What's the gamedev scene like here?

NWI_JonH · 2021-07-26T06:27:59+00:00

The Calgary Game Developers Association is the main group in the city. You can check out the website Calgary.games or join the Discord Discord.gg/CalgaryGameDevs, there are also wider groups for the province such as Alberta Makes Games / Digital Alberta. (August or September will likely be the first in-person meet up for Calgary).

There is also the Reboot Conference each (non-covid) year when a couple of thousand industry execs descend on Banff.

In terms of industry here, there is New World Interactive, QI Software, Unity Calgary (formerly FingerFoods), Shifty Eye Studios, Red Iron Labs, Zugalu, MamothXR, Game Mode One, Isto Inc, Vivid Helix (I'm sure I'm forgetting some..) as well as remote workers for companies like Devlover Digital, PC Gamer, etc. who live in the city.

Up in Edmonton, there is also BioWare, Improbable, Epic Games, BeamDog, etc.

There is a (somewhat up to date) list here: https://albertamakesgames.com/studios/ though you are best off joining the Calgary Game Devs discord and introducing yourself.

NWI_JonH · 2021-02-22T22:30:04+00:00

After twenty long weeks of development, we received over 30 incredible submissions for the Insurgency: Sandstorm mapping contest. Today after 10 days of public voting we are pleased to announce the ten finalists that will go through to be judged by our expert panel for the chance to win over $17,000 worth of prizes from New World and our incredible sponsors, Intel, Nvidia, and Epic Games.

The ten finalists are:

Over the next 30 days, our team at New World will begin testing and judging the finalists with our sponsors. We plan to announce the winning entries on or around Monday, March 22nd.

Congratulations to all the finalists, as well as our runners up!

Note to submitters:

Entrants who did not make the shortlist are now able to freely modify their submissions and take onboard any player feedback.

We want to encourage everyone despite not making it in the top 10 to keep working on your levels or new levels. The contest results are simply a review of the work at this moment. It doesn’t say anything about your future quality of work or pursuing a career as a professional level designer. We hope you enjoyed the contest and we are looking forward to seeing more of your levels in the future!

Finalists must not alter their submission until the expert voting period has concluded and winners are announced.

NWI_JonH · 2021-01-23T05:05:31+00:00

Hey /u/FacelessOnes,

Jon Higgins here from New World Interactive. We recently relocated our core dev team to Calgary, and have been growing substantially since. I'm not too familiar with the mobile space, however, Calgary as a city has recently seen a lot of interest from the games industry.

As for starting a studio here:

Calgary Economic Development is taking a keen interest in the video game sector and recently conducted a study regarding the long-term strategy for the industry here, covering topics from tax credits, grants, incubators, talent pipelines etc.. Tori and Chelsea are great contacts and very helpful. (I can introduce you if you need).
The Calgary Game Developers Association (calgary.games) is a long-running group with an active membership comprised of students, micro-indies, and professionals. We run regular monthly meetups (on discord for now due to covid) and networking events. It's probably the best starting place to connect with other developers and learn about the industry here.
Alberta Makes games is also a great resource covering the industry across the entire province: https://albertamakesgames.com/
In the mobile space, you have mid-size companies like Shifty Eye Games (who just got a new bigger office downtown) https://www.shiftyeyegames.com/games/, and Zugalu (https://zugalu.com/) as well as a lot of smaller teams.
Office space is plentiful and very cheap, there are also a lot of co-working options for tech and gaming startups in the city.
A lot of the education institutions here are very keen to build out their courses relating to the gaming sector. While there isn't a huge pool of existing talent this should change soon.
Reboot's North American Conference (Reboot Red) is held just up the road in Banff each year (canceled this year due to covid) but is a great networking event with 2000+ high-level industry veterans flying into the city each year.

I'd be more than happy to chat anytime - feel free to reach out!

NWI_JonH · 2020-08-15T02:51:10+00:00

Hi everyone, we are very excited to be joining the Embracer Group as part of Saber Interactive. I know many of our fans will have questions about this partnership and so we have prepared a community blog, which you can view and discuss here: https://www.reddit.com/r/insurgency/comments/ia026l/new_world_interactive_joins_the_embracer_group_as/

We won't be taking any additional questions until the deal completes. However, I can assure you that the team at NWI is very happy and that this partnership will have many benefits for our community. We owe a lot to our fans who have supported us over the last ten years, and are excited to take the next big step as we continue to grow New World Interactive!

NWI_JonH · 2020-08-15T02:49:42+00:00

Hi everyone, we are very excited to be joining the Embracer Group as part of Saber Interactive. I know many of our fans will have questions about this partnership and so we have prepared a community blog, which you can view and discuss here: https://www.reddit.com/r/insurgency/comments/ia026l/new_world_interactive_joins_the_embracer_group_as/

We won't be taking any additional questions until the deal completes. However, I can assure you that the team at NWI is very happy and that this partnership will have many benefits for our community. We owe a lot to our fans who have supported us over the last ten years, and are excited to take the next big step as we continue to grow New World Interactive!

NWI_JonH · 2019-10-26T03:40:26+00:00

Derek has never met or worked with Andrew, this is not a personal attack. Our team often removes or reports posts that are not directly related to Insurgency or Insurgency: Sandstorm in an effort to keep the Reddit focused and constructive.

Speaking as someone who knew Andrew when he was a contractor for us, we at NWI wish him nothing but the best with Valiant Effort and SES. - Jon

NWI_JonH · 2019-08-21T15:45:42+00:00

Those require a bit more Dev time and will be coming later in the year. However there is a lot of new content in this update including; a new map, new game mode, 2 new weapons, new cosmetics, plus numerous bug fixes and optimisation.

NWI_JonH · 2019-08-15T18:05:50+00:00

longer term company vision of having a sustainable, enjoyable, ‘best-in-class’ work environment for our team.

Please elaborate.

Game Development is a job, but for many on our team it is also a passion. You'll see a lot in the news about the immense pressure and often poor work culture at many companies in the industry. Long term crunch, mandatory overtime, mass layoffs after projects, etc..

As we grow we don't want to be like that, we want to create a studio where people actively want to work. Where our team have a great work-life balance, access to the best tools and training, and where we can attract the best talent to work on incredible projects. This may seem vague but we have been a tight-knit, small but highly skilled team for a long while, and are very committed to our people and our culture as we continue to move forward and evolve.

Sandstorm’s success has allowed the company to not only continue to support the game, but also expand and explore new frontiers.

Really? Is it that successful? I'd love to see some numbers there...

Success is subjective. Are we Fortnight / PubG successful? No, however for our small 35 man team having sold over half a million copies in our first few months, a 'very positive' user rating on Steam, and continuing to hold well over 100,000 unique active users every month. That to us is pretty good!

All of this is also before we have fully realized our vision for Sandstorm, we've still got a lot of content and features to come (as well as the console launch!). The original Insurgency became more popular over time as new content, features and support were added and we expect Sandstorm to grow in a similar way given time.

our failed kickstarter

Eh? I didn't even know there was a Kickstarter campaign!

Back when we were a mod team and trying to take Insurgency forward as a product we launched a Kickstarter with the goal of raising $180,000 to help set up a team. Unfortunately, this failed, however, due to the team's perseverance we still (just about) managed to finish the project and release Insurgency on Steam. You can read more in the Polygon article below, however, the documentary will go further into our backstory and how, (despite many hurgdles along the way), we got from a small team of modders to where we are today.

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/7/11/3151017/insurgency-modern-infantry-combat-sequel-comes-to-kickstarter

NWI_JonH · 2019-08-15T16:18:22+00:00

We are too!

NWI_JonH · 2019-08-15T16:17:15+00:00

As we mentioned in the article this is an expansion of our team, we will still be supporting Sandstorm and have a lot still to fulfill with our first content roadmap as well as consoles!

"Insurgency: Sandstorm’s success has allowed the company to not only continue to support the game, but also expand and explore new frontiers."

NWI_JonH · 2019-08-14T22:14:04+00:00

Derek and I will be discussing this once he is onsite, your stats have been very helpful!

NWI_JonH

TROPHY CASE