Question regarding the developer of Talvisota

[Joseph_Porta]

Hello,

I was, and I am still thrilled to be able to play as Finland during the Second World War (in this case the Winter War), and I am glad to discuss the game further here. Talvisota´s details in terms of maps, objects/buildings, units and scripts makes this one of the best add-ons/mods/stand-alones of the Blitzkrieg series. For a less important subject, my interest in this conflict made be edit the Norwegian pages on Wikipedia on this subject - as Finland, like so many other small countries of the Second World War, is neglected in the priority nations such as the U.S., the USSR, Germany and Japan has when coming to books, movies, games and history in general.  

However, there is one question I would like to get answered: The game was released in the CIS nations before Finland, so what nation (or nations) is this game´s developer from? And is the developer in this situation an important factor, or is it the publisher who decides when and where the game is relased?

I could probably find my answer by looking through the many pages of the internet, but realised I could use the forum as a starter post. So thanks in advance for your help.

By the way, the cover art for the Finnish version is WAY better than the CIS version!

Regards,
Joseph_Porta
Talvisota fan from Norway

[mixer]

Hi Joseph!

So that's who made the Norwegian wiki-page for Talvisota!.. Thank you!

Actually, asking is a better way because there is a lot of unreliable and outdated information on the Internet. And besides, it's a good thing to get all the game-information in one place (here)!

There were three main national groups of people involved in the development of Talvisota: Icy Hell. Russians, Finnish and Estonian people. The Russians have been the biggest group of all three, but on another hand the technical project manager was from Estonia and me, the producer (manager of non-technical issues, as one could say), from Finland. There were people from other countries as well, playing their important part in the process.

I claim that this game can't be called "Russian", "Finnish", "Estonian" or whatever else. I think Talvisota: Icy Hell is an international project, the purpose of which was to recreate the atmosphere of Winter war and to show it in most objective, versatile and accurate way. Everybody among the team of developers, had his own view on "The Ultimate Truth", which resulted in many discussions, debates and virtual fistfights. At the end the game has been successfully finished, which imho demonstrates that the result was objective enough for everybody to be happy and proves my point about the versatility and accuracy of "game's story telling"!

Cover art for both the CIS and Finnish versions (Finnish version has back-cover and manual in Finnish, but the game itself is actually in English) have been made by the same person. That's how much the guy (Vitalius "Vetal" Kryssin) improved his skills during that one year or so!

[Joseph_Porta]

Thanks for the answer. 

Estonia is also one of the neglected countries of the Interwar/early WW2 period - along with Latvia and Lithuania. If you manage to find the sources, it is very interesting reading about their armies - they were actually quite large for such small countries - even larger than Denmark and more modern than both Denmark and Norway (at some points).

Just thought that as I am expanding the article on the Winter War itself and my love for this game/add-on, I could make an article about this for Norwegians - Wikipedia is considered as sort of a "bad thing", but the fact is that they are expanding, improving and prioritised in many situations.

Sadly, Norwegians are quite strict in the regulations concerning covers for DVDs and Video (in this case PC) games - even an accept from the developer/publisher isn´t good enough, it is restricted due to some stupid part in the copyright laws in Norway. So I must find a cunning way to do so... perhaps take a photo of the game/DVD with a camera and upload it...?