Montreal

When: Tuesday, May 21st - 6:30pm doors/food/drinks open | 7:30pm presentation begins
What: IGDA-Montreal Presentation Night
Where: The SAT, 1201 St.Laurent
Why: Playdom's Tamir Nadav on mobile/social development
Who: All game developers, and those related to the game industry
Entry: free for IGDA members; $5 for non-members

"Bringing Mobile/Social Games to Life: Making the Transition to Live-Ops"

By Salvador Garcia-Martinez

On April 24, we had a very interesting and motivating presentation by Simon Darveau, creative director of Spearhead Games and previously working extensively on the Assassin's Creed franchise and other games at Ubisoft. The main goal of this presentation was to introduce the audience to the integration of effective prototyping during the game’s development process.

Simon started talking about his experience prototyping games, kindly shared a number of tips to integrate prototyping in the game development process, and finally answered some questions from the audience.

Did you know there's an awesome and rapidly-growing conference at a 2 hour drive from Montreal? Check out the Ottawa International Game Conference, May 29-31.

Also did you know that IGDA members get a 20% discount? Use code "GAMEONOTTAWA" to claim your discount when registering.

The study in 2012 on the electronic game industry, unveiled today by TECHNOCompétences illustrates that the sector should experience a growth rate between 5% to 10% for 2013. Despite several announcements of layoffs and closures of studios in 2012, the industry experienced a spectacular growth rate of 9%.

Read the press release: http://www.technocompetences.qc.ca/actualite/etude_jeu_2012

Read the study: http://www.technocompetences.qc.ca/etudes/jeu/2012

by Stephen Wark

On March 27th, Autodesk is presenting The Unfold Event where you can catch an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at a thrilling new project, see live Autodesk 2014 workflow demonstrations, and the heated State of the Industry panel where experts will debate the future of the 3D industry. Drinks and snacks will be provided. Must register.

TechnoCompetences is hosting a masterclass on "Community Management and Customer Engagement for Online and Social Games" by Stephanie Bayer of PopCap Games. It is a full-day course on May 31st. Check out the full details via the class PDF.

The video of 2013 DemoNight! with all 14 game demo presentations is now available via our Vimeo account.

Over 400 local developers showed up at the SAT to check out the latest and greatest from 14 studios in Montreal. Teams had 7 minutes each to show off their work-in-progress games. It was a diverse mix from solo labors of love all the way up to massive AAA productions. Aside from each project being interesting in its own right, that spread of styles, genres, and scale is made the night especially interesting.

There were several post-even write-ups (that are much better than this one