The fourth annual Game Con Canada was held in Edmonton last weekend, bringing together around 40,000 fans for all kinds of video game and tabletop programming. A sister show, the inaugural North American Games Industry Summit (NAGIS) business conference, was also held alongside it and featured industry luminaries like Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and several key BioWare Edmonton alums.
Crucially, the two events help fill a void in the Canadian video game industry. While the country is among the top producers of games in the world, there are very few major consumer-facing events here, making GCC’s status as Canada’s largest gaming show all the more noteworthy. On top of that, the handful of major business-to-business (B2B) conferences in Canada often take place in Montreal or Toronto, positioning NAGIS as a great opportunity to further support Alberta’s talented — but oft-overlooked — developer scene.
“During COVID, I think everyone had a lot of time to reflect, and we were like, ‘Man, we love what we do […] but I’m tired of having to drive into the States for a big gaming convention. Why is nobody doing this [in Canada]?” says Chris Meilleur, the co-founder and CEO of GCC and NAGIS organizer, Lethbridge, Alta.-based Meibel Consulting. “Canadians deserve it, and we just really wanted to do it.”
Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack delivers opening remarks at Game Con Canada and NAGIS.
Indeed, there really is nothing like GCC in Canada. In between an array of tabletop programming from the likes of Warhammer and special guests like Daredevil star Deborah Ann Woll, the Edmonton Expo Centre’s roughly 300,000 square feet of floor space played host to dozens of demo stations featuring all kinds of games from independent developers. And on the 9K LED screen-equipped Mega Stage, additional games and studios were featured in showcases, including the anticipated anime PvP shooter The Calling from PEI’s Buried Candy, and an awards ceremony hosted by the Canadian entertainment publication CGM.
“[GCC] brings a lot of excitement, and it brings multiple gaming communities together — not just video games. So, I think the gap that gets filled is annually, it gives people a main staple event to work towards, and really showcase what’s new in the communities here,” says Ronnie Villanueva, digital media and technology specialist at Edmonton Screen, the non-profit that advocates for the city’s film, TV and gaming industries.
Big benefits for indie devs
For indie developers, a business-to-consumer (B2C) event like GCC not only helps put their games in front of more eyes, but it also directly connects them with fans to solicit real-time feedback and Steam wishlists. One of the best examples of all of this is Edmonton-based Lucid Rain, the developer behind the Lovecraftian horror-inspired roguelike deckbuilder Inferius. Lucid Rain is one of nearly a dozen local studios who had GCC booths sponsored by Edmonton Screen, and that support would help lead Inferius to win top prizes from both the expert-judged Big Indie Pitch and CGM.
Inferius at Game Con Canada.
“It definitely provides an opportunity for game studios and different vendors to all get together and collaborate in a single space,” says Ricardo Rheeder, Lucid Rain’s chief technical officer and technical director. “There is definitely a market for it, and being able to get closer to the community — it has a really good place here in Edmonton […] More collaborative spaces, additional development funding and mentorship is always the extra mile, and that can always go a long way for an indie studio over here.”
Another small local developer that Edmonton Screen helped bring to GCC was The Halley Company, which is behind a point-and-click psychological thriller called Halley’s Bell. The opportunity to attend any convention, let alone one on the scale of GCC, was an especially big deal for the team because it largely consists of recent University of Alberta graduates who made the game for their capstone project. The Halley Company says it hopes to use this momentum to release the short experience for free in August and, eventually, make premium games.
“Honestly, we feel really lucky, especially with partnering with Edmonton Screen. Booth space can be expensive, so as students, being able to come here and show people, it was very cool for us to just have people play your game,” says Miriam Martin, one of the co-founders of The Halley Company. “As kids that are working, we don’t necessarily have the time or the money to be able to travel to places, so having it here is really, really cool for us.”
Opportunities to connect
Halley’s Bell. (Image credit: The Halley Company)For others, like Gaian Helmers of local developer Genome Studios, GCC can even be a form of validation. Over the past few years, Helmers has regularly organized dozens of gaming events, including Edmonton’s second games meetup event. GCC, then, helps build on that sort of grassroots work.
“Like with community events, I think ‘saturation’ is a critical key to all this. GCC contributes greatly in that it adds high-value contact points for our industry to connect with each other and an audience excited to engage with us,” they say. “As we gain these heavier hitting events, we’re sowing a narrative that Edmonton and Alberta is an exciting and active place to develop, invest in, and connect with skilled developers ready and able to share their craft. The more solidified that becomes with reliable events, and a rising reputation therein, we will be in a far stronger and healthier state in general.”
And of course, being Canada’s largest gaming convention means that GCC can draw developers from outside of Alberta. One of the studios at this year’s show was Toronto’s Little Buffalo, which was demoing its Canada-set Indigenous cozy survival adventure game Akiiwan: Relaxing Survival. Jeremy Nelson, the studio’s Red River Métis founder, designer and producer, has brought the game to international events like PAX in Seattle and Gamescom in Germany, but says he’s especially happy to have something like GCC in Canada.
“I think they’re doing a great job. As an indie studio, one of the things we need to do is talk to our players — and not just talk to random testers, but talk to the fans of our genre. Because they’re the ones who are going to give us the best feedback,” says Nelson. “One of the things that’s really great about [GCC] is that I find so much actionable feedback from players at a fraction of the cost that I have to pay when I’m going to PAX or Gamescom.”
He adds that something like GCC can help drive Steam wishlists, a clear metric of consumer interest, which he can then bring into Canadian B2B events like Toronto’s XP Game Summit during conversations with publishers and other backers. “Having an event in Canada that’s modestly priced, [where] you actually generate those wishlists and talk to the players, is really, really helpful,” he says.
Reach beyond Canada
GCC also attracted Popularium, the LA-based studio co-founded by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield alongside Blizzard veterans Jon Bankard and Arka Ray. At GCC, Popularium showcased Chaos Agents, a multiplayer game that mixes autobattling mechanics with battle royale-style matches.
“We’ve had the fortune of attending many great gaming events, and when we first heard about GCC, we were intrigued because it sounded a bit like those shows in their early days. In particular, working with Marc Belisle, one of the co-founders behind GCC, was nothing short of amazing,” says Bankard, praising Belisle for taking the time to make sure Popularium felt taken care of while also providing valuable input.
Chaos Agents. (Image credit: Popularium)
“The fans are amazing, enthusiastic, and most importantly for us as an indie studio, they were curious to learn more about Chaos Agents. As an indie studio, you’re trying to stand out, and GCC had a great indie area with a lot of excellent traffic,” he says. “I’m excited to see GCC continue to grow and establish itself as a top-tier show that both indies and AAA studios want to attend. I think they have the right team, the right fans, and ultimately the right vision to continue growing and become a top-tier show. We feel lucky to be a part of this journey and to be in ‘before it was cool.’”
To be sure, there’s always room for improvement. Several of the developers we spoke to lamented their booths being placed on either side of the thunderous Mega Stage, which could make it hard for attendees to properly hear their games or, in some cases, even soak in their atmosphere. Additionally, major video game studios like Nintendo or PlayStation weren’t in attendance with booths or playable game demos to draw in even more audiences. Still, it’s a commendable showing of indie — and predominantly Canadian — talent from an event run by a small Alberta team, and hopefully, it will attract even more studios in the future.
Uplifting Alberta’s entire gaming industry
Outside of the fruitful meetings between developers, industry folks and consumers, the highlight of NAGIS for many was the big BioWare panel.
Moderated by Mass Effect star Mark Meer and featuring studio co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Trent Oster, former creative director Casey Hudson and former producer Mark Darrah, the reunion offered a fascinating trip down memory lane with arguably Canada’s most famous and influential developer. In a way, their presence highlighted that Alberta is home to some incredible and globally beloved talent while also serving as a stark reminder of how BioWare, under parent company EA, has lost so many staff members, including other veterans, in recent years.
BioWare reunion at NAGIS. (From left to right: Mark Meer, Casey Hudson, Greg Zeschuk, Trent Oster and Mark Darrah.)
Between BioWare and all of the other studios featured at GCC, though, it’s clear that Alberta’s got the talent; it just needs more support. In particular, Alberta is the only province without a video game development tax credit. Former Premier Jason Kenney axed the gaming tax credit in 2019, and incumbent leader Danielle Smith ultimately scrapped plans to reintroduce it last year in favour of supporting local industry with “strategic funding partnerships and investments.”
That’s where the one-two punch of GCC and NAGIS comes in. The former helps studios directly present their games to the public, while the latter helps them form the business arrangements that will ultimately help get the games made. At the events, developers were hopeful these kinds of public showcases and industry talks would help demonstrate why there’s much more talent in Alberta beyond BioWare, and it warrants more investment and other forms of support.
Just ask Kaelin Lavallée, a Dragon Age veteran who recently formed a new Edmonton developer, Studio Reset, with fellow BioWare alums Kris Schoneberg and Francis Lacuna. The team is in early development on an X-Files-inspired untitled neon-noir mystery game set in Canada and was at NAGIS for networking.
Lavallée says Alberta’s gaming scene could “feel the difference” with the previous tax credit, noting that it helped drive new studios and hires, only to lose “a lot of that momentum” once it was removed. Meanwhile, he adds, the rest of Canada has continued to offer — and, in cases like B.C., even expanded — their own tax credits.
The Mass Effect trilogy was made by BioWare Edmonton, among many other beloved games. (Image credit: EA)
“Other provinces have leaned harder into this exact tool, not pulled back from it. A credit is something every studio, big or small, can actually build a budget around,” he says. “And that budget would then look more attractive to potential partners to keep growing a studio — whether that partner is a local or foreign investment.”
That investment is important, Lavallée says, to help further move Alberta’s developer scene away from relying on BioWare. “For a long time, BioWare was effectively the only major studio in Alberta, and to their credit, they did a lot of post-secondary outreach. But that meant the institutions ended up calibrating around what one AAA studio needed – which shaped curricula toward AAA-scale pipelines and AAA-scale teams,” he says. “That’s not a knock on BioWare; it’s just what happens when one studio is the dominant gravitational pull for that long.”
Credits help build studios
To that point, Lavallée says it’s important to continue to support the smaller studios, especially as game development tools are more accessible than ever to upstart game makers and the AAA space is so volatile. Studio Reset’s name is a nod to that fact, and it wants to leverage Canada Media Fund backing for tighter and more sustainable development.
“You don’t need to build the next big AAA title to have a successful career or a successful studio. A lot of the most interesting, sustainable work happening right now is smaller in scope, by design,” he says. “I’d love to see provincial support and post-secondary programming evolve to reflect that — more non-dilutive funding and skill-up resources built around what a small or solo team actually needs: pitching, bookkeeping, marketing, even practical stuff like setting up a Steam page or build pipeline. NAIT and the University of Alberta are already moving in that direction, and that’s exactly the kind of foundation-building that should happen alongside GCC and NAGIS, not instead of them.”
Concept art for Studio Reset’s first game. (Image credit: Studio Reset)
Villanueva, meanwhile, notes that NAGIS helps “fill in that missing voice” for B2B events in Alberta, including an international developer conference in Banff called Reboot Develop Red that has since gone away amid a bankruptcy order against organizer Digitalna Avantura.
“Our industry in Alberta is honestly too small to ignore. And the fact that it’s small means we have to work together […] What NAGIS actually does is it puts a spotlight on the studios that are lesser-known in the industry,” says Villaneuva. “We had publishers from countries that have quite literally never visited Edmonton — France, there was a few from China, Brazil, Tokyo… So bringing them here to Edmonton is a win, not just for our city, but it’s a win for the province. It’s also a win, in my opinion, for the whole country.”
This sentiment is echoed by John Nguyen, the Canadian regional vice-president of Xsolla, the gaming fintech company that helped sponsor NAGIS.
“One of the biggest issues or challenges that an indie developer has in Canada is to find their audience, and [NAGIS] is a perfect crossroads between business, finding the financing, publishing partnerships, etc.,” says Nguyen. “Then it opens up to a gigantic consumer show, which allows people to showcase their game, make sales, wishlists, whatever they need to do on the consumer side, because ultimately that’s who’s buying games.”
Nguyen says he’s hopeful that developers will uplift each other even if the provincial government isn’t quite doing the same. “The games industry has always been about community. We are a community — we’re a small industry relative to others — and we’ve always had a knack of supporting each other,” he says. “Nature hates vacuums, so if some stakeholders aren’t taking up the mantle, then certainly the community will.”
All about community
Lucid Rain wins The Big Indie Pitch prize for Inferius.
And sure enough, that community is demonstrably strong. For one, several developers we spoke to praised Edmonton Screen for their support, including Rheeder, who noted that the organization helped Lucid Rain bring Inferius to Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming event. Others, meanwhile, shouted out national funding opportunities like the Canada Media Fund.
“I think the biggest game-changer for us was having arts grants like Edmonton Screen and other ones, like the Canada Media Fund, where we’re able to go to them, and they’re able to help us get funding and that mentorship. I think that for students, especially, what is the difference maker is the mentorship,” says Martin.
But of course, not everyone can be funded, with Helmers noting that they’re currently “oversaturated with applicants.” As a result, they encourage more studios to pursue co-development to spread risk across multiple vested parties while sharing talent — in other words, leaning into community.
“To organize around light funding to keep a co-development afloat, or to provide mixers where likeminded, and skilled, developers can meet and take on a joint venture, a supporting organization may be able to catalyze opportunity and growth in a way nobody is talking about today,” they say. “A year from now? That could very well become a new standard sentiment, much like the current: ‘Build small, build fast’ is becoming the mantra of developers across the board.”
Naturally, developers can only take it one step at a time, but there are reasons to be optimistic based on all of these conversations. Look no further than Lucid Rain; already, the nascent studio has been making big moves both at home and internationally, and it’s grateful for all of these opportunities so far. “All of this marketing and visibility is some of the best we can ask for,” says Rheeder.
