Bugbear

Janne Alanenpää
Janne, our beloved boss started his way into games back in 1987 when he got involved in the demoscene, arranging demoparties etc. In 1997 he got specifically into games, as he was a project lead at Carts Entertainment working on Thrust, Twist'n Turn, a futuristic fast-paced arcade driving game.
He's the CEO of Bugbear Entertainment which means he's responsible for all the paperwork, general design of the game and keeping Rally Trophy on schedule. When time permits, he also does graphics for the game.
Janne is 26 years old and states his hobbies as 'Beer, movies, speeding cars, computer games and family'. Not sure if they come in that order, though. We'll probably never want to ask either.
His gaming taste includes pretty much everything - car games, FPS, sports games, strategy and kid's games (!).

Tatu Blomberg
Tatu, our technical director & lead programmer has a hefty history in demoscene: He's been programming for about 15 years now, which is quite respectable considering he's 27 years old. He started with c-64 and other 8-bit computers and has won a bunch of prizes in demoparties with his coding skills. After his studies in technical university he started his career in games industry which happened a few years ago. In early 2000, he co-founded Bugbear Entertainment together with Janne.
His hobbies include beer & family, and his gaming taste lingers around racing-, strategy- & manager-games.

Olli Jäderholm
Olli is also one of the many artists at Bugbear who have started early this year. His handiwork will be seen mainly in the menu & interface graphics, which by the way don't look bad at all. He's also the youngest one at 19 years old, which means he's gained a nickname 'little-olli' (it sounds better in Finnish, trust me) which we use to differentiate him from the other Olli we have.
His free-time activities include arts, skateboarding, golf and computers and his gaming taste covers "all good games".

Mikko Kautto
Mikko is our lead artist and desperately tries to keep the graphics stuff going in orderly fashion. His previous graphics history includes lots of 2D and 3D, and he has also a technical drawing major, which means he draws proper technical things. Lately we've seen him drawing lots of women with good technics, so to say. He told me to mention how 'good guy' he is.
Mikko is 24 years old, and plays generally shoot-em up's, adventure-, and roleplaying games.

Juha Kämäräinen
Juha is a 2D/3D artist, and has been doing graphics-related things ever since Commodore 64 came out (didn't they have pens & paper back then?). He was also working on Thrust, Twist'n Turn, doing textures for it which means he's been in games developing since 1998. He's 24 years old, with gaming taste including just about every genre from platformers to simulations.

Ilari Lehtinen
This guy is responsible for the wrong grammar and other mistakes in this text. He's 24 years old and took his first steps in 3D in 1996, and has also been involved in demoscene since '94 or so. He started at Bugbear at the beginning of this year, but has been doing low-poly modeling in several game mods before. His hobbies include archery, 2D/3D, computers, summer terraces and going to strange places with his friends. He wishes to start axe-throwing some day as well.
When he's playing, it's usually a car sim, space sim or flight sim.

Hannu Leskinen
Hannu is our in-house mascot who we bounce around as a stress-reliever toy when deadlines are looming on our minds. He's 25 years old 2D/3D-artist, and has been doing graphics for quite a long time - 5 years of advertisements and posters, 2 years of multimedia, 1 year of book illustrations and now 1 year of game graphics.
When not making track graphics, he's in various sports activities. He also 'forests', as he says. Yes, that was a verb.. We didn't want to question him further about that. We can only assume it's related to trekking and hiking.

Tomi Linja-aho
Tomi is also doing track graphics to Rally Trophy, and this can be often figured out by the way he swears. He's 21 years old, with 3+ years of modeling experience on various projects. He was hijacked to Bugbear early this year as well, and hasn't been let out since. Despite this, he says he does have hobbies such as shooting other people in multiplayer FPS's, doing 3D for fun, doing freaky things with his girlfr..computer (...) and so forth.
His taste for games covers first-person shooters and car sims.

Niko Miettinen
This guy came out of the school as a cook, and now he does textures for us. If someone finds any relation between those two things, please tell us. Niko is 23 years old, with previous work-related history including all kinds of graphic productions, including videos, websites, advertisements and so forth. He also comes from demoscene originally, where he's been active since '90, give or take a few years. He entered games business early this year and cranks out excellent textures.
On his free time he actively pursues beer and football when not doing graphics.

Heikki-Pekka Noronen
We have come to a conclusion that all the programmers are -by some standards- slightly mentally bent, and Hepe (as we call him) is no exception. He's 22 years old, and has been coding with PC for approximately 7 years. His roots are also in demoscene where he has been active since '94, often participating in competitions (sometimes succesfully too, he says). He coded advertisement -related things for companies before entering games business. Games coding he's been doing for about a year now.
As his hobbies, he claimed 'cigarettes, booze and wild women' at first but then retreated and started to list somewhat decent hobbies as various sports, singing, writing, roleplaying and surprisingly, computers.
His gaming preferences include mostly RPG's and strategy games.

Sami Räihä
This guy is responsible for most of the car modeling in Rally Trophy. Fortunately, he's good at it as well. He comes originally from demoscene too, with plenty of different demo projects, modeling and music making in his history which dates back to '91. He also worked on Thrust, Twist'n Turn, doing "all kinds of various things".
When out of the office, he is involved in band/music -activities, tinkers & drives cars and plays with computers.
Games he spends time with include shoot'em ups, first-person shooters, building/finance games, all car games, plenty of adventure games and retrogames.

Olli Sorjonen
Olli, as his brother below, didn't want to disclose his age.. They hide something, we're sure. Olli is a 2D/3D-artist, with lots of graphic history behind him (read that the way you want). He's been doing characters, game graphics (levels, textures), web3d, technology demonstrations, webgames, "few X-Box freelance things" and so forth. He's been in games graphics for 4 years, 1 years in newmedia and 2 years in a warehouse (is there a logic in this?). Hobbies of his consists of literature and graphics, while his gaming taste moves around nethack, old shoot'em ups and driving games.

Sami Sorjonen
Sami is not from Lapland despite his first name. He forms 50% of the automated high-speed 2D/3D-factory which consists of him and his brother (above). He's been doing 3D as a freelancer for a year, and when asked for his age he answered 'too old' and went into hiding. His hobbies include 3D and then some more 3D, for the last 4 years anyways. Whenever he plays games, they include certain sports games and a certain pinball.

Heikki Vehmas
Heikki is not from Lapland either, although he did spend some time there. His job consists of doing tracks, testing, and doing them all over again. He's been doing 3D for approximately 4,5 years now, with some 2D thrown in for a good measure. Same applies for his hobbies as well, although he always looks like he's hiding some other hobbies of his from us. Well, there's IRC, but we don't believe it stops there. He plays mainly first-person shooters and RPG's. Oh, he's 20 years old, too.

Mika Hirvonen
Graphic artist, Mika Hirvonen, has several years of experience in community based racing game projects.

JoWooD

Matthias Siedlaczek
Our producer, Matthias Siedlaczek started his career in the game industry in 1994. Before joining JoWooD he has been working on several projects. He was part of the Panzer Elite team as lead scenario designer. He was responsible for the scenario-content and design, map-data and damage system. He's very enthusiastic about all kinds of sims and has played all the rally and racing games of the past.

Manuel Fischer
Our webmaster, Manuel Fischer is the youngster here. He joined the team in decembre 2000 and he is now responsible for most of the JoWooD websites that will show up in the future. Rumors tell his home is his Computer...

Patricia Vahstall
Patricia is our 26 year old half norwegian singing Amazon and Office Manager. Trish is responsible for Language Translations, Office Management and Content Updates to our JoWooD websites. Before joining the team Patricia spent 3 1/2 years as a Dental Technician. With teeth being a little too boring for our Amazon, she decided to return to school. She attendet Essen Management Akademy and completed her degree in Project & Communication Management. After school, she accepted a position at Phenomedia AG where she was responsible for Marketing & Projectmanagement Projects. After her departure from Phenomedia AG we were fortunate enough to get her to join our team.
Trish's boyfriend from the United States says "She is a nutter! Good Luck Guys!" And after a few days working here we agree with him. "We love you Trish." The Team