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

by

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.

XP Game Developer Summit talk

The XP Game Developer Summit is a relatively new event, but seems to have managed to find success. It’s slated to come back to Toronto in Spring 2023, as well as a separate event in Vancouver in the Fall for the first time. In 2022, it was hosted as a hybrid event (both in-person and online) for 2 days, and I’d guess there were roughly 250 – 500 in attendance. A pass cost roughly ~$100 in 2022, but there was a free “career day” during the event for students.

The event focuses heavily on industry business connections and student outreach, with a little bit of an opportunity for indie developers to show off their work (there was a heavy synergy with Sheridan College in 2022). There were a couple dozen talks ranging from development practices and investor and pitching tips. The talks were heavily focused for Canadian developers, especially in Toronto and Ontario, so some of the investment and government grant panels would only be of relevance to local developers. But if you ARE a local developer, that focus makes the content much more valuable.

At GDC in San Francisco, there were at least 20x as many developers in town, but it seemed difficult to make genuine connections with either developers, studios, investors or software companies. At XP Summit, I didn’t have to search for connections – those connections came to me! Of course, not all of the outreach might be relevant to you (you might not want to partner with international publishers or translation services yet), but I felt much more like I was part of the event than at GDC. That’s the value of smaller events where company representatives need to come back with results.

MEGAMIGS show floor

Even years ago, I’ve heard that the Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) was THE Canadian gaming conference to attend (supposedly, tickets would sell out fast). Since then, it’s merged with the Montreal Expo Gaming Arcade (MEGA) to become MEGAMIGS, an event primarily for industry developers, but now also for gamers. In 2022, it was hosted for 5 days, and I’d guess there were roughly 500 – 1,00 in attendance (on the top floor of a small but classy hotel). A pass to attend the conference talks are expensive (I think some passes were over $500, but the prices are offline now), but a general pass to see the show floor is less than $30 per day, and it’s even free for kids!

The event focuses on talks and industry booths in a manner similar to GDC, just on a slightly smaller scale. There were almost 100 different talks and panels, ranging from making games, funding games and running companies, and how to start a career. There was a heavy focus for colleges and universities to promote their game-design and animation programs, primarily in Quebec. There was also a student-indie showcase, game awards, and a small room for board games and arcade games.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I was surprised to see a high-quality of exhibitors. Studios like Ubisoft, Warner Bros., Gearbox and Beenox were showing off their latest releases, including some early demos of hot games releasing later in the month. There were some big names from the indie-game scene, including games you might have seen in Nintendo Direct and Playstation State of Play presentations recently. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised: after all, Montreal is one of the biggest capitals for the gaming industry, so most of the companies just had to drive down the street to attend. Curiously, nearly all the booths (even for smaller indie studios) only had HR-staff on hand to answer questions when I visited for one day on Saturday, probably meeting prospective job applicants. The overall event was small for all the hype I’ve seen it get, but with a higher-quality-per-square-foot exhibitor list that makes it far better than GDC. And again, the smaller size makes it a little easier to start meaningful conversations.

There’s only one problem: Es-que tu parlez en français? The website’s organization was a little lacking, but while it claimed English was the event’s main language to support international audiences, I found everything to be almost exclusively French. That includes signage, talks and panels (without English subtitles), and regular conversations. Of course, nearly everyone at the event could speak perfect English if I asked, but a lot of the studio HR-staff present seemed much less interested to talk afterwards (I don’t know if that’s Quebec’s famous pro-French bias, or if that’s just my awkward personality). Despite the “International” moniker, nearly all of the studios and schools in attendance were from Quebec, so if you’re looking for a job at this event, learning French is an necessary skill. That’s a huge limitation barrier for most developers to attend the event, but if you have real intentions to work for studios in Montreal, attending MEGAMIGS is a must. And even if you aren’t looking for jobs or schools, the game demos at the event were pretty cool.

  • Are there others?

These events may not be the only events in Canada, and events aren’t guaranteed to occur every year, so these are subject to change. Leave a comment below if there’s another event you want to bring attention to.

There’s a common misconception that anything other than the biggest events are not worth attending. Small events might not have enough of what you’re looking for, but I was impressed at the quality of these two gaming industry events, including the studios and investors present. Canadian developers should keep these on their calendar over GDC, and in fact, some American developers might find it a good excuse to visit the Great North.