RovioCon 2019 Recap – The Future of Games and Tech

On November 20, 2019, Rovio held its RovioCon conference in Helsinki. What began as an internal conference to share learnings within Rovio has since transformed into a public conference open to the whole gaming industry, with past cons exploring what goes into creating great games.

In 2019, as Rovio celebrates the 10th anniversary of Angry Birds, we used RovioCon 2019 as an opportunity to look back on the last decade and also look forward to the future. What will games and tech look like ten more years into the future? To tackle this big question, we invited a panel of forward-thinking speakers to give us a glimpse into the future to explore the constants that will remain, as well as the changes that could catch us by surprise.

The speakers:
– Sofie Hvitved, Associated Partner, Copenhagen Institute of Futures Studies
– Asko Relas, Senior Data Engineer, Rovio Entertainment
– RJ Mical, Director of Engineering, Google
– Loïc Fontaine, Head of Community and Live Content, Paradox Interactive
– Eros Resmini, Co-Founder, Discord
– Celia Hodent, Game UX Consultant
– Neil Harbisson, Cyborg Artist

Over 500 guest were in attendance at Helsinki’s Bio Rex theater to hear speakers cover topics of how we will play and communicate, the behavior and trends that will affect future consumers, how technologies like machine learning will change… everything, and even how body augmentation could change the way we experience the world through our senses, with speaker Neil Harbisson sharing his experience of extending his sense of color through an antenna implanted in his head.

We may not be able to predict exactly what the future holds, how trends, games, and even our own bodies will change, but with the help of forward thinkers like the RovioCon 2019 speakers, we can begin to imagine the possibilities.