Aalto University and University of Jyväskylä
Solip Park is a post-doc researcher at the University of Jyväskylä and lecturer at Aalto University School of Arts, Design, and Architecture – including co-hosting Games Now! event week. Solip’s research interest focuses on immigrants in the video game industry while advocating for cultural diversity in game development. She is also the author and artist of “Game Expats Story” comic series, which is part of her doctoral dissertation “Understanding Game Work Migration: Game Expats in Finland”.
The game industry is becoming more diverse than ever before. According to recent reports, approximately 30% of game professionals in Finland (Neogames Finland 2023) have migrant backgrounds. A similar trend can also be found in many regional game industry hubs, indicating the growing significance of migrant groups in the game development scenes. Yet, the stories of these creators remain largely untold. Who are they, what drives them to relocate, and how does migration influence the games they create? Solip Park’s doctoral thesis, “Understanding Game Work Migration”, from Aalto University, seeks to answer these questions. Her research, conducted over four years, involved longitudinal interviews with migrant game developers (referred to as “game expats”) in Finland.
Find out more about Solip’s doctoral research: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-64-2114-8 , also available as a web comic https://www.instagram.com/solip.comic/
