Montreal

IGDA-Montreal co-chair Jason Della Rocca will be hosting IndieCamp: A Game Business Workshop on June 1st in Montreal, as part of Centre NAD’s Elite masterclass series. The focus will be on funding, marketing, distribution and other business related topics for garage and indie developers.

For full details, panelist listing and to register jump to bit.ly/IndieCamp. IGDA members can select the "partner organization" to get the discounted rate.

The video of Funcom's "Inside the Secret World panel" is now available via our Vimeo account.

The First Annual Ottawa Game Conference (OGC), to be held at the Ottawa Convention Center on May 29, 2012, recently announced its speaker lineup, including keynotes from Gabe Zichermann, author and gamification expert, and Jason Della Rocca, founder of Perimeter Partners and former Executive Director of the IGDA.

Combining speakers from Ottawa firms and developers around the world, the conferences' business and content tracks will explore a variety of topics in gaming trends, including social game design, location-based gaming, vehicle-embedded gaming, multi-screen experience design, web, console, PC, mobile and more.

For complete details and to register, check out: http://ottawagameconference.com/

GRAND 2012 is Canada's leading conference on digital media research, innovation and new technology. The focus of GRAND is to:

• Connect with top Canadian researchers from a variety of new media disciplines.
• Learn about the latest advancements in digital media research. More than 100 academic posters and demos will be on display.
• Discover how GRAND technology can help your business or organization.

GRAND would like to invite members of the game development community who are interested in connecting with the research community to the conference's opening reception:

When: Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Time: 6PM – 9PM
Where: Le Centre Sheraton, 1201 Boulevard Rene-Levesque West

When: Tuesday, April 24th - 6:30pm doors/food/drinks open | 7:30pm presentation begins
What: IGDA-Montreal Presentation Night
Where: The SAT, 1201 St.Laurent
Why: An inside look at Funcom's The Secret World
Who: All game developers, and those related to the game industry
Entry: free for IGDA members; $5 for non-members

"Inside The Secret World"

by Stephen Wark

Nathan Vella and Kris Piotrowski sat, drinks in hand, and told an eager IGDA Montreal crowd about all the wonderful things that can be accomplished with a little beer, and a lot of friends. The co-founders of Toronto's Capybara Games hastened to add that the "beer" part of their talk, titled "Beers with Friends" was not mandatory, but the "friends" were absolutely essential.

"Beers with Friends" is the catchy summation of the history of Capybara Games, creators of indie blockbuster-darlings Critter Crunch on XBLA and the Sword & Sworcery collaboration with Superbrothers, and the founders' philosophy. Nathan explained at the outset that in the small, tight-knit game dev community, everyone in that industry will help a friend, especially if you're working on something cool and interesting, because the really cool projects are surprisingly rare.

A 48-hour game jam inspired by the works of @petermolydeux is being hosted across the globe the weekend of March 31st. Jamming will commence Friday evening and continue through Sunday evening. The Montreal site is being hosted at the Notman House by Renaud Bedard. See the Montreal Molydeux Facebook page for complete details.

The video of Capy's "The Indie Way: Beers with Friends" is now available via our Vimeo account.

TECHNOCompétences est fier d’accueillir Jesse Schell, sommité internationale et auteur du livre The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses le 13 avril prochain à Montréal dans le cadre de son projet de classes de maîtres en jeu vidéo. Cette 6e classe de maître organisée par TECHNOCompétences amènera les participants à décortiquer le processus de création d’un jeu et considérer ses différentes perspectives grâce aux « 100 lentilles » proposées par M. Schell dans le but d’en améliorer la qualité. Pour tous les détails, visitez le www.technocompetences.qc.ca/formations/jeuvideo