Login / RegisterReboot Communications ponders future of Vancouver video game conventions
After producing video-game conventions in Vancouver since 2007, Reboot Communications scrapped plans for an event this year. In a phone interview, Carla Tadla, senior vice-president of operations for the Victoria-based company, told the Straight that the dynamics of the industry in Vancouver have shifted. “We need to shift with it,” she said.
The Vancouver International Game Summit took place in 2007 and 2008 and brought the local development community together for keynote presentations and workshops. In 2009 and 2010, Reboot partnered with UBM TechWeb, the San Francisco company that puts on Game Developers Conference events worldwide, to produce GDC Canada. Unemployed developers were offered complimentary passes to attend the GDC Canada events, which was not only an acknowledgment of contraction in the industry, but also a way to boost attendee numbers.
But the numbers weren’t large enough for UBM TechWeb. It pulled out, and last year Reboot morphed GDC Canada into the Canadian Games Conference. Those recently laid off from the industry were again offered free admission.
Reboot also produces the Canadian Videogame Awards with Victor Lucas’s Greedy Productions, but hasn’t ruled out a return to conference-organizing. “We are currently exploring options,” Tadla said, “for how to best offer a content-based event that meets the needs of a changing industry.”
