Village Gamer

Via DigiBC: We’ve all heard news circulating about the state of the BC video game industry in the wake of multiple studio closures and downsizing. When the global digital media industry is growing at over 11% per year, why does it feel like BC is slowly declining? Studios have been shutting down since 2009, including Radical, Rockstar, Propaganda, and Nokia Labs, as well as job losses and project cancellations from EA and Microsoft.

Vancouver has been one of the top video game clusters in the world, with the presence of major publishers, such as EA, Nintendo, THQ, Vivendi/Activision, Disney and Microsoft, but it’s leadership is now being eroded. For such a talented province as BC, what’s going on? And what does this mean for the future of the gaming industry in BC? Does our BC tax credit policy need to be more competitive?

Join DigiBC and a panel of local gaming executives at tomorrow evening’s Town Hall Meeting led by moderator Lance Davis (Slant Six Games). Discussion will centre around the state of the industry, outline how studios are being affected, what is being done behind the scene and most importantly capture your views and opinions on the future of BC’s video game industry.

Panelists

• Wil Mozell, Microsoft Studios
• John Lutz, Electronic Arts
• Brenda Bailey Gershkovitch, Silicon Sisters Interactive
• Matt Toner, Zeros 2 Heros Media
• Kenny Huang, Blue Bat Games
• Julian Ing, Eruptive Games
• Moderator: Lance Davis, Slant Six Games

Date: Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Time: 5:30 – 8:30 PM
Location: Vancouver Rowing Club – 450 Stanley Park Drive

Also participating is Rick Griffiths, Partner PwC, commenting on the economic benefits of Video Games to the BC economy.

Ticket Prices:

DigiBC Members: $10.00
Non-Members: $25.00
Unemployed: $5.00 – Please note that DigiBC will be checking that those purchasing these tickets are currently unemployed in the industry.

Village Gamer will be live tweeting the session via the Village Gamer Twitter page.