Bytecamp (Bittileiri) is a Finnish youth work innovation that has been able to gather teens to the LAN party several times in the year since 1994. In Finland, the professional youth work has been traditionally been provided by the Lutheran church which the municipalities are picking up after 2005 youth work legislation was passed. Bytecamp is the long-standing activity of the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Parishes in Tampere. During the semester vacation, the camp gathered 36 teens of age 12-16 and some eight volunteering adults.
The first Bytecamp was arranged to the old rectory of Aitolahti. For the horror of volunteers, the old electrical wires were insulated with the cloth. Luckily they didn't cause problems old volunteer Ilkka Puranen tells during an interview. The first games were played with null modem cabling and titles were famous Doom and Formula One Grand Prix. First commercial internet connections were rapidly acquired by the first service provider called 'Soon'.
The biggest improvement happened when the University of Tampere donated a number of 3c509 networking cards to the camp. The networking was made possible with hard work. The PCs were opened and cards installed. 3.5" disks provided the drivers for the network. Most gifted campers could help in this progress and later end up as volunteers. Windows 3.11 was required because it had TCP-support.
The summer campsite called 'Torppa' was used many years after the first camp. The first internet connection arrived there 2002
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| Fitting the networking card |
Games played in Torppa depended on the player. The campers liked single player games but Civilization was the most significant hit amongst the volunteers. Youngest of the campers were ten years old, but the minimum age soon rose after age ratings started to pick up, states the leader of the camp Jussi 'Kaapo' Kosonen.
Warcraft 1 was the most popular multiplayer game. Widely popular Battlefield 1942 was surprising 'one summer' thing. The similar fate happened with the Starcraft, which didn't generate Korea-like popularity in Finland. The undoubtedly most significant demand came for Counterstrike and Warcraft 3. The first mod-version of CS was freshly acquired. Battlefield 2 was favorite at first, but it was banned because after the match it jammed the network by uploading every player profile to the server.
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| Camp at Torppa |
Team Fortress 2 was the next significant popularity hit when it changed to free to play. MOBA games Dota 2 and League of Legends fought briefly, but the campers decided to play LOL instead. Hearthstone generated some strong popularity and led to the renewal of card games like Magic the Gathering. Another significant change happened in 2014 when the camp migrated to another campsite called Ilkko. The improvement was the vastly better internet connection. Every camper could play TF2 and LOL without a problem. The 2016 summer camp saw the rise of the Overwatch.
For a while camp suffered from the dubious age rating of the Counterstrike: Global Offensive, as the PEGI 18 games were explicitly banned. CS:O had console versions which had PEGI 18 rating, there was no rating at Steam version and Finnish broadcasting company YLE had aired E-Sports with CS:O getting age rating of 16. However, the Centre of Expertise for Digital Youth Work in Finland (VERKE) managed to acquire the classification of the game (16). The age ratings are restricted in a way that even adult volunteers are not allowed to play higher rated games.
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| Final camp at Torppa 2013 |
The networking is still barely enough for over 40 people. A familiar program like Skype, all torrent programs, Spotify, Netflix and sometimes Youtube has been banned to save bandwidth for the games. Updates and game downloads are to be downloaded during the lunch and night breaks. Practically the first concern is to check that the campers PCs have up to date firewall. The communication happens through Teamspeak or Discord-servers.
The volunteers noticed that game pirating was reduced drastically during the years because Steam-service which provides easy updates and community tools. This service is practically only one that campers use.
One banned the type of game is horror games like Slender, Amnesia and Five Nights At Freddy’s.
While these games are indie and do not have official age ratings the content is similar to Finnish age ratings of distress. However violent games haven't been observed to have any on the behavior of the campers. Many of the volunteer adults have themselves been Bytecamp campers as kids.
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| New campsite, Ilkko. |
The local parish can't really offer gaming PCs for the camp. The 'firm' can offer Wii U console for the gaming but most of the PCs are kids own. While the gaming PCs are there, the console games are quite popular, for example, Super Smash Bros Melee is a load of fun together.
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| Soft foam swords during outdoor activites. |
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