Aki Kanerva

Aki Kanerva is the founder of Virtual Air Guitar Company, a Finnish studio he co-founded. He has worked in games for 17–18 years, moving from interface designer to generalist programmer and CEO. He has created and implemented a range of game concepts and led an indie studio. Today he is an active mentor who shares his accumulated experience with the game development community through IGDA and incubator networks. At Games Gathering 2024 in Lviv he gave the talk "Surviving 17 years, 15 games, 8 cancelled partners, and 5 pivots," covering the company's journey, its games, cancelled partnerships and changes of direction.