Noice Stories: Simo Sylgren, Senior Game Designer

Who are you, Simo? Where do you come from professionally?

My name is Simo Sylgren, I'm the Senior Game Designer at Noice. My professional background is very much in games. Before joining Noice, I’ve had my own company, and I’ve also worked at Kyy Games and Nitro Games. At Kyy I was the Lead Game Designer, at Nitro I was Head of Design and also did project management. Leading teams of game designers and coordinating efforts with other stakeholders is something I am familiar with. I studied at, what at the time was called Saimia, now I think it's LAB University of Applied Science. That’s where I got my start working on games. A small group of us had this idea for a gaming company, and the rest is history. Through this small company, I was able to break into the industry and learn a lot about project management and game production in the process.?So yeah, the gaming space has been near and dear for a long time now.?

What do you do at Noice?

I’m the Senior Game Designer here at Noice. I'm also currently coaching our team's newest member, Marjo, who joined as a Live Game Designer a few months ago. We're both focused on creating Noice's gameplay and mechanics, it's quite a design task for a team of essentially three people right now. I'm looking forward to the launch of Noice (like most of us) and to be able to discuss more about the platform with peers and hopefully get to also grow the team with more amazing people in the future!

Why did you choose to work at Noice? What were some of the things, people, or ideas that lured you in??

I was introduced to Noice when I was looking for new opportunities. I was quite unexpectedly introduced to Leena Kuitunen, the HR Head at Noice as she might have had an open position I would be interested in. At the time, I didn't know anything about Noice, so I first checked out their website. But, it didn't give much away. So, I headed to LinkedIn to see who was working there. I saw a lot of experienced people and got excited about the different roles and their seniority. But what was their product? After an intro call with Leena, I was a bit more interested. But honestly, I was mostly looking for a job at a bigger, more established place. Noice was just the opposite at that time. However, as I chatted more with Leena, Jenni, and Jussi, I began to change my mind. I found myself getting excited about the next steps and started to really like the potential of the product. I kept thinking, "Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?" It felt like a great mix of something new, something tested, and something completely different. Plus, there were a lot of things that intrigued me about the product, especially the technical stuff around Machine Learning. It seemed like Noice was really onto something special.

Something that “lured me in” for sure was the product demo. What I loved about getting the Noice demo was seeing something I was already used to doing being elevated and changed into a so much better and involved experience (excuse the clunky wording - can’t spill the beans yet.) I can see myself using the product and got super excited about that. I also love the fact that when I get to explain the product to someone, they can’t just immediately say “oh so it’s just like x.” That’s inspiring to me.?

What about outside of work?

Great question - about the same stuff I do at work. So gaming-related things! Also tending to our parrots outside.?

So what's your favourite game?

I think I have to name the game that started it all for me, which would be World of Warcraft. Absolutely countless hours spent on that in my youth. Currently I’m enjoying Apex Legends.?