XP GAME DEVELOPER
SUMMIT

The XP team kicks off the event with a short word.

Moderator: Lucie Lalumiere  (Interactive Ontario)

Participants: Jayson Hilchie (ESAC), Vincent Regimbald (Behaviour Interactive), Dan Ayoub (Certain Affinity), Scott Nye (Inflexion)

The Canadian gaming industry has changed and evolved significantly over the last decade. The global pandemic has forced unprecedented changes to those working in the gaming sector across Canada. Join a panel of experts from across the country as they share their insights on what’s changed over the years, where we’re at post-pandemic and what’s still needed in our industry.

Moderator:David Campbell (MNP)

Participants: Nick Alfieri (Digerati), Michael Metzger (Drake Star Partners), Bill Wang (Skystone)

Across the world, investors of all sizes are currently looking for their next projects. Join a panel of publishers and investors as they share their past investment projects and what they’re actively looking for in their next investment or acquisition.

Presented by: Oz Syed, Game Dev Evangelist, Backtrace, Sauce Labs

Game companies spend a lot of money in the development of games and to acquire new players but do not focus enough on improving retention and gaming experience by addressing the biggest concern of any gamer: Errors and Crashes. Learn how 17 out of top 25 game companies use Backtrace to build a positive gaming experience, improve gamer retention and to help ensure overall success. Learn why Backtrace is the critical error and crash reporting tool that game dev teams need to incorporate into their projects of all sizes, platforms and scope.

Moderator: Mary Sorrenti (Gamepill)

Participants: Scott Nye (Inflexion), Keith Warner (New World Interactive), Guillaume Provost (Compulsion Games)

Being acquired is a major milestone for your company which often takes years of work to achieve. We’ve brought together a panel of experts which include executives that have recently gone through an acquisition. They will share what they considered prior to being acquired and the pros and cons of different acquisition deals.

Moderator

• Carl-Edwin Michel

Participants:
Sean Gauthier Neilson (Pixel Audio), Benjamin Denis (Edgegap), Nik Schmidt (Game On) and Michael Rodrigues (PleaseFix by Turbulent)

To create amazing games, studios need strategic partners to support them with non-core activities so they can focus on what they do best. Edgegap, Game On, Pixel Audio and PleaseFix by Turbulent will discuss how strategic partners can provide added value for gaming companies.

Presented by: Nik Palmer (Accelbyte)

With the move towards a more permanent work-from-home environment, with hybrid teams, fully remote teams and development spread across the world, we are seeing certain sections of the tech industry start to suffer from reduced development cadence. In particular Games Development teams are being affected from the slower development of their products. This is evident in both small and larger organisations.

Through this presentation we will look at:

– How teams have worked previously.

– What typical development looks like today. 

– Where the effects of the dispersal of game dev activities are seen most. 

– Solutions for games teams to explore.

Moderated by: Ryan Hill & Carolina Veliz (Gameloft Toronto)

XP is proud to host the XP Summit Student Games featuring Sheridan College’s fourth-year Honours Bachelor of Game Design students (Class of 2022) and their final capstone projects. During the panel, Sheridan game design student teams will share the unique game design challenges and video games they developed over the past academic year to a panel of industry professionals and attendees of the XP Game Summit.

Participants: Felix Kramer, Kim Belair, Louisa Atto, Evan Narcisse, Julia Minamata, Xalavier Nelson Jr.

The games industry is made up of thousands of walled gardens – fiefdoms full of secrets, where too often we find ourselves hard at work fixing the same problems… without ever sharing solutions with one another. Industry shifts often as a result of individual titles’ public success, but rarely behind closed doors, or as the result of inter-team collaborations. In this panel, five narrative professionals from the games industry and beyond, will explore what a more collaborative, open industry might look like– and ask how much better games could be if their productions weren’t locked behind closed doors?

Presented by: Victoria Tran (Innersloth)

What goes into the strategy of a Twitter account? How do you execute on it? What are the problems and joys of handling an enormous community while still being a small independent team? This talk by Innersloth’s Community Director will dive deep into the community engagement tactics they used for the Among Us Twitter account to grow it to over 1.4 million followers – and counting!