12 Lessons Helsinki Can Learn from Istanbul’s Mobile Gaming Boom

Why Helsinki, the previous mobile games capital, lost its position to Istanbul

Photo by Ibrahim Uzun on Unsplash

In the competitive landscape of mobile game development, two cities have emerged as fascinating case studies with contrasting trajectories: Istanbul and Helsinki. Both have produced notable success stories. Helsinki gave us the global phenomenon Supercell, while Istanbul birthed Peak Games and Dream Games. Yet over the past five years, these gaming ecosystems have evolved along dramatically different paths.

Helsinki, once considered the undisputed top hub for mobile gaming innovation, has seen its startup momentum slow considerably. Meanwhile, Istanbul has experienced an explosive surge in new studios and investment attraction, creating a vibrant ecosystem that shows no signs of slowing down.

What makes this difference so interesting is that both cities started with similar strengths: strong technical talent pools, successful predecessor companies creating wealth and knowledge spillover, and geographic positions somewhat outside the traditional tech centers. Yet their current trajectories could hardly be more different.

What factors explain this divergence? As someone who has spent significant time observing both ecosystems, I've identified ten key differentiators that explain why Istanbul is now outpacing Helsinki in mobile gaming innovation and investment attraction.

1. Younger, Skilled First-Time Founders

Turkish first-time founders are generally younger and highly skilled when they launch their startup careers. Many are in their twenties, recently graduated, and deliberately choosing gaming. The success stories of Peak Games and Dream Games inspire a steady wave of new talent. In Finland, although there is Supercell and large events like Slush, these do not seem to motivate the younger generation to choose startups and gaming to the same extent, likely due to several reasons outlined below.

2. Street Hustle Culture

After multiple trips to Istanbul, I've noticed something striking: entrepreneurship is embraced and celebrated there much like in Silicon Valley. There's a palpable excitement around startup culture. In Finland, the attitude is markedly different. Many see entrepreneurship with a concerns about risk. While Turkish founders eagerly chase success stories, their Finnish counterparts seem more preoccupied with avoiding failure. This fundamental difference in mindset shapes everything from fundraising to product development.

3. Differences in Government Support

In Finland, the governments support arm, Business Finland, provides generous grants to early-stage tech startups, often before there is any proven market success. In Turkey, public funding focuses more on later stages such as aiding with product marketing, requiring companies to get to market first and then scale with the help of the government.

This affects urgency. In Finland, early money stretches the runway and reduces pressure, while in Turkey, funding comes when the product is ready to scale, demanding real results.

4. Working Hours

In Istanbul, many startup founders work at the office until 10 PM or later. Work-life balance is not their immediate goal. Success is. Finnish founders, even though they aren't at the office that late, will worry 24/7 about their businesses. The Turkish founder channels their excitement for success to working on the company, the product, whatever can be done to get their product to market quicker.

5. Fierce Competition

Turkish founders are extremely competitive. They maintain friendly relations but prioritize spending their time building at the office rather than attending social gatherings. Their main focus remains on product and growth. I remember one Finnish founder celebrating their funding by buying expensive tickets to attend GDC in San Francisco. That’s not the way to win.

6. Debate Culture in Teams

In Turkey, internal team debates are frequent and vigorous. Team members challenge assumptions based on real market understanding and quality insights. In Finland, deep team discussions do happen, but they often lack substance, partly because not all team members are deeply immersed in mobile gaming themselves. I’ve often observed that Finnish devs see mobile games strictly as work, preferring PC or console games in their free time. This creates a gap in market intuition.

I’d also like to highlight the cultural differences. Finnish work culture values harmony and consensus, often discouraging the robust debate that drives innovation. Turkish teams seem to be more able to separate personal relationships from professional critique.

7. Marketing-Led Approach

Successful Turkish gaming companies prioritize paid marketing from the start. They focus on understanding cost-per-install metrics early, knowing that if a game takes longer than six months to soft launch, pivoting becomes very difficult. In Finland, teams often spend years perfecting their games, only to find themselves unprepared to make marketing decisions once the game is launched.

8. Employee Churn Fuels New Companies

In Turkey, top employees often leave established companies to start new ventures. Entire teams of five people might leave incumbents to form startups together. In Finland, this is much less common. Many state that high salaries and financial security, such as mortgage and family commitments, make leaving for a risky startup much less attractive. This probably is true, but there’s a lot of other factors like all the points made in this article.

9. Ongoing Success Momentum

The Turkish mobile gaming scene has kept growing. While Finland saw its major mobile gaming successes between 2010 and 2019 with companies like Rovio, Supercell, Small Giant Games, Seriously, and others, Turkey continues to produce new hits in the 2020s.

There is now a third wave of mobile gaming startups:

1. First generation: Gram Games and Peak Games, forming the “Peak Mafia” in a manner similar to the “PayPal Mafia,” which has since produced several waves of successful startups.

2. Second generation: Spyke Games, Dream Games, and Cypher Games

3. Third generation: Third generation: Grand Games, Circle Games, Leap Games, Pine Games, and several others in the hybrid-casual genre.

Many international investors are increasingly interested in these third-wave Turkish gaming companies, though they often remain under the radar and are hard to discover without local connections.

10. The Industry Has Moved Past ATT Troubles

At the Laton Ventures summit, Eric Kress projected that 2025 mobile gaming revenues will return to early 2020s peak levels. Publishers, helped by networks like AppLovin, have developed strategies to work around Apple’s privacy changes. Turkey is perfectly positioned for this resurgence with its expertise in casual and hyper casual games, plus its new shift toward hybrid casual. These genres require sophisticated user acquisition, an area where Turkish developers have gained clear advantages. Unlike their Turkish counterparts, Finnish studios largely avoided these genres, focusing more on midcore titles.

11. Nokia Generation

In Finland, many senior gaming professionals come from the “Nokia Generation,” those who built games for Nokia in the early 2000s. Back then, starting a company was often the only way to work in gaming. I experienced this firsthand, founding my own studio at the time. Today, Finland’s gaming industry is mature, offering stable, well-paid jobs. Unlike Helsinki, Istanbul continues to accelerate, powered by the dynamic conditions we've explored.

Final lesson, and IMHO, the most valuable one

12. How Gaming Is Perceived

In Helsinki, gaming is often seen as something that requires personal passion. In Istanbul, gaming is viewed as a business opportunity. Building companies around proven models within broader puzzle genres is seen as smart entrepreneurship, not a compromise. While many market executives in Turkey recognize that specific subgenres like Match-3 face intense competition, making them potentially risky investment areas, they remain strategic about identifying opportunities within the broader puzzle ecosystem.

The focus is on business innovation, including product development, data, marketing, and operations. These aspects attract the ambition and hustle of Turkish founders.

Finnish developers have demonstrated their ability to pioneer new genres with breakthrough hits like Angry Birds, Clash Royale and Merge Mansion. However, we’ve not shown similar excellence in the other business areas that are crucial success factors in today's mature mobile games market.

Turkish developers primarily base their decisions on market opportunity, particularly within the current paid marketing environment. Rather than focusing first on creating a better game than existing ones, they analyze the scale potential of a genre and build accordingly. This differs from Finnish developers, who often operate under the belief that there's always room in the market for a great product, regardless of genre saturation.