Games Job Fair Spring 2023 Wrap-Up and Onwards to NG23 Spring

Organizing a recruitment-heavy event for the games industry while it is going through a crisis is no easy feat. How do you give talents hope when all we hear is closures, layoffs, and acquisitions? Our goal with Games Job Fair Spring 2023 was to show everyone that hope through the beauty of connection, and the encouragement of fellow game developers.

It is a goal we at Games Factory Talents feel most honored to always strive for.

That being said, this three-day event brought together 19 studios from across Europe, offering over 160 open positions to 2150 talented professionals from across 96 countries, out of which around 130 talents joined us onsite for the last day of the event.

View the Anonymous Talent List here

New Ways of Growing and Learning

This spring marked the first time Unity has joined us for an amazing Unity Programming Challenge, and the Code Review kindly taken on by Thomas Winkley Sourav Chatterjee, and Sasu Louke. Along with the Unreal Engine Challenge and its wonderful judges, Ari Arnbj?rnsson, Chris Rock, and Ciaran Deasy, it has been a super fun beef-up of our content for programmers.

We've also had the pleasure of planning our first UX Design Challenge, which we plan to fine-tune and maintain for all future events attended by interested studios. The Art Challenges got an upgrade as well, adding Props and Lighting and Scene Composition into our featured categories, while the Creative Portfolio Review and its judges, John Cipriani, Charlotta Tiuri, Egor Blintsov, and Ville Assinen, provided our participants with expert feedback.

Some Winning Entries of the Challenges at Games Job Fair Spring 2023

But what else has been new? Well, there is nothing like having the chance to learn hands-on, and we want to thank the studios that provide opportunities for it for their participation. Companies such as Redhill Games and Wargaming provide paid internships and courses.

Games Job Fair Spring 2023 has also been the premiere of our Workshops, with Redhill Games kindly providing their support for 'Tileable Material Creation', by the lovely Syed Safeer Abbas Rizvi. We also want to thank Essi Jukkala and Salla Hiiskoski of We in Games Finland for their workshop on 'Seeking Mentorship,' another great method of growth. Last, but definitely not least, Game Makers of Finland are always there for Finnish gamedevs, and we want to thank Milla Pennanen and Maria Jauhiainen for providing valuable advice on legal and labor matters of our country to protect the rights of our wonderful talents.

April could not have been sweeter when one gets to meet even more of our lovely community in person. Our Hybrid Day in Espoo's Innopoli 2 campus and the Afterparty hosted by the lovely folks at HypeHype Inc. is a day to remember.

Connection is so very important for our health, growth and professional evolution, and it's important that everyone has access to it. We want to thank everyone who visited onsite, but also our big, warm, inspiring global online community of amazing, skilled, passionate people who time and time again put their faith in us, join the fun, and provide honest feedback to keep us improving and growing ourselves.

The pandemic provided everyone with unprecedented growth, and many were not ready for the natural slowing down of that growth, that is true. But this industry has known change a lot, and we know how to stick together and adapt through it. We are in this for the long haul.

Will you join us in October for another exciting adventure? ??

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If you missed us and can't wait for October, however, we're back in action already! Oleg Paliy and Vasileia Tolou are attending Nordic Game for its Spring 2023 iteration on May 23-26. You can find Oleg onsite at Slagthuset in the beautiful Malm?, and Vasia online. You can also book meetings with us at the event through Meet-to-Match. This is a tough year for the games industry, but everyone in events and recruitment for it are doing our best and going strong. So until the industry fully balances out, we hope our lovely talents and industry folks will keep fighting, keep taking care of yourselves, and have a wonderful summer season! See you next month for more Games Factory Talent news!