The first step in the right direction has been done
Baltic Explorers project started last year on April 1st, 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, with an open-end date. In the beginning, we all thought this is a short-time experience. We need to go through, and soonish we will be ready to travel and boost our teams to new exciting levels. Now, 1 year later and we are still on the ground, waiting for an opportunity. 
If you start an international project in the middle of a pandemic, you need to figure out quite fast and intensive how you will communicate with your partners and how to build up functional communication as well. Our project’s most important issue is that each of us is on the same page and understands the direction. Flexibility in the project is highly recommended, and also to react fast, the pandemic taught us to expect the unexpected.
It is necessary to keep the project goals in mind; the biggest challenge was implementing our goals into a digital environment; this might sound curious in a gaming project, but the most important gaming industry assets are networking. The gaming industry is like a family – everybody knows each other and supports each other – this is essential in the business. In 2020 in the mobile game industry, 77.2 billion US$ revenue, and there are no signs of slowing down in 2021. In that sense, the industry is one of the faster-growing ones – and more as 1000 games/day are getting spread out into the market. There is a great need for networking, gaining feedback, showing-case your game, and attending trade shows to be present and experience the latest trends on the market.
Baltic Explorers supports growing companies to grow and to achieve their goals
During the last couple of month, we created a new way of accelerating programs. We figured out that there are such programs like sand on the see on the market, all with approx. The same goals, and not that much program with complete flexibility of both party; in the meaning of participants and mentors. It allows participating teams to explore the possibilities and not depending on mentors to achieve their success. Facilitators are supporting the teams by softly but steady pushing them in the right direction.
It is the team’s responsibility to know their needs and try to define them clearly. Most of them know it – but is it the right path – probably not. It is an easy explanation, a target in the industry is to get funding and publisher deals; those are not easy to catch, as the market is very much competitive. If you are seeking such goals; there is also the need of being ready and prepared, and there is mostly coming to the game business side in action.
This is why Baltic Explorers is differentiating slightly from others – our focus is mainly on the business side of the story – you can have a killer game on your hand, but you still need to know where and how to place it right.
BE BIG Kick-off 25.3. – 26.3.2021
Our partner from Latvia Ints Viksna came up with the amazing event name of BE BIG – as we thought something new needs to be done. In the gaming industry, ”transnational event” or acceleration program might not be an excellent unique selling point.
The Kick-off was organized fully virtually and streamed in all our partner country and beyond. We had great amount of participants available. We decided that our topics should be open and also general, so suitable for a more wider audience. To have an event completely online, can be challenging, the technical matters are more of challenging as the human ones. As our project is running entirely remotely, we found a good communication. The background of our team-members is also very valuable; cause if they are familiar with certain gadgets, that helps a lot and gives the event already a security.
At the end we need to say that we have been really happy with the outcome, a good wide audience, topics have been highly appreciated and we got a good start in to our program. It general, it is very beneficial for a public seminar to have suitable topics for everybody, no matter which part of the gaming industry, and level of development. Game Business is an interesting topic, we know already that during the pandemic the gaming industry was growing massively. This means also the competition growth is also massively, you can have a killer game on your hand, but the business side needs to be developed as well.
In Finland there are couple of great opportunities to seek for funding one can be Business Finland ;those funding can be used for testing of the business concept, exploring new markets and achieve feedback from potential customers.
Baltic Explorers is supporting teams to seek for funding, projects and publisher deals
One of our targets is to support gaming companies in their path of development and to get them their where they should to seriously achieve the goal.
Our BE BIG program started in beginning of April and we have now approx. 40 teams with us, from Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia. We arrange that the program will be flexible and custom-designed. This means we have a good amount of mentor-ship available, teams are in charge of booking and also to prepare. We created at Discord a BE BIG community, here our teams and participants can improve their games and also seek for valuable advice. Our mentors are professionals in all fields of game business, they will give them the sharp reality of how important it is to have all parts of the game in order.
Baltic Explorers will offer teams participation in valuable events like e.g. PGCD#6 which is in the moment ongoing, some events in the Nordic and of course events in the US and in Asia. In the moment, it might be those tickets will be available online – but the future is already opening slowly but steady; we hope we will be soon part of on-sight participation.
Those tickets to new dimensions will be open for those team with the potential to catch deals and to succeed on the market; it does not mean that other teams are not valuable, it means that they need more time for development and procedure. For that reasons we are focusing to keep those teams in the funnel and continue our support.
If you want to part of Baltic Explorers – contact us and we are ready to support you and bring you to the next level