How to uplift Canadian game makers? We asked them

Over a year ago, I wrote a column titled “The Canadian video game industry deserves more recognition.”

Despite being a relatively small country, Canada has a multi-billion-dollar gaming sector that’s among the biggest in the entire world, responsible for such globally beloved giants as Mass Effect, Dead by Daylight and Warframe, and indie darlings like Cuphead, Balatro and 1000xResist.

And yet, few people seem to know about any of that. Much in the same way that Toronto’s Matt Johnson, the co-writer and director of 2023’s fantastic BlackBerry film, has talked about Canada getting little credit “on the world stage” for effectively inventing the smartphone, our national game creators don’t get much recognition for their significant contributions to pop culture.

This was the impetus for my January 2024 column, although I wasn’t expecting it to strike such a chord. Before long, I had received hundreds of likes, comments and messages across social media, especially LinkedIn, with many Canadian game makers echoing my sentiment. Clearly, there was more to explore here.

And explore that I did. Over the course of the past year and change, I’ve asked dozens of Canadian developers, actors, lobbyists and the like about how we can address this lack of recognition for our massive gaming industry. Some, admittedly, didn’t really have an answer, and that’s completely understandable. Others, meanwhile, presented all kinds of solutions, offering a great starting point for deeper conversations. And throughout all of this, U.S. government started launching vile and unwarranted attacks against Canadian sovereignty, which has only made these conversations about better supporting each other all the more important.

In other words, how can we help Canada’s massive gaming industry get the recognition and support it deserves?

Start to talk about it more — to everyone

Jayson Hilchie (former president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada): We need people to understand how big the video game industry is in Canada that have nothing to do with the video game industry. When you live in a town and you have General Motors, or you have Ford and someone works there — when you say, “I work at Ford,” everybody knows what that means. But even to this day, with [about 34,000 people contributing $5.1 billion] to the Canadian economy, when you tell someone you work in the video game industry, they always still go, “Oh, really? That’s interesting.” But they don’t know what that means.

For me, at least, how do we get working in the video game industry to be almost normalized and respected in a way where people are either not surprised or curious? It’d be great if we got to a spot where you could say, “Yeah, I work at Ubisoft, I work on Assassin’s Creed.” And people go, “Cool! And they know what that is.” But we’re not there. And it is still surprising to me, given how many people work in the industry, and also how ubiquitous video games have become, that we still have those types of responses. And I really think that until we get to that point [of] the average person understanding the impact of the industry that we’re going to have a depreciated level of respect across the country.

Paul Fogolin (current president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada): I’ve worked really hard over the last five or six years to help promote [the industry] to government officials [as the ESAC’s former vice president of policy and government affairs], but there’s just more work to do. It’s not just the MPs in Ottawa, it’s MPPs and MLAs across the country. It’s even councillors and mayors. The City of Toronto actually formed an esports working group, and we were invited to be a part of it, and I’d like to see more of those sorts of things. Interactive Ontario was there. We were there. The tourism people, the esports [people], academics [were there]. So we could do more to speak to player audiences and more to decision makers. The more that we get out there and we tell our story, the more people will start to realize.

Remy Siu (founder of Vancouver’s Sunset Visitor, creative director of 1000xResist): I think maybe it’s time for the broader public and media in Canada to realize that Canadian indie games are one of the biggest cultural exports in the country, in the sense of new IP. People around the world may not know Canadian TV shows, for example, but I’m pretty sure they’ve played a Canadian indie game before. Have they played Celeste? Inscryption? Balatro?

There’s always talk of how it’s a struggle (and it is) to get Canadian content made and distributed, but indie games are making Canadian content and being distributed to a wide global audience, and also being celebrated on the international stage for their work. Perhaps it’s time to look at these Canadian-made homegrown indie games, with the same sense of some beloved Canadian literature and content, and find a way to catalogue and celebrate them into the future.

Navid Khavari (Ubisoft Toronto narrative director, Star Wars Outlaws): We have a wonderful team — a lot of the [Outlaws] story team is based in Ubisoft Toronto, and we’ve been developing this with our partners at [lead developer] Massive [Entertainment] in Sweden for years. We have a lot of great animators as well within [Toronto] studio, and folks from Ubisoft Montreal that have been contributing. All of the cinematics that we’ve shot have been in studios within Ubisoft Toronto and Ubisoft Montreal.

So there’s absolutely just a huge wellspring of talent from Canada that’s been contributing to the game and giving some of that Canadian spirit and flavour, I think, to it. And it’s a beautiful thing with Ubisoft as well that we’re able to do that — that we’re able to work together across an entire ocean and it still feels cohesive. And I think it’s to the studio’s credit, to the talent we have across Canada, to be honest, that I think we’re able to hit the quality of bringing a Star Wars open-world game to life.

Marc-Alexis Côté (Ubisoft’s vice president and executive producer of the Assassin’s Creed franchise): I think we should be proud of what we can accomplish in Canada. It’s one of the things I was telling the team recently. We have a talent to be able to build those games that’s very rare in the world — to be able to work together in such a way. There’s over 500 people in Quebec City who worked on [Assassin’s Creed Shadows]. We’ve got people in Montreal. We’ve got a few people in Toronto as well. But it’s like one big family coming together to be able to build those games. And I think it’s exciting. And I think it’s something we should promote more: our craft. Because we are very creative people, and I think we should be proud of that as a country and not hesitate to show it to the world.

I think we should promote video games as art more globally — not just within Canada, but like globally. And be proud of it. When you look at the games that we build now, the investment, the talent, the passion that it requires, I can only hope that one day, video games are recognized with the same exposure as movies or music. But I think with the younger generations, for them, gaming is an extension of their life, so I think it’s going to take more and more players, and we just need to keep showing to the world the beautiful games that we can create. And I think our games need to speak for themselves more than us speak about our games in a way. So the more fun they will be, the more people they will draw in, and the more naturally people will look at us to see what the next big thing is.

Carl-Edwin Michel (creator of the Canadian Game Awards): This community needs to be celebrated. It’s just an unfortunate situation. [Canada is] the third largest creator of video games in the world, and we don’t have our own celebration. That doesn’t make sense. The UK has one with the BAFTAs. Obviously, [there’s] The Game Awards [in the U.S.]. There’s so many different ones — D.I.C.E. [in Las Vegas], etc. There’s so many game awards, but there’s no real celebration of our industry […]

The video game industry is covered in tech publications or in finance publications when it comes to, “This studio has millions of dollars of investment,” or “This studio is closing or they have layoffs.” That’s usually how the video game industry is covered […] I’m watching Breakfast Television in the morning and they have an entertainment segment and they talk about movies, they talk about TVs, they talk about music. Why don’t they talk about video games? It’s an entertainment medium that’s bigger than the movie and TV business combined. So why don’t we cover this industry as art, as a medium that’s consumed by millions and millions of people?

Jennifer Hale (Canadian-American actress in Mass Effect, Metal Gear, The Long Dark and more): That’s a piece of the Canadian culture: you don’t brag on yourself. You just don’t. A little [more] celebration might be in order!

Leslie Quinton (Ubisoft’s vice president of communications, North America): We kind of punch above our weight, Canada, if you think about our population, in terms of our involvement in those kinds of high-level entertainment things. So the idea is that we definitely have this capacity in Canada. Maybe we’re too “Canadian modest.” We’re too humble!

Prakash Amarasooriya (founder and CEO of Toronto-based pop-culture concert company Kashamara Productions): I think a lot of times, Canada hasn’t been seen as globally for its identity in the arts, which is really unfortunate, because we have actually quite a lot of talent. I think it’s just a reputation of being so close to the [U.S.] that we’re so often overlooked. A lot of our biggest stars are in the States, just because of the bigger market. And a lot of times, the Canadian identity also follows suit. And so we don’t get to hone that here. And I’ll be honest, I think Canada can do a lot better job of highlighting a lot of what we have to offer and showcase, “This is what the Canadian identity is about.”

I think there’s a lot of opportunity here because of the fact that our Canadian identity is so diverse. And that’s why you have a South Asian man running a company that puts on Japanese projects, as well as other international projects, in a space that’s predominantly European. And I think that just speaks to what Canada is all about — that that can make sense here and also can be successful here.

Scott Christian (Toronto’s Hilltop Studios co-founder, creative director, writer and composer on Lil’ Guardsman): I think the issue is how much does a game being made in Canada matter to gamers? There’s obviously a massive push right now to support Canadian-made, but the challenge for developers and publishers is how small relative to the American and international markets the Canadian market is. That being said, the work done by our small but mighty Canadian games media has an impact. I think there’s an opportunity for publishers of Canadian games to create sales, bundles, and events that take advantage of this moment for Canadian creators. But like I said, it’s a tough business case with our relatively small population.

[…] It would be wonderful to see a Canadian politician give the kind of recognition that France’s president recently lavished on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s developers in the wake of its success. [Editor’s note: the last time we saw something on this scale was former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeting about Cuphead‘s The Game Awards wins in 2017.]

Lucie Lalumière (president and CEO of Interactive Ontario): We’ve seen growing awareness of Canada’s world-class video game industry, thanks in large part to journalists and influencers like you, as well as to a wave of grassroots, institutional, and business-led initiatives across the country. A standout example is that in 2025, the City of Toronto declared June as Video Game Month, the first time a Canadian city has made such a bold and public commitment to celebrate our sector. With over 30 events (and counting) planned across June and July, including Toronto Games Week and Giant Video Games, the public will experience the depth and diversity of our video game ecosystem.

Funké Joseph (co-founder of Toronto-based Play Underground Games, winner of the Ubisoft Indie Series 2024): A lot of the [local] devs are super welcoming to us […] It clicked for me that Ontario is the spot — Toronto feels so good for making games. And I used to feel like we were so removed from the whole process with things being so L.A.-based and American or just global events. I was like, “It’s not even happening close to home.” But to see how warm and welcoming everyone is? It’s great […] It’s helpful to talk to people and just see all the people, especially at Ubisoft, that went through that experience with us.

More representation — both in and out of the games

Jayson Hilchie: Back in 2019, we humanized the people who make video games and interviewed them in their studios [for a video series]. And they talked to us about what they did, where they were from, and how they got into the industry. I’ve been speaking about this since — how do we humanize the people who make games? And any way that we can, we can do that, whether it’s through videos, or whether it’s through interviews, or whether it’s through documentaries — all those things are going to help […]

[But] we’re not hitting the average person with those videos. I doubt that they’re getting hit with [documentaries], either. [Electric Playground creator] Victor Lucas has said this numerous times — we’re just not getting the respect on TV. There’s no video game shows on TV. There’s video game shows on YouTube, the video game shows on the web, but there’s no video game shows on TV anymore. When you come home after school, you’re not seeing a show about video games. That used to be normal. And the video game industry has kind of inversely outpaced the TV focus on our industry. Like, we got a lot of focus in the ’90s when we weren’t that big. And now, we’re massive, and there’s nothing. So how do we increase mainstream media exposure of our industry when we’re massive, but there’s just no interest? I agree with Vic on that, it’s a little perplexing.

Rod Fergusson (Blizzard Entertainment’s general manager of Diablo, former longtime producer on Gears of War): I think it’s just trying to represent [Canadian developers] more. I tried to do that when I was in Vancouver at The Coalition. That’s my relationship with Victor [Lucas], and why [I was at Fan Expo] — the notion of being able to try to support the Canadian industry and try to have a little bit more representation. But we never really talked about [how] Gears 4 and Gears 5 were Canadian-made games. But you’re right. When you look at Vancouver and the BioWare stuff and all of the Ubisoft stuff in Montreal, there’s a lot of games here, but we don’t really trumpet it out that “There’s our Canadian games.” So I think it’s more about how we build recognition.

But again, it goes down to people. Because I am Canadian, and I tended to be the face of Gears, I tried to be a little bit more out there. But when you think about the two founders of BioWare who retired, the doctors [Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, who co-founded the studio alongside Augustine Yip]… There isn’t really a face of Ubisoft in Montreal. Who’s the personality? And so I think that’s something that’s missing — we don’t have the “movie director face” in the Canadian industry. Who’s the “Vancouver person?” Now that I’m not there, who’s the face of The Coalition right now? They don’t really have one. Who’s the face of all the other stuff? There’s a very great thriving industry in Vancouver, but there aren’t a lot of faces. So I think if we could get more personalities to pop, then we can bring more attention to it.

Megan Everett (director of community and live ops at London, Ontario’s Digital Extremes, Warframe): I didn’t even know DE existed and I’ve lived [in London] my entire life. I had no idea it existed. And for obvious reasons, we keep it a little more secret for safety reasons. But we’ve been trying more and more to kind of go that “Canadian grassroots” route [in DE’s popular community videos.] [Creative director] Rebb [Ford] has recently been saying a lot that we’re very “Wayne’s World” in our approach to how we appear and goof off and do that with our players. So I think we’re trying to leverage the more “Canadian-isms” that we have.

Leslie Quinton: We had an event [in 2022] where we brought fans in and it was amazing. They were taking pictures of computers that were turned off saying, ‘This is where Rainbow Six is made!” And they were so excited. So we want to show that openness, because there’s not at all a hidden agenda. And also, we need more people in tech. There are simply not enough people — not just in video games, but technology in general. So showing people all the interesting sides to it is obviously in our interest and the interest of the industry. So part of it is making sure we continue to be very visible — these university competitions we do [like the Ubisoft Game Lab Competition] have great visibility and are extremely appealing.

Matthieu Dupont (Gameloft Montreal studio head, Disney Dreamlight Valley): I feel putting forward the people who are making the game, so not only the studio heads and the execs, but also the Canadian developers, the Quebecois developers, the Ontarian developers that are working on the game, doing the code, the graphics, the design, [letting] them speak at events, gather them into cross-studio industry events… And hopefully, people start to notice. We have a lot of success, but if you ask players, they don’t necessarily know where the game has been made. Sometimes they don’t care as well; they just want to enjoy the game. But even industry-wise, I think we can do better of giving the mic to developers and let them speak for themselves.

Jennifer Hale: One of the things I want to do is reach out to indie devs in Canada, especially. I want to work with Canadian indie devs. I want to support them. It’s not even about me having a role in the game. What I want to focus on is, “How can I support you? How can we all connect?” I have witnessed — quite directly, unfortunately — a disconnect between the Canadian actors union in B.C. and indie developers. I experienced some quite antagonistic stuff that shocked me, honestly, and made me want to reach very directly out to devs to see what I can do to support them.

Humberly González (Venezuelan-Canadian actress, Star Wars Outlaws, Ginny & Georgia): I really believe in Canadian talent — there are incredible artists there that maybe sometimes get overlooked because we’re on the other side of the border. But the reality is that they come to us and they cast locally because there is talent. Sometimes the odd one makes it out and they go, “Oh, my goodness,” or when I meet fans and I tell them that I’m based out of Toronto and that we shot the show here, or the movie here, or the game here, and they go, “Really?” And I go, “Yeah! A lot of our cast is actually Canadian.”

There are a lot of opportunities [in Canada]. There’s people who are such creators, especially in Toronto — there’s a very creative indie scene, and there’s people who go to school there and stay there and live there. And I think it is such a melting pot of so many different cultures and languages and food. I love Toronto, I love living [here].

Amanda Farough (Canadian game writer, producer, consultant and analyst, Strange Scaffold): We need to be loud, we need to be proud, and we need to keep moving that mission forward — that Canadian games are some of the best games in the world. 1000xResist wouldn’t exist if not for government funding, and, quite frankly, other Canadians taking a chance on a brand-new studio […] We need more of that: more Canadian stories, more stories that celebrate the mosaic of our culture, not the homogeny of our culture, because it’s not homogenous.

That is the thing that makes Canada so strong and so beautiful: we are telling distinctly Canadian stories through places like through stories like Venba. That is a distinctly Canadian story, but you wouldn’t know that unless you’re Canadian, unless you, too, grew up in your own diaspora, or you, too, grew up alongside a diaspora. I’m just a white girl from Kamloops, but my friends growing up, a good chunk of them [and] their families, were from all over the globe, and I grew up eating foods that other white kids weren’t eating, and it was such a beautiful education for the kind of life I wanted to live and the kind of life I wanted for my future children. And I love the mosaic of our culture, and we need more stories, more studios, more funding, and louder people to advocate for how amazing the Canadian mosaic is. And it doesn’t have to be stereotypical. Our stories are quiet. That’s what makes our stories so impactful, is that they’re quiet. They’re unassuming. But as Canadians and as Canadian developers, we have to be a lot louder!

Jeff Mundee (University of New Brunswick professor, co-founder of Fredericton’s Reframe Games, Noxia Somnia): The thing in New Brunswick is that there’s a lot of communities spread out, and so it’s hard to get people to group and do something more. There’s a lot of hidden game development talent and a lot of game development projects that are hiding out. And I believe that we are stronger together. I want to really push for bringing the groups together and making a go of New Brunswick of being more than just a supplier of talents [and] making more games here.

Better promote existing funding opportunities

Remy Siu: I think it’s important [to talk about funding] because I really do like thinking about logistics, constraints, and context, and how all those things may affect an artwork. In my previous artistic life, I would watch documentaries about big-name visual artists, working at huge scales, intersecting huge sites, and it would always be awe inspiring, but sometimes I wish they showed how the whole thing was funded — the mundane side of it — how was it produced?

I want to see artists in meetings talking to stakeholders and institutions. How did they convince people to do it? To fund it? Maybe that might seem boring to the general watching audience, but I’m sometimes worried that the general populace may think an artist has an idea and then just kind of waves their hand and makes it happen. Whereas, in my experience, most artists are working within tight constraints, and how they deal with those constraints have as much to do with the art as anything.

Manda Farough: There are so many studios out there that are dying because there is no money, and the money that is out there is from really questionable places sometimes. I’m not saying universally, but in the United States, which is where I live now, there’s no grants. There’s no funding down here. We don’t have the Canada Media Fund down here. We don’t have Ontario Creates. We don’t have B.C. arts funds.

Sasha Boersma (co-founder of Toronto’s Sticky Brain Studios, Rooster): [Our point-and-click Chinese culture and community game Rooster] is heavy on art and animation and wanting it to look right and feel right, so it’s all that finessing. We’ve made 12 minigames with very, very, very simple mechanics. But it’s the magic around it. That’s really what’s taxing on the dev team, and so we just put our decisions in a different place. And we can do that thanks to the Canada Media Fund and Ontario Creates — we’re not beholden to what a publisher says we can give. We can try something different, which is why CMF calls it “envelope innovation.” We’re innovating in a way that no publisher would ever give us funding to be able to try.

Funké Joseph: If you’re from Canada, there’s a lot of opportunities to get funding — to prototype, to make something bigger that you want to get commercial — in so many different places in our country. Because not many other places have those opportunities. So I think especially if you’re in Canada, look into those different grants and funding options, and apply. Sometimes, people are like, “I don’t know if I should apply.” Apply! They want people to apply to these things because otherwise, they’re not going to be giving out money. They just want creative projects, a lot of these funders. So if you have that fire, there’s people that can help fund you for “X amount of time” to make that into whatever you want with that idea. So I just want people to know what’s possible and look it up.

Lucie Lalumière: Canada has the techno-creative talent. We have the entrepreneurial drive. But we’re not yet seizing the full market opportunity in front of us. The global video game industry now generates more revenue than the film and music industries combined, a clear signal of its cultural influence and economic weight.

Take Ontario as an example. While it produces globally successful games across all genres and platforms; develops top-tier techno-creative talent; and represents roughly 40 per cent of Canada’s population; it holds only about 20 per cent of the country’s video game jobs. To bridge that gap and truly compete on a global scale, we need to: cut red tape around existing business incentives; remove barriers to interprovincial collaboration, take bold action to attract and encourage investment and support inbound and outbound international business development.

Scott Christian: In so many ways, gaming is borderless. I would love a robust domestic publishing scene, but I don’t think that would have as much impact as increased investment and support for CMF and Ontario Creates grant funding. I think this is what would seed more Canadian and Ontario teams and projects and would have the biggest positive impact.

Lil’ Guardsman was supported by a traditional publisher model, which is less and less the norm these days it seems. With Hilltop’s latest project, we applied for these grants, and were successful with one. It’s a lifeline for Canadian developers, and coupled with the OIDMTC (Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit), these programs make it possible for small teams like ours to thrive. These programs work to guarantee that games jobs aren’t leaving the country (or the province with Ontario Creates), which I think is important.

Lucie Lalumière: Ontario’s video game ecosystem stands out for its highly skilled and innovative techno-creative talent, diverse and globally minded workforce, entrepreneurial spirit, and economic development incentives, including the new Ontario Creates IP Development Fund and the Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit.

However, many studios are currently experiencing significant delays in the processing of the tax credit. These delays slow investment in talent and IP development, undermining the credit’s effectiveness and limiting Ontario’s ability to fully capitalize on growing global opportunities. At a time when the video game sector can meaningfully contribute to Ontario’s economy and innovation agenda, this bottleneck is especially concerning. The Ontario government has acknowledged the issue and pledged to address it. The industry is hopeful that a timely solution will help restore this key incentive’s full effectiveness in supporting the growth of Ontario’s video game ecosystem.

Introduce new funding opportunities, like an actual Canadian publisher, to drive further investment

Mathieu Côté (Montreal’s Behaviour Interactive — game director and head of partnerships on Dead by Daylight): Most of those big companies [in Canada] are not Canadian. Ubisoft is right next door here — they’re French, for the most part. You have Warner Bros., that’s set up not very far away, but they’re American. You’ve got Electronic Arts that has an office, Amazon Games is literally across the street. We have NetEase right there. There’s more and more of those gigantic studios from around the world, which is amazing because it yields a lot of really cool talent, and it makes people grow and it gives people jobs here. But it’s really, really cool to be part of one of the rare Canadian Quebec companies that is still, to this day, very much a Canadian company.

Miriam Verburg (CEO and executive producer, Toronto’s Bloom Digital Media, Disney Villains Cursed Cafe): I’ve long supported the idea of developing a publishing fund in Canada […] We could access support for publishing by banding together to create cooperatives to publish together — creating marketing resources that we can share so that we can go out to the wider world with a little bit more ease. And localized games. There is no way to get support for game localization in Canada — like nothing — unless you get a publisher.

So if you have a game that’s in English and you want to localize it, you’re just footing the bill yourself and taking that out of revenue, unless you get a publisher, and there are no Canadian publishers. So then if you want to localize your game, you’re going to a publisher in a different country to get your game localized, to get it published, and then that publisher is taking between 50 to 70 per cent of your launch day profits. How can we grow the industry, then? How could we get attention to Canadian games, if we are unwilling to fund anything to do with their sale of marketing? If all we do is go, ‘Okay, let’s, let’s fund production, let’s figure out how to get things made, and then it’s up to the game producers.’

Manda Farough: Let’s be real. What is our publishing landscape at home? It doesn’t really exist [And] what generally tends to go into the back half of putting a game together is you need things like release management — publishing services can do that. You need help with PR, help with marketing, help with working with influencers, localization, quality assurance, localization quality assurance. So I feel like putting together shared resources among developers that have already learned these lessons gives everybody access to knowledge, even if they don’t have access to the services themselves […]

Because I think that for the most part, publishing is going to continue to be sparse. There aren’t a ton of independent developers left in the major cities in Canada — all over the place, we’re not even just looking at Ontario or even Quebec. In my home province [B.C.], there were a lot of independent studios once upon a time. It’s too expensive. It’s too expensive to be a developer in Canada a lot of the time, and to scale that, you need equity and you need investment. And that’s also another thing that’s really difficult, private investment, and that’s very difficult to come by in Canada […] Being able to pool those resources is a way to make sure that we’re elevating Canadian developers, and not necessarily putting them at risk, which is nice.

Remy Siu: I think we have to figure out a way for banks to bridge-fund indie games at reasonable interest rates, especially based on the milestone systems that most of these funding bodies work on. Both in film and in indie games, the funding bodies expect some level of bridge funding and that can be difficult to get, or expensive […] I’m also not sure why there aren’t more publishers in Canada. I wonder if the digital media tax credits can be extended to those types of entities, for their labour spend (if they don’t already). I will say in Canada, I think we have a lot of self-publishing indie stars! Venba, Slay the Princess, Celeste, and more. Perhaps the culture and environment here does foster the self-publishing indie spirit.

Lucie Laumière: Even if more Canadian publishers were to emerge, independent video game studios would still choose partners based not on geography, but on fit. Does the publisher understand the genre? Do they have the right platform relationships? Can they effectively reach the players and influencers in their target markets? Publishing is a global business, and most publishers, Canadian or otherwise, select games based on their market potential, not national origin, unless incentivized to do otherwise.

The greater challenge for indie studios isn’t the absence of large-scale Canadian publishers, but the need for more robust support for IP development and commercialization. Today, most publishers expect some level of market validation before committing to a title. That means indie studios must invest early in iterative, market-tested prototyping, marketing and community building to demonstrate a game’s potential. So why not self-publish? Many studios now assume they will, knowing that strong market traction can help attract publishers or investors down the line, and give them greater leverage to negotiate favourable terms if they choose to pursue those partnerships.

To keep pace with these industry dynamics, Canada must strengthen its strategic investment in programs like those offered by the Canada Media Fund, particularly to expand support for video game prototyping, marketing and community building. These investments play a critical role in helping Canadian studios bring original IP to market, scale their businesses, and compete in a fast-moving global industry.

Have more events, especially for consumers

Carl-Edwin Michel: I actually had that discussion with one of the studios that is coming on board [the CGAs] and they were saying to me that [business-to-business], for them, was the most important thing. Because that’s where they get investors and the support to get their game created. And they were really like, ‘Yeah, the consumer is always going to be there. People are going to buy games. We have the community, it’s fine.

And also, we’re a smaller country when you compare us to the U.S. So a PAX or some of those big events, they go to where they think there’ll be a lot of people coming in, and also that they can generate a lot of revenue. I wasn’t in the books of [EGLX], but it was the last big consumer event that we had right in the country. We don’t have to go crazy. We can do something that is decent size and go from there. For me, the Eh! Game Expo [a free public exhibition of demos in Toronto] is a start, and I have a plan to make this thing grow. But I want to grow it organically, and I’m not going to fake it and put investment money to it, and just go to [Scotiabank Arena] or whatever and do something crazy.

Allie Wilde (PR and marketing lead at Montreal’s Studio Exnilo, Strand): Events like the Eh! Expo are huge for indie devs, especially in Canada, where we don’t have many consumer-facing opportunities like this. Conferences can be really expensive, and like other indie teams, we can’t just dig up loot buried in our backyard to fund every event. So when something like the Eh! Expo comes along, giving us a chance to showcase our game to
real players without breaking the bank, it’s massively valuable.

Getting direct access to our community and sharing the game hands-on is one of the most
important assets we have. As a small team working from home, that can be tough. Seeing
players experience Strand in person, watching their reactions, and hearing real-time
feedback is crazy valuable. It helps us refine the experience and makes all the difference in
shaping the game into something truly special.
Beyond just our game, though, there is so much Canadian talent out there. So many
emerging studios, all creating amazing work, and we’re all incredibly keen to lift each other
up. More events like this wouldn’t just help individual studios, they’d strengthen the entire
Canadian gaming scene. We believe “more is more” when it comes to these kinds of
opportunities, and we’d love to see even more public-facing gaming events in Canada in the
future.

Scott Christian: The return of the Canadian Game Awards this year had an impact, and I dream (and scheme) about a “Canadian Indie Games festival” and awards event with a specific focus on Canada’s robust indie game scene.

Lucie Lalumière: We’re beginning to see a welcome resurgence of [business to consumer] video game expos in Canada, most notably Game Con Canada in Alberta and the newly announced Video Game Live Expo (VGLX) in Ontario. There are also an increasing number of opportunities for players to engage with games in development, such as The G.R.I.D., a new playtesting-focused event in Toronto […] The province also showcases unique initiatives such as Level Up Showcase, the largest exhibition of student-made games in Canada [and Digital Extremes’] TennoCon, the country’s largest fan event organized by a studio, drawing thousands from around the world to London each year [for Warframe]…

On the [business to business] front, Interactive Ontario and our peers at the Canadian Interactive Alliance/l’Alliance Interactive Canadienne (CIAIC) are actively working with XP Gaming Inc. and the Government of Canada to bring international publishers to Canada. Our goal is to create cost-effective, high-impact business opportunities for developers at flagship events like XP Game Summit. Programs like Ontario Creates’ Global Market Development are also essential in supporting international business development, and would benefit from enhanced investment to meet growing demand.

That said, the way games are promoted and discovered is evolving. Large-scale in-person/online hybrid showcases like Summer Game Fest; fully digital showcases like Wholesome Games; and global digital storefront campaigns, such as a potential Canada-focused Steam Sale, are becoming vital tools for reaching players, influencers, and industry partners worldwide. That’s why we’re also excited to see new hybrid initiatives emerging in Canada, such as Pixel Power Play in Toronto, which blends public-facing engagement with digital amplification, connecting fans, creators, and influencers, while showcasing Canada’s creative excellence to the world.

Megan Everett: Having [our Warframe fan event TennoCon] in London does feel special, because this is where DE has always been. And it gives back to the community, a little bit. It boosts London for hotels, and travel, and people just learn about London. And we try, as we’re doing TennoCon, to let people know best restaurants to go to, bars to go to, libraries to go to. So we’re trying to give back to London as they’ve kind of given us this space. So it’s special to us. And it also is really nice for the employees here being able to bring their family and their friends to it, because most of us are local. So we’re able to have like one big celebration, and you just can’t beat being at home. It’s very comfortable. And logistically, it just makes sense.

Dan Vader (game director at Toronto’s Capybara Games, Battle Vision Network): What I love about [something like] Day of the Devs [a non-profit promoting indies] is it puts faces to who makes your games — it shows you the real human beings that are making these things that you love, where they’re from, and I think that’s a great way to demystify the process of making games. It’s just a bunch of people who are inspired to make cool things.

There are so many Canadian developers making so many games big and small, and I often get surprised when I find out that this game I’m playing is actually not just from a Canadian dev, but a Toronto dev. I even get surprised by that, and I’m in the industry. And I think if more Canadians, especially young Canadians, knew how big it was, how many opportunities there might be, it might steer the course of their lives. Because when I grew up, I didn’t think video games were made in Canada, I thought they were made somewhere very far off — it was not possible to get into them. And the truth is that there are multitudes of games being made in Canada.

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These responses have been slightly edited for clarity and length.

Update: 02/06/2025 at 2:16 p.m. ET — This story previously mentioned that Leslie Quinton was VP of talent acquisition and communication at Ubisoft Montreal, but her current title is Ubisoft’s VP of communications, North America. This story has been updated accordingly.