Explaining My Summer Car cultural refrences (english)

My Summer Car is an odd open world-car crafting-beer and job simulator from Finland. The game is set to 1995 when Finland had just joined to European Union and it’s main character is young finnish male. The game is culturally loaded and deals with real life issues of Finnish origin, most of which are not apparent to non-native finns and those things deserve closer examination and explanation.

Hardcore realism

My Summer Car is interestingly faithful to the real life in some of instances, the truck for example takes 7,5 minutes to fill full with diesel. This is actually what happens in real life with slow pumps! Another hardcore realism is applied to building the summer car. Leaving bolts unchecked might cause Bad Things to happen in real life. Likewise the cars are modelled faithfully like starting up the diesel engine or the fact that agri tractors can go pretty much everywhere. Same kind of pietistic details can be found from many aspects of game, most of which are not apparent to non-Finnish people.

Kesseli

The main character is living in ‘kesselinperä.’ Kesseli means ‘stupid’ or ‘clown’ and it’s usually attributed to younger persons.  Also "Kesseli" is an old finnish word from Viena-Karelia, meaning ruck sag made of birchbark. This is one of many puns of the game. Example from landry room one can find HOMO-detergent which is a pun from common Finnish detegent called ‘OMO-color’. The car names are similiar puns, the van is definetly Toyotoa because ‘Hajosiko’ means ‘Did I break down?’ and ‘Hayosiko’ sounds really japanese to Finns. Tractor ‘Kekmet’ is finnish Valmet, ‘Gifu’ is definetly a Sisu truck and summer car ‘Satsuma’ is definetly popular ‘Datsun’ that was popular as a amateur tuning car in the 90s. Similiar ‘amis’ car was simulated in the first ‘FDFmod’ for Operation Flashpoint.

Amis

Developers call themselves ‘Amistech’ and player can mail-order parts from Amis-auto. “Amis” is a abbreviation of “ammattikoulu”, which translates to ‘vocational school’ - the lowest education most finns attended after compulsory nine classes of schooling. The vocational schools had lazy reputation untill change of millenium after changes in educational system made vocational schools improve their standing. Even the players card licence emphasis this point: the main character is 18 year old finnish male who has most likely studied in vocational school and is still living in home.

Long Distances

Finland has quite of a lot landmass and few people. In the game distances are long and this portrays effectively what the people living in rural areas are facing every day. The long distances explain the constant traffic in the roads as well. The central country is filled with lakes (60000 of them) and that’s why Peräjärvi is named Perä (‘Backwater’ or just ‘Bottom’) Järvi (Lake). Finns have accustomed to traverse through lakes so that’s why there’s a boat and the engine. The main character can swim (pretty well!) as he has grown up next to lake.

Urbanisation, effects on rural areas

The main character lives in a average 70s brick building practically in the middle of nowhere. Next to his house is long, modern looking barn and shed for tractor and truck. After the Second World War Finns developed industry which did draw people to cities. During this progress Finland became more urbanized leaving lots of empty farms to countryside and reducing amount of jobs to close to zero. We can see Finnish history in Peräjärvi area and especially in Kesselinperä. The cattle barn is modern and there’s old wooden cottage near it. It would appear that grandparents were indeed farmers who lived there - the main character did know them because after drunken night he wakes up from the stairs of old house and not the new one.



The Kesselinperä farm as whole is reminiscent of farm that probably didn’t quite succeed on generation changing. Average size of finnish rural farm is smaller than ones found from western europe - this has generated lots of problems with actual profit of the farming. Main characters parents probably modernized the farm but couldn’t make it profitable - instead turning to service jobs like emptying sweage and bringing wood. This means Kesselinperä company is family business that our hero is actually running for his parents and maybe getting car of his own in the progress.

Where are the females?

The other side of coin is that today main bulk of female population is living in the southern towns rarely continuing family farm or working in countryside. Situation is especially bad in Lappland but signs of young population leaving the area without jobs can be seen in the game: all the males are middle aged (probably unemployed after 90s depression) with beer belly.

Sauna

On average all of the finns have access to sauna either owned or shared. The house in Kesselinperä is typical single house in that manner. Sauna has been part of Finnish lifestyle quite likely forever and it has been important part of any house. In the game sauna improves hygiene which is exacly why Finns have sticked with the only invention they could truely call their own.

Buzzing

Mosquitos are part of Finnish summer. The buzzing sound can be heard throughout the game. The mosquitos spawn in stagnant pools of water, some which one can find near Kesselinperä road. There’s lots of oils and smokes that could drive the mosquitos away but none of these are not simulated in-game.

Landlines

Kesselinperä has landlines. Although one can see cellphone-mast in the Peräjärvi this was time when the mobile phones were just making a breakthrough. Indeed in 1996 there were 600000 cellphones in Finland alone (5 million people). The mast in Peräjärvi is either NMT 450 or 900. Indeed as simulated in the game, the lightning strike can actually kill you through the phonelines!

Church

85,6 % of the population belonged to the the Lutheran Church of Finland. In the previous centuries congregations were widespread and they did jobs that municipalities do today. The church in Peräjärvi is standard Finnish wooden church built in 1800-1900 and it’s set correctly to the west-east direction with the bell tower being in the middle part of the church. Local congregations hire gardeners to keep cemetery clean which incidently ment that every Finnish community has public park. The big stone in the middle is monument for the unknown soldier, in the memory of those villagers who gave their lives in Second World War. In this game it’s the beta testers that have their names written in the stone.

Teimon Kauppa

Teimo’s store is the only one in the Peräjärvi and Teimo himself is really aware of this. The store sells multiple of goods and acts as postal office, gas station and bar as well. After general population moved from countryside the small businesses had to strive to make proft. For example today small village store in Lieso needs to have 50 different services to be proftiable!

“Markka Lama”

In the store slot machine can be seen. The name of the machine “Markka Lama” is hint to the depression in the 1991-1993. Even the politicial figureheads of the depression are portrayed in the slots telling tale about how population still remembers those who made the decisions (unemployement did rise from 3,5% to 18,9%). In the year of 1995 the Finland is making pretty good strides for better future.

Beer

Although one can find pure alcohol (Koskenkorva) from the barn there’s few changes to get it from the game area because Finland had and still has govermental monopoly on alcohol. Grocery stores are allowed to sell mild alcohol drinks, so the beer available in the game has precentage similiar to the beer served in Germany (4,5%). Traditional bonus is that beer doesn’t get spoiled like milk does so that’s why it is traditional finnish drink number one.

Car Check-Up

Used before EU standards the Finnish car-checkup is horrible event for anyone trying to get his not-so-great car checked. The car owner is paying for certificated business to check his car and is given list of faults. Usually car owner has month to correct the things. The “summer” cars that are not registered are not allowed in the roads and driving them can mean big bill.

Police

Mobile police is a traffic task force that has been around from 1920s and has whole country as area of operation. In the game we can see them in police check-up point where they check the drivers and vehicles. Biggest problem is drunk driving, something which happens (a lot) in the game.