Athens Startup Awards 2018

July 20, 2018

2nd Place in Athens Startup Awards for Happyland

Happyland Entertainment was one of the finalists at Athens Startup Awards 2018. We won 2nd place and suddenly games fit inside startups and we couldn’t be happier and more proud!

What is Athens Startup Awards?

It is a prestigious competition for Greek Startups held by the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the Region of Attica. A hard competing procedure, which required a video and two live pitchings, a rehearsal for the finals and a -at last useful- training day, as well as powerful startuppers and entrepreneurs.

Lesson Earned aka TIP for business

If you need help with the business visit SaintStartup! It is a very useful platform created by a talented Greek team!
We are using it already, and it is helping us a lot!
I wish there were a similar platform for a game design document.

People’s Choice Award for Happyland 😀

July 11, 2018

Go Heroes brought to us "Peoples Choice Award"!

GO HEROES: Prometheus won People’s Choice Award during N.G.D.C. 2018 and we couldn’t be more proud, happy, excited and honoured! But first, we want to share a lesson learnt. When you are competing at a game development conference with two prizes don’t lose faith if you miss your first shot, you might get the second 😉

What is Nordic Game Discovery Contest (N.G.D.C)?

It is a competition held by Nordic Games Conference which travels through European Game Development Conferences for almost a year, during those events local teams compete in pitching in front of judges and the qualifiers go for the last round of the competition to Sweden -Malmo- in May. Two Awards are awaiting the lucky teams: “Game of the Year” which results from pitching in front of judges and “People’s Choice Award” which results from public voting during the event.

Where did it all start for us?

We qualified in NGDC round through the Athens Games Festival last year. An incredible experience for which you can read about here.

Final Round and Disappointment

When we arrived in Malmo, we met the other 14 qualified teams and realised it would be a fair and tough fight among talented people. We were set to pitch first in the first semifinal -I didn’t love that- and ended up in 3rd place in our round, which means we didn’t make it to the finals.

The Awards - Things aren't always as they seem

We returned to the conference the next day disappointed by not entering the finals, but soon we forgot all about that and enjoyed showing our game and getting feedback from the gamers. We even forgot all about the finals and the award ceremony, when suddenly the organisers informed Marinos that our team had to attend too. It turned out that people loved GO HEROES: Prometheus and we had won the “People’s Choice Award 2018”!

Lesson learned, Vol.10:
We almost lost our the awarding moment. Don’t EVER leave the conference building unless it is really important!
Lesson learned, Vol. 11:
Losing may not be cool, but it is useful; it is a tool to learn things -I will make an extra article about this one.

Thank you 🙂

Vasiliki Tsiftsian
vasiliki@happyland-ent.com