There are some details still to be sorted out, but this is now official: games research has been selected as one of the spearhead areas that will be supported in the new Finnish University Alliance. The University Alliance is formed by three universities: University of Tampere, University of Jyväskylä and Tampere University of Technology. Games research has been granted the spearhead project status together with the research into the future of learning, so there will be particular interest in the connections of games and learning in the Alliance. The overall aim is to strengthen the Finnish academic work on games research by uniting the forces and having finally a large games research centre in this area. More (in Finnish): http://www.yliopistoallianssi.fi/karkihankkeet.html.
frans goes blog 
This is very pleasing to read. The games industry is huge. The education sector is huge. And the former has much potential (and an increasing body of research) of relevance to the other.
Thanks, John. The Alliance itself, btw, is only part (and perhaps a reaction) to a much greater reform shaking the entire Finnish university system. This will introduce, among other things, outsider-dominated boards to govern universities that will from 2010 onwards be legally autonomous from state offices. It is still hard to see the real outcome of all the coming upheavals. Currently, every university professor is actually a civil servant (“virkamies”) and it is e.g. very hard to sack one, but all this will change under the new law. We will become mere mortals, alas, he groans…