Juha Vainio

As the Executive Producer of CONTROL Resonant, I direct the Directors, lead the development team, own the development budget, and am accountable for the ROI of the game. As the Head of the CONTROL Franchise, I own, supervise, and am accountable for all CONTROL-related undertakings at Remedy, including strategy, development, production, and PnL. We have shipped Control (a AAA 3rd-person supernatural action-adventure game) and two paid expansions on PS4, XBox One, Epic Game Store (PC), Steam (PC), GOG (PC), Amazon Luna, Nintendo Switch (Cloud Version), PS5, and XBox Series X|S, and Google Stadia. Control has won over 80 awards, out of which over 20 are Game Of The Year awards.

Lead Producer of Control, an awesome critically acclaimed AAA game. Planned and executed the production of a AAA title simultaneously shipping on PS4, XBox and PC. Lead the team of ~150 internal game developers of 15+ crafts in addition to the external outsourced work force. Tackled a multitude of firsts for Remedy, including shipping simultaneously on multiple platforms, making a non-linear sand-box type of a game, and operating in a multi-project organization.

The Finnish Game Developers’ Association is an association for Finnish game developer companies. The association coordinates cooperation between these companies and advocates for their industry.

Helping the Finnish game developers' community to thrive along with the Finnish game developers, companies, and the industry as a whole!

Epic Owl was a High-Ambition-High-Risk games startup aiming to pave the way for hardcore gamers to mobile. The company itself did not make it but our game Starside Arena is a successful mobile game in its relaunch as Space Arena, making good profit and continuing to beat the UA costs still after 5 years from launch. Main responsibilities: Company strategy, business development, production, analytics, partnerships, marketing, finances. 2015: Executive Producer and Producer of Starside Arena, self-published. 2016-2017: Executive Producer of Spaceship Battles, published by HeroCraft Ltd. 2017: Executive Producer of Space Arena: Build & Fight (rebranded), published by HeroCraft Ltd. Major achievements: Securing the initial funding from Sisu Game Ventures and Tekes high-tech fund. Negotiating a global licensing contract for Spaceship Battles with HeroCraft. Leading the production of Starside Arena, a free-to-play global PvP strategy game, from scratch to soft-launch in 6 months and subsequently to global launch both on iOS and Android. 6 Featured blog posts in Gamasutra.com in my Starting up a game business series. Epic Owl Ltd. excellence: Startup100.net "#1 Hottest Startup From Finland" (April 2015) Startup100.net "#1 Hottest Game Startup From Finland" (December 2015) Spaceship Battles & Space Arena: Build & Fight excellence: Over 1 MILLION downloads in Google Play! Starside Arena excellence: TouchArcade.com Hot Games #4 (3 months after launch) PocketGamer.biz: "Top 20 Games In Soft Launch" (November 2015) App Store rating average: 4.5 stars (December 2015) Google Play rating average: 4.5 stars (December 2015) http://www.epic-owl.com/ http://www.facebook.com/epicowl http://www.twitter.com/epicowlltd

Broadening my horizons by checking out a different kind of games business in a company donating annually over one billion euros to charity. Owner of the user experience of Veikkaus (and former RAY) gaming and slots machines and games. Supervisor and line manager of UX designers, UI artists, front-end and UI coders and usability testers.

Handling Executive Producer, Producer, Product Manager, Team Lead and miscellaneous other duties for two game projects in our startup-style new IP game studio. Full responsibility over the products, including vision, business plan, risk assessment, KPIs, feature prioritisation, IP development, cross-organisational collaboration and communication, scheduling, day-to-day operations, team leadership. 1) A huge 3D character-focused mid-core+ game project with absolutely awesome new IP, utilising proven free-to-play mechanics, spearheading lots of areas where the company had not gone before. Prototyping, Pre-production and Production until the project was canceled in November 2014 when the company re-focused its operations. 2) A smaller game project with innovative gameplay and more experimental free-to-play mechanics. Pre-production and Production until the project was canceled in November 2014 when the company re-focused its operations. Other duties have included assisting our Studio Head with operational management, such as taking over the responsibility of studio game jamming activity, i.e. organising five studio game jams during 2014 with the outcome of 30+ really cool game prototypes. During the 2014 lay-offs I was elected as the Games unit employee representative by and for the 250 Rovio game developers.

10/2013 - 12/2013: Senior Game Producer, new game concepts Lead prototyping efforts of a game concept that was later canceled by our team's decision. 9/2012 - 4/2013: Producer, Angry Birds Star Wars on Facebook Free-to-play Angry Birds Star Wars game on Facebook with - Virtual currency - Weekly tournaments where you compete against friends - Power-ups that were later taken into use in the mobile version From pre-production to launch to multiple small updates and 2 content updates. Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEMOMSSyxQ4 4/2013 - 11/2013: Producer, Angry Birds Refreshing the biggest game of all time, the one and only original Angry Birds. Three special updates with new game modes and new game mechanics: - Short Fuse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv54QkH6ocg - Red's Mighty Feathers II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aatMq8eM2EQ - Red's Mighty Feathers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNb62NBYvGU

Heading the User Experience studios of Helsinki, Espoo, Salo and Tampere in Finland. Operations management in Symbian User Experience organization, including line management of multi-national team of 15 people: UX project managers, graphics (visual) designers and localization specialists. Hands-on user experience project work such as user experience analysis of all high-end mobile devices. In addition to managing UX people, I also managed all Capital Area Finland ex-Nokia people who were between projects – networking, competence development, identifying new roles and projects, self-development plans, coaching, etc.

Heading the User Experience studios of Helsinki, Espoo and Salo in Finland, Boston, San Diego and Silicon Valley in USA. Global operative management in Symbian User Experience organization during what is arguably the toughest period ever in Nokia’s history. Line management of 6 multi­national teams, 32 people altogether: (Senior) interaction designers, graphics (visual) designers, consumer experience specialists, project managers, team leads and localization specialists. Among other operative and line management tasks the duties included wellbeing management, process development, resourcing, budget management, liaison work between Symbian User Experience and Nokia Design and competence development planning and execution for the whole Symbian UX organization.

Manager / Product Owner, Symbian OS Operative Management in Devices RnD / S60 SW. Solid Line Manager of a multinational multi-site agile scrum team of 7 (senior) software engineers debugging Symbian OS and analyzing defects. Being the Product Owner of the team “product”. Responsibilities include project and people management, process development, managing and developing the team. Received constantly positive feedback in work atmosphere surveys. Leadership and True Nokia Leader score 100% favorable in 2008. Measurable efficiency boost due to process developmen during 2007t: 400% higher efficiency with higher accuracy of Triage. Guided the team through several co-operation negotiations and large organizational changes. Transformed the team from a regular old-school project team to an agile scrum team. Collaborated with Symbian on debugging efforts and quality improvement actions. Coordinated the team activities of Symbian OS consulting inside Nokia. Planned and executed the ramp-down of the activities and the team. Actively networking within Nokia to find new areas where the team’s vast Symbian OS expertise might be needed. Periodical trips to the UK, irregular trips to e.g. Asia, North America.

Symbian OS expert / Technical Lead in error analysis team in Nokia-Symbian interface (TP / S60 Core / Symbian Ltd. Operations) Toughest of the tough during times when programming still involved writing code. Symbian OS C++ plus general problem solving on situations where no two cases were alike.

Software design and development on Symbian OS and Windows. Projects such as a large-scale multimedia diary on Symbian/Windows, Manchester, UK and Helsinki, Finland. Symbian C++. March 2004 forward: Technical Lead of an error analysis team working between two companies analyzing software errors.

Software development on VDSL DSLAM user interface and network management; Java and Python on Linux.

Since 2010 Helsinki University of Technology has been a part of Aalto University and is nowadays known as Aalto Unversity School of Science and Technology.