by Critical Force. The developer of the massively successful mobile FPS, Critical Ops, will launch a special training program for game development and game technology students of Kajaani University of Applied Sciences.

The Academy’s primary purpose is to help students reach a professional level during their studies by engaging in demanding game development projects defined and coached by Critical Force and other Kajaani based game companies. Up to 20 students are selected through job interviews to participate in the program. The participating students will be creating mobile online multiplayer games with their teams. There will be weekly coaching and feedback is given to students by internationally recognised professional game developers. The most talented students are selected for a paid internship at Critical Force and other Kajaani based game studios.

“As published by Finland’s game industry representatives last week, it has been a continuous pain to find experienced and talented game developers”, said CEO of Critical Force Veli-Pekka Piirainen. “However, we have been lucky in finding great people from abroad, but supporting and hiring talents from the local university is definitely very important to us. Despite its remote location at some 550 kilometers north of Helsinki, Kajaani is one of Finland’s innovation hotbeds for games with many studios and the excellent game development curriculum of Kajaani University of Applied Sciences.”

“Kajaani offers outstanding work-life balance for game developers with abundant and peaceful settings all around the small northern city. Even though Kajaani itself is a small city in the midst of woodlands, it has a very vibrant game development community. Ease of living, with a wide availability of services, as well as clean air and non-stressful environment has been proven a good combination in attracting foreign talent to work in Kajaani”, Piirainen concludes.

Nordic Game 2017 Critical Force will be attending Nordic’s biggest gaming convention, Nordic Game 2017, on the 17th to 19th of May. Critical Force is in attendance looking for veteran game industry professionals to give guidance and feedback to development teams in the Critical Force Academy.

Critical Ops
Critical Ops is a competitive first person shooter (FPS) predicted to be the next breakthrough game in eSports. The game, which has seen a soft launch for Android and iOS, has already achieved massive success via 17,5 million downloads and 670.000 daily gamers. Critical Ops’ ideological forefather is the hugely popular computer game Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). The same basic gameplay formula is shared by both games. Two teams armed with modern weapons battle it out in arenas. Counter-terrorists try to prevent terrorist attacks in realistic present day environments. The most important distinctions between these two games are the gaming platform, team size and length of the game rounds.

Additional information
http://www.neogames.fi/fgir2016/ (Finnish game industry report 2016)
http://bit.ly/2k6o32v (downloadable images and videos)
https://www.facebook.com/CriticalOpsGame/
Tweets by CriticalOpsGame
https://play.eslgaming.com/criticalops/ (tournaments)
https://mobileesports.org (tournaments)
http://valiance.gg (tournaments)