About
About Jussi
Game designer, entrepreneur and educator from Oulu, Finland.
Jussi Autio has spent twenty years in the game industry in three main roles: making games, building game businesses, and teaching others to do both. Strategy games are his favourite genre, and the history of games is his favourite topic.
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Jussi Autio is a Finnish game designer, entrepreneur and educator with 20 years in the game industry. He designed the Oulu Game Lab pre-incubator model, named the world's best innovation and entrepreneurship model in 2017, and has directed PC strategy games such as Great Houses of Calderia and Company of Crime.
Jussi Autio is a Finnish game designer, entrepreneur and educator with 20 years in the game industry. He designed the Oulu Game Lab pre-incubator model, which was named the world's best innovation and entrepreneurship model in 2017 and has since been run in eight countries. Teams he has coached have founded more than 40 game companies. As a game director and designer he has worked on Great Houses of Calderia, Company of Crime, Urban Empire and Cities in Motion, and he led the studio behind Fail Hard, a mobile game with over 40 million downloads. He teaches and speaks about games in English and Finnish.
Career
The story so far
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2025–
Silver Legend
Jussi is the CEO of the game studio Silver Legend, his main job today. The studio is making Grey Legend Survivors, coming to Early Access in late 2027.
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2020–
University of Oulu
Jussi designed a 15 ECTS game design course for the University of Oulu in 2019 and has taught it every spring since 2020, alongside guest lectures in other faculties.
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2013–2014, 2022–2023
Game Founders
Jussi first mentored startups at Game Founders in Estonia in 2013–2014. In 2022–2023 he returned to bring the Oulu Game Lab model to Saudi Arabia and help build a local game industry there.
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2018–2024
Resistance Games
The studio was founded in August 2018 and made Company of Crime and Great Houses of Calderia. Resistance Games was named Finnish Game Startup of the Year and Startup of the Year in Oulu. It closed in December 2024.
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2017–2018
Free2App
Jussi founded Free2App to bring the free-to-play model to other industries, while bootstrapping a strategy game studio on the side.
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2015–2017
Reborn
In March 2015 strategy games pulled him to Reborn, where he spent two years as lead designer on Urban Empire until its release in early 2017.
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2013–2015
Viima Games
Alongside Oulu Game Lab, Jussi led the game startup Viima Games as CEO. Its first game, Fail Hard, passed 40 million downloads.
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2012–2015, 2017–2020
Oulu Game Lab
In late 2011 Jussi designed a new kind of game education and incubation program, Oulu Game Lab, and in September 2012 he joined full-time to run it. By March 2015 he had helped 11 new game companies get founded, and seven more followed when he returned as a part-time coach in 2017–2020.
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2006–2012
Tuonela Productions
Jussi started by founding and running Tuonela Productions for six years as its CEO and game designer. The studio published ten games, more than half of them designed by Jussi. The studio made free-to-play online games already in 2006 and took the same games to several platforms, from browser and mobile to board games: Oil Field, The Club and the Modern Society games. It also worked with the music and film industries.
Alongside his main work, Jussi works as a consultant, coach and teacher for game studios, universities and accelerators. The Oulu Game Lab model returns to Kajaani with Game Catalyst in 2027, and he is writing a book on the history of games.
Recognition
Awards and nominations
In total, 30+ awards for Jussi and his teams.
- World's best innovation & entrepreneurship model, GCEC (2017) – Oulu Game Lab
- Second best entrepreneurship & innovation model in Europe, ECIE (2017) – Oulu Game Lab
- Certificate of Merit, Innovative Youth Incubator Awards, Malaysia (2016) – Oulu Game Lab
- Best project to boost innovation in Finland, Arene (2014) – Oulu Game Lab
- Finnish Game Startup of the Year – Resistance Games
- Startup of the Year in Oulu – Resistance Games
- Nominated for Finnish Game of the Year – Great Houses of Calderia
- Nominated for Best Debut, Nordic Game Awards – Company of Crime
- Nominated for Best Simulation, Gamescom – Urban Empire
- Silver Medal, Nordic Serious Games Conference – Modern Society
Teaching
Educator
Jussi has taught regular courses at vocational college, university of applied sciences and university level, and has designed 85 ECTS worth of courses for Finnish universities. He was a visiting lecturer in game design at Oulu Vocational College in 2009–2014, and at the University of Oulu he has run a 15 ECTS game design course every spring since 2020.
Working with Jussi
How he works
Hands-on and straightforward. Jussi gives honest feedback early, shares the tools and templates he uses himself, and builds things so that your own people can run them after he steps back, as in Lapland, where the university now runs his game business course with its own staff.
Positions of trust
Advisor and board member
Alongside his own work, Jussi has advised studios and served on boards in games, film and education.
- Advisor, Bossy Studios, USA (2021–2022)
- Board member, Next Level, a project to improve the quality of game education in Finland (2020–2022)
- Board member, TechArt, a project combining technology and art (2021–2022)
- Advisor, FakeFish, the studio behind Barotrauma (2016–2021)
- Advisor, Random Potion, a PC RPG studio (2016–2021)
- Board member, POEM Foundation / Northern Film & Media Foundation (2010–2012)
- Vice chair, Pava – Northern Audiovisual Professionals (2010–2013)
- Board member, Oulu Game Research Center (2010–2011)
- Board member, Ludowaves (2008–2012)