NAGIS: What Year One Looks Like

May 31

A New Games Industry Event

The North American Games Industry Summit is coming to Edmonton this June. NAGIS is a dedicated B2B event designed to bring developers, publishers, investors, and industry partners to Alberta — attached to Game Con Canada, which is now locked in through 2031 at the Edmonton Expo Centre.

It's a significant moment for the Alberta game industry. Edmonton already has 45 active studios and 32 games in active development, according to Edmonton Screen Industries Office. Studios like Caldera Interactive and Basement Bunker Labs are building here. The infrastructure exists. What's been missing is a venue to bring the business side of the industry home. NAGIS is that venue.

What NAGIS Actually Is

Marc Belisle and Chris Meilleur from Meibel Consulting — the Alberta-based event company behind Game Con Canada — have been working toward a dedicated B2B event since the show's earliest days. The model draws from Gamescom's business component in Germany, adapted for the North American market. The goal for year one: create a neutral playground where Canadian developers can meet international publishers, pitch their games, and do real business.

NAGIS runs June 18–19 at the Edmonton Expo Centre. Game Con Canada picks up immediately after, running June 19–21. NAGIS badge holders get full access to both events.

Xsolla, one of the leading games commerce companies globally, is the title sponsor. John Nguyen, Regional Vice President of Canada at Xsolla, described the company's read on Alberta plainly: the province is underserved relative to the talent that already exists here. BioWare, New World Interactive, BeamDog — Edmonton has produced games that have had global impact. NAGIS is part of bringing the industry conversation back to where some of it started.

What It Means for Indie Developers in Alberta

The most consistent theme across the entire conversation is accessibility. GDC in San Francisco costs thousands of dollars to attend. Gamescom in Germany is more. For indie studios in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, or Lethbridge, those trips are often out of reach.

NAGIS puts that opportunity in Western Canada's backyard. Edmonton Screen, the Alberta Ministry of Technology and Innovation, Saskatchewan Interactive, and ASUS ROG are sponsoring turnkey booth spaces — meaning smaller studios can show their games to publishers and VCs without funding a full convention presence themselves. As of the recording, 55 studios had confirmed booth spaces, with more expected before launch.

Ronnie Villanueva from Edmonton Screen put it plainly: for a studio trying to grow, NAGIS becomes a date on your calendar to work backwards from. You set milestones. You build toward it. And if a publisher walks past your booth and wants to know more, that's a conversation that wouldn't have happened without the event existing.

The Speaker Lineup and What Indie Devs Should Know

The programming at NAGIS is built around what indie developers actually need — not just inspiration, but operational knowledge. That came through clearly in the conversation with Marc and Chris.

Three confirmed highlights:

Brent Bushnell, son of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, speaking on the future of gaming and his family's continued role in the industry.
BioWare founders reunion — original founders of the Edmonton studio discussing what they built, what they'd do differently, and what they see ahead.
Toni Dominich, a Hollywood talent agent whose client list includes a significant portion of the Marvel cast. She's running a dedicated panel alongside YDB from the Wu-Tang Clan — who just finished voice acting for SEGA's Shinobi — on the intersection of film and video games.
The Toni Dominich panel deserves its own mention. The practical angle is this: indie developers almost never have a path to working with recognizable talent because the standard agency route is prohibitively expensive. You meet your first agent, you hear a number like $150,000, and the conversation ends before it starts. What Dominich is bringing to NAGIS is a blueprint for a different approach — working with talent on points-based strategies instead of flat fees, navigating the system without getting steamrolled by it. Every attendee leaves with a digital handbook. If you're an indie dev who's ever thought about voice acting or narrative talent and immediately ruled it out on budget, this is the session to be in the room for.

Beyond those three headliners: speakers on breaking into the Chinese market, community engagement for mid-level studios, crowdfunding, legal representation, and accounting. The full Thursday programming is curated around the gaps that tend to hold indie developers back. As Marc put it — they have the event expertise, so they leaned on the advisory panel to identify what developers actually need to hear. That's the filter the whole lineup was built through.

Building an Esport Game Before Esports Was a Business

One of the more unexpected moments in the episode came when the esports conversation opened up a personal story from John Nguyen.

His studio, early in his career, was building a mech game. Not a mech game as a side project — a mech game designed from the ground up for competitive play, built around the Heavy Gear franchise lore of mech dueling. Customizable builds, team stables, competitive ladders. The whole architecture was oriented toward what we now call esports. And at the time, Bay Street was pouring money into esports companies following the successes in Asia, so the timing made a certain kind of sense. He took that team public and became a publisher in the process.

That backstory matters in the NAGIS context. John isn't an infrastructure executive who wandered into gaming. He's someone who built a competitive esports title before the category had a name, watched the industry evolve, and now runs the Canadian operation for one of the most consequential back-end companies in the global game business. The Mass Effect tattoo sleeve is real. The commitment to Alberta is real.

And just to round out the picture: he also runs a Jedi school with his wife and is bringing lightsabers to Game Con. Make of that what you will.

The B2B Infrastructure Behind NAGIS

Meet2Match is the co-producer of NAGIS and the world's leading B2B matchmaking platform for the games industry. They facilitate structured one-on-one meetings between developers, publishers, and investors at events globally. At GDC, their lounge was next door to Xsolla's. At NAGIS, they're integrated from the ground up.

For developers who haven't traveled the international conference circuit, Meet2Match removes the guesswork. You book meetings in advance. You show up prepared. The platform turns a conference floor into actual business conversations rather than hoping you bump into the right person. And the Meet2Match B2B Lounge stays open throughout all of Game Con Canada — the business side doesn't end when NAGIS closes.

One Voice for the Advocacy Conversation Nobody Said Out Loud

Chris Meilleur made a point in the episode worth holding onto. Alberta has strong organizations — Digital Alberta, the Calgary Game Developer Association, Edmonton Game Camp, Scaffold, Edmonton Screen. They're all doing real work. But for the most part, they've been operating as independent pockets. The goal for NAGIS year one, beyond the event itself, is to create a vehicle that brings those organizations together as one voice.

That framing matters because of what's behind it. Ronnie Villanueva was direct about the stakes: Alberta hasn't had a provincial incentive program for the game industry in roughly six years. Other provinces have had programs in place for decades, with measurable outcomes for their industries. That gap is real, and it's been felt.

NAGIS doesn't fix that on its own. But it puts the industry in the same room, creates new visibility for what's already being built here, and — as Ronnie put it — gives communities something to come together around that can reopen the conversation with the province. He was careful about exactly how he said it. The point landed anyway.

The NorQuest Esports Shutdown

The episode doesn't sidestep recent news. NorQuest College shut down its esports program, including associated personnel departures. Cory addressed it directly: it's a setback. NorQuest was a genuine pillar of organized esports in Edmonton — a community hub, an academic pathway, and an early supporter of Game Con Canada back when the show was still proving itself in Calgary.

The consensus from the table: it hurts, but the esports community in Edmonton is resilient. Organizations like Overklocked Gaming and the Edmonton Fighting Game Community are continuing their work. Game Con Canada is moving forward with significant esports programming, including an ASUS ROG finals on the Sunday that is expected to be one of the larger Alberta esports tournaments since pre-COVID. The NorQuest closure doesn't change the direction. It does reinforce why events that bring these communities together consistently are worth protecting.

What Year One Success Looks Like

The episode closes with everyone at the virtual roundtable answering the same question: what does year one success look like for you?

Ronnie's answer was the one that landed. He came back to the idea of rising tides. These kinds of opportunities don't show up often. The fact that Game Con chose Edmonton over Calgary — and chose to stay — is a privilege worth taking seriously. Success for him looks like communities showing up, even just to attend, because that act of showing up is itself a contribution to something being built. He noted that he's entered tournaments at Game Con, lost, and it was still a good time. Business and pleasure overlap in this industry. Lean into it.

Chris framed it around delivery: doing the work at the caliber they've promised, taking ego out of the equation, making sure partners walk away knowing something real is being built. Year one is the foundation. Year two and three are when it takes shape.

John wanted to see Edmonton on the global conference map as a sustainable destination. Not just a one-time event, but a place that international partners put on their annual circuit. He talked about multi-million dollar deals being signed on the show floor as a long-term possibility — not hype, just a straight read of what a well-run B2B summit attached to Canada's largest gaming convention could become.

Marc kept it simple: execute on the B2B, make sure everyone's objectives are met, go to the industry night on Thursday, then spend the rest of the weekend playing games. That's the recipe. Do your homework. Then play.

Get Involved

The North American Games Industry Summit runs June 18–19 at the Edmonton Expo Centre. Game Con Canada runs June 19–21. Your NAGIS badge covers both events.

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north american games industry summitgame con canadaB2B games event

Cory Sellar