Finnish game studio. Currently working on RTS RPG The Hive.
Skydome Entertainment
IGE: So how did Skydome come to life? How long has this company been alive?
Sauli: Skydome Entertainment was founded in 2014. We wanted to work on our own games,
instead for others. Our team had worked earlier in companies like Redlynx, Tuokio, Fragment
and Colossal Order that is best known for the Cities Skylines game.
Back in 2008 I did personally (Sauli) release mod called “Joutomaa” that gathered over
300,000 players outside of Steam. It opened my way to the game industry.
IGE: You released The hive on steam in Aug 2016 after being in EA for 2 years, how was the road to release?
Sauli: We had major update each month that released new levels, units, content and fixes for the
players. When we started on Early Access, we only had the first level available for testing.
Early Access was great thing for us, we were able to start building the community early and
to take community feedback early on the development. Financially it enabled us to pay rent,
licence costs and small salary.
IGE: What would you say is the biggest challenge of being an indie company?
Sauli: I would say it’s getting the first game released and staying in business after that. The road is usually bumpy and people don’t have realistic expectations, on what the first game is going
to sell for. I have seen people quitting after first game sold “just” 10,000 copies and they expected 1,000,000. One million copies, is very high for eaven AAA games on Steam.
IGE: Skydome is from Finland, is the indie community big there?
Sauli: Our office is located in Tampere, we have eight other game companies working in the same
office. It’s common for us to share ideas and ask others for help if we have problems.
Finland has very tight and friendly game industry. We have these IGDA (International Game
Developers Association) meetings every month, where we can meet with the big developers
like Rovio and have a friendly casual chat with them.
Anyone from game industry can join the event. There is usually also free beer & food.
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