When was the Finnish digital game industry born?

Soon after Finnish digital games began achieving international success in the early 2000s, advocacy organizations were established to support the industry. These organizations, such as Neogames and the Finnish Game Developers’ Association, sought in their publications—alongside other information—to outline briefly the history of Finnish digital games and the game industry. These historical accounts focused specifically on digital games and overlooked the much longer trajectories connected to companies producing non-digital games, such as board games, and their products.

In the histories produced by game industry organizations, the starting point of the industry was initially located in the mid-1980s, when Finnish coders’ early games that gained international attention were published by foreign companies. Later, those interested in game history also discovered the earliest Finnish game publishers and began investigating, for example, the order in which the company Amersoft released Finnish games between 1984 and 1986.

The search for the very first publication has at times even bordered on obsession—a singular origin point from which the entire industry’s development is traced. Establishing such a beginning is common in historical narratives for many reasons. Above all, it belongs to the narrative structure in which a story must have a clear beginning, middle, and end. It also fits the framework in which the development of a field or phenomenon is presented as a tale of progress.

Does the search for “the first” make sense?

Many scholars in media archaeology, as well as others, have criticized the pursuit of origins or “firsts.” This critique has been voiced in the spirit of philosopher Michel Foucault, who studied the archaeology of knowledge. Relationships between phenomena are usually highly complex, and identifying something as the very first of its kind is rarely simple—or even meaningful. I myself have tried to be cautious in pinpointing “firsts,” for the simple reason that, in my experience, sooner or later something older, yet still belonging to the same category, is always found. This has also happened when searching for the starting point of the Finnish digital game industry or of commercially published Finnish games.

Markku Reunanen and Manu Pärssinen, for example, discovered a Finnish computer game sold five years before Amersoft’s first publications such as Mehulinja (Juice Line) and Raharutinas (Money Prince). Raimo Suonio’s Chesmac chess program, written for the Telmac computer, was sold at a computer shop called Topdata in 1979.

Also belonging to the earliest phase of Finnish video game production is Salora’s Playmaster television set, released in 1977, which had a built-in tennis game. It was based on a popular chip set by General Instruments, used by many manufacturers of televisions and home video game consoles around the world.

Ever older beginnings

The story, of course, does not end there: Chesmac and the Playmaster were not the earliest products that could be defined as digital games published in Finland. In my own research this year, I came across a company called Gemco, which apparently began producing its own TV tennis arcade machines for bars and similar public venues around 1973. Founded in the early 1960s by engineers Martin Strengell and Bengt Antas, Gemco initially imported coin-op machines and other types of automata into Finland. The company also ran a repair workshop, which expanded its technical expertise and provided suitable facilities for manufacturing machines of its own design.

Most likely, Gemco’s tennis machines were based on chipsets manufactured in the U.S. or elsewhere, but the company began producing its own devices almost simultaneously with larger countries. Atari had presented its Pong machine in the U.S. in 1972. According to game historian Henry Lowood, Pong-type machines were largely based on television technology, even though they were often called computer or video games.

Gemco aimed its products not only at domestic markets but also at export. For example, the company sold a 68-kilogram TV game machine called Smash, designed for two or four players. An English-language brochure from 1974 promoted it with the slogan: “Tennis in a luxury lobby? Or in any location. Yes, it’s possible with Smash.” In addition to Smash, Gemco is also known to have produced at least one other machine, named Playboy—though “Smash,” referring to a tennis stroke, was likely a far more appropriate brand name than Playboy, better known as the title of an American men’s magazine.

Gemco’s story as a game manufacturer was short-lived. Sales soon faltered. In early 1976, company representatives blamed the situation on the state-owned Slot Machine Association (Raha-automaattiyhdistys), which under new legislation was to gain a monopoly on the operation of amusement machines in Finland after a transitional period. Because of this, customers stopped purchasing new machines from Gemco. The company demanded compensation from the Slot Machine Association for its significant development costs but ultimately had to settle for a much smaller sum, after which the entire business was shut down.

However, it is likely that the company’s failure was not solely due to the Slot Machine Association. Internationally, TV tennis machines quickly went out of fashion, replaced by many other types of arcade games. Gemco would therefore have needed to innovate its product line, and it likely also struggled to compete in terms of pricing.

When I first found evidence of Gemco’s TV game machines, I thought no scholar had previously been aware of them. Later, however, I discovered that some Finnish game enthusiasts already knew part of the story, and even the Finnish Museum of Games had heard of the company. The collector group Pelikonepeijoonit also owns a Gemco TV game machine, though it has not yet been restored or displayed publicly.

Beyond the search for the first

When researching and presenting the history of the Finnish game industry, what matters is not which product was the first or the very oldest digital game publication. More essential is the fact that Finland, too, has actively followed international currents and transformations of the game industry for decades—even centuries—whether in digital games or in other forms of play, such as slot machines, board games, card games, outdoor games, or sports. Equally important is the question of the cultural contexts into which play has been embedded: political decision-making and legislation, public debate, changing patterns of consumption and leisure, shifting interests, and the group-specific and regional practices and fashions of play.

Jaakko Suominen is Professor of Digital Culture and team leader at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, University of Turku. His research has focused in particular on media history and the cultural history of information technology and games. At present, Suominen is preparing a book on Finnish gaming phenomena from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Literature

Lowood, Henry. 2009. “Videogames in computer space: The complex history of Pong.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 31(3), 5–19.

Pasanen, Tero & Jaakko Suominen. 2018. ”Epäonnistunut yritys suomalaisen digitaalisen peliteollisuuden käynnistämiseksi: Amersoft 1984–1986.” [A Failed attempt to launch Finnish digital game industry: Amersoft 1984–1986] Lähikuva 31(4), 27–47. https://journal.fi/lahikuva/article/view/77932 

Reunanen, Markku & Manu Pärssinen. 2014. ”Chesmac: ensimmäinen suomalainen kaupallinen tietokonepeli – jälleen.” [Chesmac – Yet Another First Commercial Finnish Computer Game] In Pelitutkimuksen vuosikirja 2014, edited by Jaakko Suominen, Raine Koskimaa, Frans Mäyrä, Petri Saarikoski and Olli Sotamaa, 76–80. Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto. http://www.pelitutkimus.fi/vuosikirja2014/ptvk2014-07.pdf

Suominen, Jaakko & Anna Sivula. 2016. “Participatory Historians in Digital Cultural Heritage Process — Monumentalization of the First Finnish Commercial Computer Game.” Refractory – Australian Journal of Entertainment Media, volume 27, 2016 – Themed issue: Born Digital Cultural Heritage. https://web.archive.org/web/20160903020905/http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2016/09/02/suominen-sivula/ 

Suominen, Jaakko, Antti Silvast, Tero Pasanen & Markku Reunanen, Markku. 2022. ”Uutuudesta yhteiskunnan osaksi: instituutionäkökulma pelialan kulttuuriseen omaksumiseen 1990-luvulta 2010-luvulle.” [From Novelty to Part of Society: An Institutional Perspective on the Cultural Adoption of the Game Industry from the 1990s to the 2010s] WiderScreen 1–2/2022. http://widerscreen.fi/numerot/2022-1-2/uutuudesta-yhteiskunnan-osaksi-instituutionakokulma-pelialan-kulttuuriseen-omaksumiseen-1990-luvulta-2010-luvulle/

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