Alternatives to the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in Canada

The Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California is the premier event for game developers. For industry professionals, students, and indie hobbyists, it’s a lot of fun. But it’s also expensive, both for the conference passes by themselves, and the airfare and hotels you’ll need to spend the week in one of America’s most expensive cities. There might only be one or two other comparable conferences in the world… are there any in Canada?

In addition to GDC, I attended a couple other events for the first time this year in 2022: the XP Game Developer Summit in Toronto, Ontario, and the MEGAMIGS Summit in Montreal, Quebec. Both are a bit smaller, but I was surprised at how much more I got out of them, in addition to being a lot cheaper and easier for me to travel to. If you’re a Canadian dev, before you book your tickets to GDC 2023, you might want to reconsider and stay closer to home. I discuss these events in more detail below.

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I Got My “Steam Deck!” User Impressions, and Running Old Unity3D Games

After putting in a pre-order in Canada on the first day (back in July I think), my Steam Deck 64 GB model arrived in the mail. It’s cool to finally hold the thing, and as an indie developer, to see my old games running on it. But getting my games to run wasn’t perfect; I go into detail in this post about my experience and impressions as both a developer and as a gamer.

My Steam Deck is here!

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