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Be a world champion programmer: Hello World Open now accepting sign-ups

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The Hello World Open is world programming competition that takes the form of a virtual race, with teams participating from all around the world. Organized by Finland based creative firm Reaktor and game developer Supercell, the race will require teams to program an artificial intelligence to drive the race faster than the competition, hopefully without any serious crashes! [1] Teams can include one to three members from the same country, but the same person can only participate on one team. Sign ups are accepted starting today (as of 1900 JST), and will run until April 7th. The actual coding goes from April 15th to the 29th, with regional qualifying rounds to follow in May (see map below). Six teams will travel to Helsinki, Finland (all expenses paid) for the finals. I’m really hoping we can see many entrants here from Japan, but I have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be the case [2]. But the folks from Reaktor were kind enough to pass along a Japanese translation of their announcement, which you can find below. Please check out out and sign up if you think you can outrun the competition to the (ahem) Finnish line! ハローワールドオープン : 史上初のコーディング世界選手権への申し込み受付が始まります。 この春は、コード裏に隠れた未来のスーパースターを見い出すチャンスです。ハローワールドオープンでは、史上初のコーディング世界選手権にて、トップコーダー達が自国の名誉をかけて挑みます。 創造力に富んだテクノロジー企業…

The Hello World Open is world programming competition that takes the form of a virtual race, with teams participating from all around the world. Organized by Finland based creative firm Reaktor and game developer Supercell, the race will require teams to program an artificial intelligence to drive the race faster than the competition, hopefully without any serious crashes! [1]

Teams can include one to three members from the same country, but the same person can only participate on one team.

Sign ups are accepted starting today (as of 1900 JST), and will run until April 7th. The actual coding goes from April 15th to the 29th, with regional qualifying rounds to follow in May (see map below). Six teams will travel to Helsinki, Finland (all expenses paid) for the finals.

I’m really hoping we can see many entrants here from Japan, but I have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be the case [2].

But the folks from Reaktor were kind enough to pass along a Japanese translation of their announcement, which you can find below. Please check out out and sign up if you think you can outrun the competition to the (ahem) Finnish line!

hello world open


ハローワールドオープン : 史上初のコーディング世界選手権への申し込み受付が始まります。

この春は、コード裏に隠れた未来のスーパースターを見い出すチャンスです。ハローワールドオープンでは、史上初のコーディング世界選手権にて、トップコーダー達が自国の名誉をかけて挑みます。

創造力に富んだテクノロジー企業 Reaktor社およびモバイルゲームデベロッパーのSupercell社が企画するハローワールドオープンは、一風変わったコンテキストの中でプログラミング能力に国際的な脚光を当てます。まず、希望に燃える参加者は1~3名のトップコーダーによるチームを作ります。最高の人材がそろったら、各チームの課題はバーチャルカーレース用の人工知能を制作することにあります。申し込み受付は3月31日に始まります。

「コーディングのような掴みにくいコンセプトを簡潔化することによって、コーディングにアピール力を与え、一般の人々も楽しめるレベルに持ってくるのが意図です」と語るのはハローワールドオープンの主催者、Reaktor社の Ville Valtonenです。「我々の狙いはコーディングにおけるセバスチャン・ヴェッテルやジェフ・ゴードン、つまり尊敬に値する国民的スーパーヒーローを作り上げることです。観客の皆さんには自国の競合者に誇りをもち、勝利に向かって彼らを応援していただきたいのです。」

決勝戦は6月5日、フィンランドのヘルシンキにて、ケーブルファクトリーで行われます。当日このイベントの前には、Supercell
社が第2回年次ゲーミングサミットを開催します。

しかし、決勝進出チームがヘルシンキまでたどり着く前にはまだ長い道のりがあります。スポーツがいつもそうであるように、これら世界選手権でも観衆が大きな役割を果たします。誰もが何千というトップコーダー達の試合をオンラインで見守るチャンスがあります。

約1万チームが仮想バトルで競い合うことが予想されます。選手権は世界地図を3大地域に分けて行い、各地域で5月に予選が繰り広げられます。

最終的に6チームがヘルシンキでの決勝戦に進出します。決勝進出チームによるヘルシンキまでの渡航費用はすべて支払われます。彼らは自国を代表してその卓越したコーディング能力を披露し、総額1万ユーロという驚くべき賞金を獲得するチャンスを手にします。

申し込み受付は3月31日に始まります。あなたもエキサイトしてみませんか。

ハローワールドオープンの導入スケジュールは以下の通りです :

3月31日 – 申し込み受付開始。競技への参加は無料です。
4月7日 – 申し込み受付終了

オンライン予選ラウンド。試合をフォローするのは次のサイトです。 helloworldopen.com

  • 5月6日 – ハロー地域1
  • 5月7日 – ハロー地域2
  • 5月8日 – ハロー地域3
  • 6月5日 – コーディング世界決勝戦 : 世界で最もタフなコーディングチーム6組がフィンランド、ヘルシンキで出会います。

Reaktor社は2012年に初回フィンランドコーディング選手権を開催しました。目標はポンボット用の人工知能をコーディングし、卓球で他のすべてのチームを打ち負かすことでした。このイベントは大成功でした
– 200以上のチームが競技に関与および参加しました。選手権は24時間で百万人のフィンランド人に達しました – 人口5百万の国でありながら。

詳細は以下にお問い合わせください
Veera Voutilainen
Head of Communications
+358 50 343 8608
[email protected]

Reaktor 社について
Reaktor社は卓越して機能性に優れたサービスを生み出す、創造力に富んだテクノロジー企業です。250名のプロフェッショナルからなるReaktor社のチームは、サービスデザイナー、インタラクションデザイナー、アートディレクター、ソフトウェアアーキテクト、デベロッパー、コーチを擁しています。当社オフィスはフィンランドのヘルシンキ、および東京にあります。当社は世界でベストなソフトウェア会社となるよう日々努めています。Reaktor社に関する詳細は、次をご覧ください。 www.reaktor.fi

Supercell 社について
2010年設立の Supercell社はフィンランドのヘルシンキに本社を置くモバイルゲーム開発会社で、サンフランシスコ、東京、およびソウルにオフィスを持ちます。Supercell社のゲーム、クラッシュオブクランおよびヘイデイは iOS および Android デバイスでどうぞ。新作タイトル Boom Beach が間もなくiOS でリリース。Supercell 社に関する詳細は次をご覧ください。 www.supercell.com


  1. See what I did there?  ↩

  2. Besides this website, I’m not sure if there will be many ways for Japanese programmers to learn about this event, unless they read English news regularly.  ↩

After billion dollar deal, Supercell’s Hay Day becomes Japan’s top game

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The Japanese mobile game market is a lucrative one, capable of making game publishers the world over salivate. But it is rarely an easy space to break into. Finland’s Supercell has managed to find a loophole of sorts though, collaborating with GungHo Entertainment to make Clash of Clans a hit. And now, just after news of $1.5 billion in investment from SoftBank and GungHo, the company’s other prominent title Hay Day is finding success in Japan, becoming as the top free app last Friday (see chart below) after the Japanese version hit the App Store. Hay Day has also been spotlighted in the ‘featured’ section of the Japanese App Store, and it has been heavily promoted by the folks over at Japanese app review site AppBank as well. Readers may recall that Supercell also credited part of the success of Clash of Clans to AppBank’s promotional efforts as well. The GungHo/Supercell partnership is intended to be a two-way street, so it will be interesting to see how Supercell can help promote GungHo’s game titles in European and North American markets. Puzzle & Dragons just launched in the UK market on October 16, so lets wait and see what kind of…

hay_day_japan

The Japanese mobile game market is a lucrative one, capable of making game publishers the world over salivate. But it is rarely an easy space to break into.

Finland’s Supercell has managed to find a loophole of sorts though, collaborating with GungHo Entertainment to make Clash of Clans a hit. And now, just after news of $1.5 billion in investment from SoftBank and GungHo, the company’s other prominent title Hay Day is finding success in Japan, becoming as the top free app last Friday (see chart below) after the Japanese version hit the App Store.

Hay Day has also been spotlighted in the ‘featured’ section of the Japanese App Store, and it has been heavily promoted by the folks over at Japanese app review site AppBank as well. Readers may recall that Supercell also credited part of the success of Clash of Clans to AppBank’s promotional efforts as well.

The GungHo/Supercell partnership is intended to be a two-way street, so it will be interesting to see how Supercell can help promote GungHo’s game titles in European and North American markets. Puzzle & Dragons just launched in the UK market on October 16, so lets wait and see what kind of assistance Supercell can provide, and how it is received by gamers there.

hay-day-japan

Supercell credits two key partners in bringing Clash of Clans to Japanese audiences

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We previously told you about how Finnish game developer Supercell teamed up with Japanese game developer GungHo Entertainment for cross promotion of their most popular mobile games, Clash of Clans and Puzzle and Dragons. The collaboration has been especially effective for Supercell’s Clash of Clans, as promotion in Japan’s most popular mobile game , Puzzle & Dragons, has helped it reach the top of Japan’s free iOS app rankings [1]. Just this past week it rose to as high as third on the top grossing app charts as well, which is no small feat, especially in a market as lucrative as Japan. A representative at Supercell explained to us that their team is delighted with the results so far, describing the collaboration as a tremendous one so far. “We have the deepest respect for GungHo” he added. Supercell also worked closely with Japanese media site AppBank to promote its game (see video below), describing that partnership as follows: We have been similarly impressed with their success. They have provided an invaluable service to our Japanese players with detailed tutorials and support. They are simply amazing. It is still early and we have a lot to learn, but both GungHo and…

clash-of-clans-puzzle-dragons-2
Clash of Clans characters featured in Puzzle & Dragons

We previously told you about how Finnish game developer Supercell teamed up with Japanese game developer GungHo Entertainment for cross promotion of their most popular mobile games, Clash of Clans and Puzzle and Dragons. The collaboration has been especially effective for Supercell’s Clash of Clans, as promotion in Japan’s most popular mobile game , Puzzle & Dragons, has helped it reach the top of Japan’s free iOS app rankings [1]. Just this past week it rose to as high as third on the top grossing app charts as well, which is no small feat, especially in a market as lucrative as Japan.

A representative at Supercell explained to us that their team is delighted with the results so far, describing the collaboration as a tremendous one so far. “We have the deepest respect for GungHo” he added.

Supercell also worked closely with Japanese media site AppBank to promote its game (see video below), describing that partnership as follows:

We have been similarly impressed with their success. They have provided an invaluable service to our Japanese players with detailed tutorials and support. They are simply amazing. It is still early and we have a lot to learn, but both GungHo and AppBank are helping us to better understand the market in Japan.

Both partnerships are somewhat unconventional for a Western game developer looking to break into the Japanese market. But it will be interesting to see if more companies take a similar approach moving forward. From GungHo’s point of view, the power to promote a Western game inside P&D represents a pretty big bargaining chip as it looks to expand into Western markets itself.

And indeed P&D has benefited from promotion in Supercell’s Clash of Clans and Hey Day too, briefly breaking into the US top 20 apps overall for a few days in June, and peaking at sixth spot on the top grossing charts on July 14th.


  1. It held the top position in Japan from June 24 to June 26th.  ↩

Japan’s most successful mobile game is picking up steam in the US market

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Earlier in the week we wrote that the cross-promotional collaboration between Clash of Clans and Puzzle & Dragons had proven fruitful for Finnish developer Supercell, as their CoC game became the top ranked free app in Japan on Monday. Since then the app has remained in the top spot, and it will be interesting to see how long it can stay there. But has the cross-promotion helped Puzzle & Dragons in its effort to win over the US market? P&D also saw a big jump on Monday, and since then it has been hovering in the top 20 overall apps in the US app store. Of course, the more important metric is how it places in the top grossing charts, and that’s gradually on the rise as well (see chart below). Thanks primarily to its huge fan base in its home market in Japan, GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons already has over 15 million downloads under its belt. But its position at or near the top of Japan’s top grossing charts (since February 2012 for iOS, and since October 2012 on Google Play [1]) makes it the most successful mobile game of all time — not just in Japan, but anywhere….

puzzle-dragons-clash-of-clans

Earlier in the week we wrote that the cross-promotional collaboration between Clash of Clans and Puzzle & Dragons had proven fruitful for Finnish developer Supercell, as their CoC game became the top ranked free app in Japan on Monday. Since then the app has remained in the top spot, and it will be interesting to see how long it can stay there.

But has the cross-promotion helped Puzzle & Dragons in its effort to win over the US market? P&D also saw a big jump on Monday, and since then it has been hovering in the top 20 overall apps in the US app store. Of course, the more important metric is how it places in the top grossing charts, and that’s gradually on the rise as well (see chart below).

Thanks primarily to its huge fan base in its home market in Japan, GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons already has over 15 million downloads under its belt. But its position at or near the top of Japan’s top grossing charts (since February 2012 for iOS, and since October 2012 on Google Play [1]) makes it the most successful mobile game of all time — not just in Japan, but anywhere.

pnd-top-grossing
Puzzle & Dragons moving up in top grossing ranks in US (App Annie)

I think that even before the Clash of Clans cross promotion, P&D already had a decent fan base in Japan, as the official Facebook page has more than 32,000 fans. There is also an unofficial Puzzle & Dragons database, an active chat forum, and a useful sub-Reddit.

And as I explained before, I’m still pretty hooked on the game myself. If you haven’t tried Puzzle & Dragons, check out our demo video that shows the basics of gameplay.


  1. The app was released in mid-September 2012 on Google Play, and sharply rose to the top of the grossing rankings by October 10.  ↩

Clash of Clans is now Japan’s top free app, after Puzzle & Dragons collaboration goes live

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Back on June 7th we wrote that Japan’s smash hit Puzzle & Dragons would be engaging in a collaborative promotion with Supercell’s Clash of Clans. The tie-up, which sees Clash of Clans characters like appear as special enemy monsters and playable cards, began yesterday with the new CoC dungeon going live in the game. It didn’t take long for this partnership to yield fruit, as Clash of Clans became the top free iOS app in the Japan app store at about 7pm last night [1]. Check out the chart above to see it’s recent progress. In the top grossing ranks, CoC is currently ranked 21st overall. I’ve collected a couple of CoC cards already in Puzzle & Dragons, and it’s going to be interesting to see if GungHo conducts similar promotions with Western gaming companies looking to break into the lucrative Japan mobile gaming market. Of course, Puzzle & Dragons has dominated the Japanese market like no other game, recently surpassing 15 million downloads back on June 8th. Update: Serkan Toto has more on this in a great post late last night. Clash of Clans is now also a featured staff pic in the Japanese app store, and that has…

clash-of-clans
Via App Annie: Clash of Clans’ rise in the Japan market over past 24 hours

Back on June 7th we wrote that Japan’s smash hit Puzzle & Dragons would be engaging in a collaborative promotion with Supercell’s Clash of Clans. The tie-up, which sees Clash of Clans characters like appear as special enemy monsters and playable cards, began yesterday with the new CoC dungeon going live in the game.

It didn’t take long for this partnership to yield fruit, as Clash of Clans became the top free iOS app in the Japan app store at about 7pm last night [1]. Check out the chart above to see it’s recent progress. In the top grossing ranks, CoC is currently ranked 21st overall.

I’ve collected a couple of CoC cards already in Puzzle & Dragons, and it’s going to be interesting to see if GungHo conducts similar promotions with Western gaming companies looking to break into the lucrative Japan mobile gaming market.

Of course, Puzzle & Dragons has dominated the Japanese market like no other game, recently surpassing 15 million downloads back on June 8th.

Update: Serkan Toto has more on this in a great post late last night.

clash-of-clans-puzzle-dragons-2 clash-of-clans-puzzle-dragons


  1. Clash of Clans is now also a featured staff pic in the Japanese app store, and that has likely been a huge help for the app too.  ↩

Two mobile money makers team up: GungHo and Supercell announce in-game collaboration

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Japanese game publisher GungHo Entertainment and Finish publisher Supercell have just announced a joint collaboration that will result in the mutual sharing of content in each others games. To be clear, these are two giant games teaming up here; two of the biggest money makers in the mobile gaming space, working together to likely make even more money! What this means exactly is that we’ll see some Clash of Clans themed dungeons and monsters showing up in GungHo’s hit game Puzzle and Dragons. And likewise, we will see Clash of Clans and Hay Day display cross promotions for Puzzle and Dragons, in both the iOS and Android versions. Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen commented in the announcement: We are very honored to work with GungHo and learn from the masters of free-to-play gaming. The more time we spend with GungHo, the more we realize how remarkably similar our two companies are. We are deeply committed to helping each other expand into new markets and equally committed to having an incredible amount of fun working together. GungHo has done collaborations like this previously for its Japanese version, but this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that they have made such…

puzzle-dragons-clash-of-clans

Japanese game publisher GungHo Entertainment and Finish publisher Supercell have just announced a joint collaboration that will result in the mutual sharing of content in each others games. To be clear, these are two giant games teaming up here; two of the biggest money makers in the mobile gaming space, working together to likely make even more money!

What this means exactly is that we’ll see some Clash of Clans themed dungeons and monsters showing up in GungHo’s hit game Puzzle and Dragons. And likewise, we will see Clash of Clans and Hay Day display cross promotions for Puzzle and Dragons, in both the iOS and Android versions.

Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen commented in the announcement:

We are very honored to work with GungHo and learn from the masters of free-to-play gaming. The more time we spend with GungHo, the more we realize how remarkably similar our two companies are. We are deeply committed to helping each other expand into new markets and equally committed to having an incredible amount of fun working together.

GungHo has done collaborations like this previously for its Japanese version, but this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that they have made such an effort for the English version of its game.

Serkan Toto has a great overview of how Japanese gaming companies use this collaboration strategy here, if you’d like to learn more.

For anyone who has yet to try out Puzzle and Dragons check out our demo video of basic gameplay strategy here.