Toni Alatalo is a long term entrepeneur from Oulu, Finland, where he has pioneered visual interactive computer things with the Kyperjokki group (that initially was a VJ band). When changing from hobby to work, Kyperjokki has since 2002 made various kinds of visual interactive installations utilizing video cameras, positioning, mms messages and ambient sensor networks. Now in 2007 the company is re-shaped as Playsign, as we view game structures as a key to overall design, of not only actual (computer) games, but also something we utilize for installations, websites, poster campaigns -- anything.

Besides working with their own group in Oulu, Toni worked at Studio Orange in Amsterdam for the production of Elephants Dream as the technical director. There he did not only learn a lot about Blender, but also more of organizing production pipelines for small creative groups, which he is now putting to practise with the home boys too

Blender plays a key role in the game productions of our company, Playsign (ex-Kyperjokki). We are a small team of 3-5 currently making some arcade style pc mini games, using the open source tools Wings, Blender and Ogre.

Blender is used to manage all game content: models from Wings are imported to Blender to be prepared for Ogre, and even native Ogre-tools made meshes have been imported to Blender for animating. We are considering Collada but things have seemed simpler with engine specific formats. Our strategy is to keep everything in Blender, trusting we can export from there to any engine we may need (possibly targeting mobile devices or web games). One issue is character
animation incompatibilities (ideas: profiles for the armature system, or a plugin api).

We also do game sketching with the internal GE, and by animating to e.g. test the feel of different speeds on different tracks in a racing game (before there was no engine for the game). We are interested in ideas and tools to facilitate quick testing of game ideas and mechanics.