During early August 2025, a productive cooperation was held between Savonia DigiCenter, GameOn project and Robert Elworthy Economics and Technology Institute (ETI), located in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine. Ukrainian representative, Dr. Olexiy Izvalov, attended Kuopio physically and, together with Savonia RDI Specialist Ville Heiskanen, participated in a series of events and meetups which lead to strengthening academic ties in the field of game development, meaningful gaming and social impact of games.

Dr. Izvalov serves as an Associate Professor at ETI and is also the Regional Coordinator in Ukraine and a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Game Jam (GGJ). GGJ organizes annual game creation events in over 100 countries and gathers tens of thousands of game creators [1]. As Ville Heiskanen is the GGJ Regional Coordinator in Finland, the initial collaboration and contacts took place online during game jam preparation.

Typically, GGJ provides the participants with a theme to help them start their creative process and does not impose any other restrictions or preferences on what types of games should be created during the event. However, for the year 2025, due to the collaboration with the US State Department, participants from 27 countries (including Ukraine and Finland) were offered the opportunity to participate in the “Ctrl+Alt+Disinfo” game jam, which was part of the “United with Ukraine Game Jam” project. This was a multi-stage, international game jam and hackathon aimed at creating high-quality, engaging games that teach critical thinking and raise awareness of propaganda and disinformation. The games created at the game jam should’ve combined the entertainment value together with the social impact.

Initially, the “Ctrl+Alt+Disinfo” was planned to be a two-year-long project. It started from a preparation phase at the end of 2024, and one of the events with Finnish-Ukrainian collaboration was the physical visit of the Managing Director of the European Games Developer Federation, Jari-Pekka Kaleva, to Kyiv, to participate in the roundtable discussion together with Dr.Izvalov and representatives of Poland and the USA at the Game Gathering conference. Resources for the game developers were prepared and a series of webinars was run [2].

By early February 2025 exactly 999 game developers had participated in the project and created 172 games. Over 50% of the overall participants and games were from Ukraine. The international judging committee selected 20 projects with the highest potential. These games could eventually reach the market and start educating players and helping them develop critical thinking skills. However, on March 4th 2025 the US State Department stopped the project. This was a shock for the game developers. But understanding the importance of their mission, many of them continued working on their games, and the GGJ organizers used their connection networks to bring support and expertise from the European partners to help reach the ultimate goal of the project: tackling propaganda and disinformation by means of games.

During his visit to Kuopio, Dr. Izvalov familiarized himself with the activities of the GameOn project and DigiCenter and delivered presentations on his professional background as well as the current situation in Ukraine. One of the key messages was that Ukrainian game developers work in the conditions of power shortages, caused by the Russian strikes against the civil infrastructure, and often have to stop their work to take cover in the shelters during the air raid alerts. And Ukrainians deeply value the support from Finland and other partners, who help the country’s Defence Forces [3].

In addition to learning about the GameOn project, we visited the University of Eastern Finland, where we toured the HUMEA laboratory as guests of Paavo Vartiainen & Samu Sorola and the Department of Computer Science of UEF as guests of Marko Jäntti. The meetings sparked productive discussions around rehabilitation, hackathons, ethical AI, robotics, and the green transition.

In August most of the academic courses have not yet started, but Olexiy Izvalov and Ville Heskanen managed to participate in a students’ activity: spectating the presentations of Kajaani game development lab. ETI organizes events like this as well, and several useful ideas were formed to be implemented further.

Beyond academic visits, the program also included networking with local game developers. A visit to the game studio Hanki Games and participation in the IGDA Kuopio monthly meetup provided valuable opportunities for exchange—both for our guest and the local community. At the IGDA event, Dr. Izvalov presented the Ctrl+Alt+Disinfo game jam results.

We are currently exploring future collaboration opportunities, including the potential for an international project in which the practices identified through the GameOn initiative could be applied to support the rehabilitation and societal reintegration of Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front lines. The visit and activities performed were a significant step in developing Finnish-Ukrainian academia collaboration in the fields of game development, meaningful gaming and social impact of games.

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Writers:

Ville Heiskanen, RDI Specialist, Savonia UAS

Olexiy Izvalov, Associate Professor at Robert Elworthy Economics and Technology Institute

More information about GameOn project: Kimmo Pakarinen, Project Manager

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References:

1. Two Decades of Game Jams: Gorm Lai, Annakaisa Kultima, Foaad Khosmood, Johanna Pirker, Allan Fowler, Ilaria Vecchi, William Latham, Frederic Fol Leymarie ICGJ ’21: Proceedings of the 6th Annual International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons, and Game Creation Events Pages 1 – 11 https://doi.org/10.1145/3472688.3472689

2. Resources for the game creators to make games about disinformation [Online] https://unitedwithukraine.games/resources/

3. Game Jam During Military Invasion: Difficulty Level We Did Not Ask For: Oleksii Izvalov ICGJ ’23: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events Pages 42 – 45 https://doi.org/10.1145/3610602.3610608