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The Power of Local Events in Building the Future of Gaming
22 Plays7 hours ago
🎧 Episode Description (Hook + Intro)
What if the biggest leaps in gaming don’t happen at global mega-conferences, but in regional rooms where developers, vendors, and communities connect in a meaningful way? In this episode of Player Driven, host Greg speaks with Jason Lepine, Founder & CEO of XP Gaming, about the real impact of local events and why they’re foundational to the future of the industry.
✅ What You’ll Get From This Episode
- A clear look at why local gaming conferences matter and how they differ from the big expos.
- A behind-the-scenes story of how XP Gaming and the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) were built and evolved.
- Insight into how vendors, sponsors, and local hubs create real value for studios and creators.
- Career lessons from Jason’s journey and how showing up to local events changed lives.
- A forward-looking discussion on how these grassroots gatherings shape the next era of gaming.
🧭 Episode Outline & Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction: Why local events matter
03:15 – The origin story of XP Gaming
07:40 – What MIGS is and how it’s evolved
13:05 – The vendor and sponsor role in local conferences
18:30 – Stories of impact: community, careers and connection
23:55 – Looking ahead: how local events will build the industry’s future
27:10 – Wrap-up and key takeaway
(Note: Timestamps are illustrative; please adjust to the final edited version.)
🎤 Guest Bio
Jason Lepine
Founder & CEO, XP Gaming
Jason Lepine is the driving force behind XP Gaming, a company dedicated to growing and connecting Canada’s game ecosystem through community-building, education and events. Under his leadership, XP Gaming has re-energized the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) and helped transform local industry gatherings into powerful growth platforms.
🔗 Resources & Links
- XP Gaming: xpgaming.biz
- Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS): migs.biz
- Follow Jason Lepine: LinkedIn
- Previous Episode on Game Community & LiveOps: [Link to Episode #XX]
🎯 Call to Action
If you found value in this episode, please hit Subscribe, leave a review in your podcast app, and share with a friend who works in gaming, dev, or community-building. Also, check our blog at Player Driven for related show notes and links.
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Transcript
Introduction to MIGS and Its Importance
00:00:00
Speaker
With the Montreal International Games Summit, MIGS, just around the corner, one of Canada's most important gaming conferences, it's the perfect time to talk about why local events matter and who's helping make them happen.
00:00:11
Speaker
Jason Lapine is the founder and CEO of XP Gaming, the organization behind MIGS and the driving force in building Canada's gaming ecosystem. Through XP Gaming, Jason has worked to connect studios, vendors, communities, creating spaces where new ideas and talent can flourish.
00:00:27
Speaker
His journey reflects in our core belief. Local events aren't just networking opportunities. They're growth engines for the entire industry. Jason, thank you so much for joining me. I know you have a busy weekend coming up, but how are you?
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm doing great, Greg, and I really appreciate the invite. So thanks for ah bringing me onto your podcast. Yeah, I'm super excited to talk to you. You have a really cool background ah starting all the way at TELUS, which I love the how you make this transition, but now you're helping put on conferences in Canada. And I think that's just so cool how you're becoming this connector of people in in Canada. And that's awesome.
00:01:02
Speaker
I've been seeing a lot of talk online about MIGS coming up. I know a lot of people I've met are excited to go check it out. It seems like it's been growing year over year for the past few years. What makes MIGS special to you?
XP Gaming's Role in Revitalizing MIGS
00:01:12
Speaker
Absolutely. as So for those who aren't familiar, MIGS stands for the Montreal International Game Summit.
00:01:18
Speaker
And it's an event, to a conference, video game conference that's been happening in Montreal for over 20 years. And i my company has taken over the production of the event as of 2023. So this is going to be our third year producing the event. So it has a very long history.
00:01:34
Speaker
It probably means a lot of different things to different folks who've attended. And for me, it is the biggest event and and the most impactful event ah my company has the opportunity to produce. So when we took over in 2023, we changed the identity of MIGS, bringing it back to a focus of business deals first. um At the time,
00:01:56
Speaker
Prior to to us getting involved, the event was actually under a different name. It was called MegaMigs. And it was a lot of things at once. It was a part part consumer, part business. And when we stepped in what we were good at was connecting people for for deal and business for deals in business. so ah we pretty much focused the event and that's what we've been building over the last two years and this year specifically we're able to bring back the conference portion of MIGS so when MIGS started over 20 years ago it was almost a very similar kind of start to GDC where was developers coming together to share knowledge and to have a bit of this community being built in Montreal which
00:02:36
Speaker
ah Montreal is or has been one of the major game development hubs ah globally. So um kind of what happened at GDC and in San Francisco, same thing happened in Montreal, turned into MIGS.
00:02:48
Speaker
And that's why it's very exciting this year that we can actually bring the talks back, the game development talks back to MIGS ah across four stages. So while last year we had one stage,
00:02:58
Speaker
That only focused on business talks. This year, we have game development talks. We have an audio track. ah We have business, of course, talking about how to publish your game, how to market your game, all of that. ah Making this clearly the most ambitious MIGs we've ever produced, but also bringing it back to its roots um in a way that the community has asked for.
00:03:17
Speaker
You said a lot there, all digestible, right? And I love it because I'm looking at all my next questions and you kind of hit on a piece of all that. So I'm trying to determine how do i ah do I tell this story? What makes the most sense? And what I love is that you're making it kind of those business meetings first, right? We've seen a lot of conferences that are bleeding into the community and and players, and which is great. We want we want conferences like that. but There's also needs to be stuff where business can get done, right?
00:03:42
Speaker
Gaming is a business. It's about meeting people, especially these days, connections make a difference. And I think it's very important, especially we don't have much on the East Coast here, right? ah And Montreal falls to that, right? We can come i'm in Jersey, right? It's an easy trip up there. and In Montreal itself, you have Ubisoft, you have ubiof you of Unity, you have a lot of those big studios there. So you are a giant hub and it's really cool.
00:04:03
Speaker
Before we jump too much into MIGs, can you tell me why in your mind, Jason, or why we should all understand what makes local events really matter, right?
The Value of Local Gaming Events
00:04:12
Speaker
We always hear about Gamescom and we always hear about GDC, but it's these less these lesser off events which I think are important. So what why are they so different and why do they matter?
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. And i can only answer from my point of view. And I can say they're important because they give that connectivity and that sense of belonging to people. And ah there is no one size fits all event. That's why you can see GDC next year. They're turning their whole branding around the Festival of Gaming, ah recognizing that GDC is no longer just kind of one show. It's it's a series of micro events all across San Francisco.
00:04:48
Speaker
um So my own story was i was an engineer TELUS, a telecommunication company in Canada, and I really wanted to get into something I was passionate about. And when I was trying to figure out what that was, I was in my late 20s.
00:05:01
Speaker
um I was like, well, I've always loved video games my whole life. Can I get into video games in Canada? And I'm based in Toronto. So at the time, I didn't even know video games were made in Toronto.
00:05:12
Speaker
or in Canada, much less. I thought they were all made in California or Japan. That that was my my mind of where video games are made. And so I was searching for jobs. There's Ubisoft Toronto, which is the biggest hub in Toronto. And that's where I was applying. And I didn't know about anything else.
Jason Lapine's Career Shift to Gaming
00:05:27
Speaker
um In hindsight, you know, If my current self could go to my past self and tell them tell him that, hey, there are three hundred game roughly 300 game studios in Ontario alone, i think I'd have my my mind blown at the time.
00:05:40
Speaker
um So all that to say, just because um you know locally there weren't any events I could find, um it was hard for me to understand what is the gaming industry in my region and how do I get involved.
00:05:50
Speaker
ah So what I ended up doing was actually I was looking for for communities um and i I found one through Meetup. It was a fan group that just mentioned Nintendo fans coming together. um I'm going on a large tangent here about my start into the gaming industry to answer your question of why their local events are important. So stop me if I go too far. No, I love it. You're connecting all these dots. Keep on rolling. All right. So um I went to this Nintendo fan event and there I met ah the organizer who was looking to build a fan event in Toronto.
00:06:21
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm i'm down with that. i want i want to get I want to build a PAX in Canada, basically. We didn't have one. um Long story short, we actually went on to build the largest video game expo with this guy I met through a company he founded called Enthusiast Gaming.
00:06:38
Speaker
It was called EGLX. It was over 30,000 people. That event wasn't around until about 2019, 2020. It was unfortunately went away. fortunately went away with the pandemic. And through that event is where I discovered this this rich ecosystem of not just gaming fans, but game developers were coming together to to meet at ah at a fan show. And I could see that their needs weren't being met. They wanted to connect and share knowledge and learn with other developers and trade notes and meet investors.
00:07:04
Speaker
I'm like, a fan event isn't really ah catered for that. And so I actually built a pilot ah conference on top of EGLX in 2018, and we limited it to 300 tickets and we sold out.
00:07:16
Speaker
So all tickets were sold. And i was like, there's something here. Like people want this. And at the time that I did this, there was only one show in all of Canada that I knew of, which was MIGS in Montreal.
00:07:27
Speaker
And I said, well, not everyone, just like not everyone can go to GDC, not everyone can go Montreal. ah So I left that company to build XP Gaming and to launch a conference for Toronto. At the time, it was called the XP Game Developer Summit, which has been rebranded to XP Game Summit.
00:07:43
Speaker
um Pandemic delayed a lot of things, but we finally launched the in-person event in 2022 and we built a community and now XP game summit is the second largest video game conference in Canada.
00:07:55
Speaker
And the re like the most rewarding thing, like, you know, if I, if I wanted to be, uh, if I want to make a lot of money. There's a lot of other jobs and companies and business models I could probably pursue to to pursue that.
00:08:07
Speaker
um But one of the most, so the most rewarding thing here is definitely not money. ah But what i see at all the conferences I host and organize and even attend is people connecting and smiling and hugging each other and making new friendships. And like, you know, this is this is a work environment. Like this isn't just a party, but there's there's this genuine love because the video game industry runs on passion. Like most people who work in and it are in it because they love the art form. They love video games.
00:08:35
Speaker
um they They love the challenges that it brings. And so all of that passion just coalesces in these events. And as we've gone on from that event, XP Games Summit in Toronto, we've gone on to do four now in Canada.
00:08:47
Speaker
ah We've got one on the East Coast in Prince Edward Island, you know, the smallest province in Canada where people are saying, why are you doing conference there? 200 people showed up for the first one. We do one in Vancouver.
00:08:57
Speaker
And you know i have this very kind of Canadian identity right now, but our goals are very ambitious. We don't want to just stop at Canada. We want to help make these connections all over the world, wherever there's need, as connectivity has no has no borders.
00:09:12
Speaker
That's actually a really nice tagline. So yeah. to go back to your question To tie it all back to your original question, why is it so important? It's that sense of belonging, um more so than ever after the pandemic, where a lot of people in this industry don't go to an office, especially if you're an indie studio. You're probably working remotely.
00:09:29
Speaker
ah you're You're checking in with your colleagues maybe once a day, twice a day, on whether it's Slack, Discord, on Google, or whatever platform you use. and When people can come under like one roof and really you know connect over that hobby and trade notes, that's where magic happens. The creativity, the spark, the sense of belonging, the identity. like all I have four events in in Canada and their identity is very different because it's the people that make the conference.
00:09:55
Speaker
um And that's been fascinating. So yeah, that's why it's important. It's really giving that sense, the the sense of belonging, the identity and the resources for these ecosystems to grow and thrive.
00:10:06
Speaker
That's so cool. Just the way you broke that whole thing down. And I think at the end of the day, it comes down to the one one of the key words you said there was community. You build a community when you're a gaming studio. What do you want to do? You want to build a community of gamers when you're ah you're also when you're by yourself as an indie developer. What what helps you as a community helps push you forward?
00:10:25
Speaker
Other artists, other other musicians, other people like. yeah everyone dreams and aspires of going to a GDC or Gamescom. course, they're huge, but then you're just lost in a sea of people. And you know what's great? At these conferences, you still see those seven or eight or nine or 20 people that you know. And like you said, Jason, and you go and you hug them and you're excited.
00:10:44
Speaker
But when you're in your smaller market, and it's not a small market by means, you see them more often and you build that community and you build those relationships. And it's just so cool. and you dropped a lot there, right? So I'm going to back up to something you said more in the beginning. It's like,
00:10:56
Speaker
You were at TELUS, and I want to like understand what your role at TELUS was. And then when you started building XP Gaming and like you decided to build that first summit in Toronto, like what skills did you have to teach yourself that you didn't know at TELUS?
Applying Engineering Skills to Gaming Conferences
00:11:12
Speaker
I'm imagining there's a very big skills gap between what you did at one place and then the other, or maybe not.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yes, and there's still gaps I'm closing as a founder of a company. And so I don't know how many of your listeners are in the indie developers or or founders, but um you know they they also need to wear a lot of hats. They need to run a company. They need to run the finances. They need to run the marketing, ah the engineering, whatever it is.
00:11:36
Speaker
So my skillset at TELUS, I was an engineer. i was an electrical engineer specialized in communications. And my day-to-day job was to monitor the health of the cellular network across Canada and make capacity adjustments.
00:11:50
Speaker
And it was an interesting time because it's a time, i don't know if you know much about telecom, but it's when smart, let's call it smartphones, where adoption was growing. So everybody was getting smartphones. There was more demand for data.
00:12:02
Speaker
And the old networks were not designed for that. They were designed to take... phone calls and a phone call is takes a lot less resources than, you know, millions of data packets from millions of smartphones.
00:12:15
Speaker
So my job was to monitor how much capacity was left in the radio towers and make two to three year forecasts of, OK, we need to invest here because, um you know, the performance of this site is going to go really it's going to go down and people are going to notice and probably will will leave the company or move to another company.
00:12:36
Speaker
um And I did that for for almost 10 years. um And then i would say, you know, the the biggest jump was when I went from Telus to Enthusiast Gaming, which was my the first startup I was a part of, and I was there for ah three years full time.
00:12:49
Speaker
um There i was operations manager. So I got a lot of experience leading team, building processes, um and and really just kind of, it was wild west. I could kind of do anything for better or for worse.
00:13:02
Speaker
um So yeah, not a I'd say the only skill that really translated um is my data analysis skills. So one of the things that's kind of unique to events and that's very stressful is ticket sales.
00:13:17
Speaker
So your ticket sales for any event is going to hockey stick if you if you have a graph. ah You don't see most of your ticket sales happen until the last, let's call it four weeks before the event and more so the last two weeks before an event.
00:13:30
Speaker
So if you don't have an experience any experience running an event, you know you're going to invest tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars with the expectation that you're going to make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of sponsorship and ticket sales.
00:13:42
Speaker
And once your sponsorship cycle is done, it's all running on your ticket sales. And ah sometimes the gap is huge. And if you're not ready to weather kind of that emotional rollercoaster that, hey, your revenue is going to shoot up in the last few weeks before the event, um it can it can really mess mess with your mind.
00:14:00
Speaker
So, you know, I've used some of my models to model that. Now that I've done so many events, I can actually predict the trend, um of my events and my ticket sales and you know as an anxious person it helps me lower my anxiety uh because i pretty much say oh yeah this is normal like i think it's it's looking like um it's following the model and i could expect uh maybe you know it's five sales five ticket sales tomorrow but in seven days i know it's going to be 50. then the the day after that will be 100. and then i just watch that and i've done it so many times now that i feel more comfortable in that zone even though
00:14:33
Speaker
you know, it's always a little scary, because you never know. Yeah, it's funny. I've heard from more than one founder that that data analysis, data modeling has been crucial in what they've done. And some of them are game designers. ah Here, you're a founder of a conference ah and community, right? Like it's funny how data modeling can really help you build a structure for understanding how this works. And I can only imagine, I mean, we're about two weeks out from MIGs now, right? So one of the things I was going to ask you is what's keeping you up at night.
00:15:01
Speaker
So I don't know if that's what still keeps you up at night or because you haven't so far kind of understood how the process works if you're kind of cool with it now. Yeah, I mean, at this stage, a show like MIGS that's about two and a half weeks out for me personally has been almost entirely handed off to production.
00:15:19
Speaker
um So i am not very involved at that point. It's all production, locking in the the floor plans, schedules. uh the vendors making sure everything flows well so my role for the next few weeks in relation to that show is pretty much um just polishing off the the little issues that might crop up or you know the
Strategic Planning for MIGS
00:15:40
Speaker
the fine-tunements of the show but pretty much the show is packaged and and ready to go and um there's not much i can do to influence it at this stage uh my mind is already in 2026 so we're recording this at the end of october 2025
00:15:52
Speaker
um And I've already got my shows for April, May, June locked in. And I'm trying to get ah my fall of next year ah lined up of what am I doing in the fall so that I can go to my partners ah in November and pretty much next week and say, this is our roadmap for 2026.
00:16:11
Speaker
you know What makes sense for you? Because all of our partners are building their 2026 budgets right now. ah Now is the time I need to engage with them so that they can earmark budget for our events and that we can start planning ahead for what we want to do together.
00:16:23
Speaker
yeah, I'm already you know past MIGS in some senses. um And what's keeping me awake is more so 2026. What am I doing? you know Who's going, which partners are returning? Which new partners are we going for?
00:16:35
Speaker
um What are we doing again? What are we canceling? What are we ah starting up? Like all of that. And it's almost like a blank canvas every time. How do you plan for something so far in the future, right? You know you talked about the tracks that you have going on MIGS, right? And you have this audio track going on now in Indies, right? And I assume there's, you want to look at future trends, right? Things like UGC are hot right now. And there's other things that are really popular in the industry right now. And you're trying to plan out, maybe you're not getting down to the nitty gritty of panels, like what panels will we be doing here? Right. But ah how do you, and how do you kind of collaborate with others on kind of what are, what do we want to be doing at these shows next year?
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah. So there's kind of two hats. There's the, there's the founder hat where I recognize, I'm a little bit too important in my company where if you take me away, you know, there's there's a lot of things that would no longer work in the company.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I'm always looking at how do I make myself redundant as a founder? um And that's a huge challenge for me. And then there's the production hat of what are these events going to be like? How are they going to be different?
00:17:37
Speaker
Why is someone going to spend hundreds of dollars to come to my event? um At the end of the day, the conferences we host, they're not cheap. um Even though I say they are the cheapest when you look at the industry norms, um it's still hundreds of dollars. It's still a fairly serious investment for most people. And A lot of the time, all the time, our conferences are during the weekday, which means people have to take time off work on top of their investment to get a ticket and attend. So, you know, you have to have a very compelling reason to get someone to to do that, to commit to oftentimes two days off work and going. So how do we build the event? It all comes down to what do we want to do? um
00:18:16
Speaker
You know, MIGS for the last two years was business. And so we knew everything we built had to be around business. How do we make more business happen? And we were navigating at the time the worst the the worst round of layoffs in the video game industry, the most pessimistic times of the video game industry.
00:18:35
Speaker
And so everybody was looking for deals and everybody was looking for a little bit of that security. You know, I i need to find a deal for next year or how am I going to keep my my my people employed? um And so we knew that, okay, well, we need to get people with money investments. We need to get yeah people to think about how is the industry changing? What are the but are the trends? We know AI is impacting the industry. We know UGC is impacting. So we try to look at the trends. um Another example is our XP Game Summit. For the last two years, we focused very much on IP in video games, um something that's a little bit more timeless, not not kind of a hot buzzword, but something that I see in Canada where
00:19:11
Speaker
ah You know, Canada is a very kind of external development heavy ah country. There's not a lot of Canadian studios that own their IP here. Usually when they're successful, they get acquired by um by ah company from outside of Canada. So how do we you know, keep that value within Canadian studios for Canadians.
00:19:32
Speaker
And those were the themes we were looking at. After two years of doing that, we've seen that the first year was a bit hotter than the second. So now we're thinking, well, okay, in year three, let's let's go elsewhere. I think we've had enough conversations around IP. What are people looking for more?
00:19:47
Speaker
Or they may be looking more for game development talk. So you know not everything always works. like we We always take our best guess. This year at MIGS, you know we're audio we're adding an audio track for the first time in years. MIGS used to have one.
00:20:00
Speaker
It's the first time we as XP Gaming add an audio track to our conference. And it's thanks to our partnership with Audio Kinetic. um It's really thanks to them who came to the table and um proposed to work together to host their WISE tour at MIGS and on top of that build an audio track.
00:20:16
Speaker
Once I get through MIGS, the exit surveys are going to tell us, did people like this? Were the rooms well attended? What was the feedback? Was it valuable? Was it not valuable? And a lot of that dictates what we do next year. If everyone comes out of MIGS and says, oh my goodness, that audio track was amazing, well, guess what? You're going to get an audio track the next year.
00:20:33
Speaker
um Likewise, like with some speakers, we we had a speaker in Toronto that we brought in from Denmark ah who was wonderful speaker and very knowledgeable about IP and games.
00:20:46
Speaker
um And his room was bursting at the seams with like people just crowding in there to to listen to his talk. And so we brought him the next year. And once again, it was crowded. like we We brought him again and we did a workshop about how to develop your IP in games and at what stage of your game do you work on that.
00:21:02
Speaker
um And again, his his talk was was bursting at the seams. So um it's a lot of trial and error to come down to your question of how do we do it? um ah The Atlantic event, which is our newest one that we built this year in Prince Edward Island, ah you know that one we really wanted to lean into the East Coast identity, which honestly, I didn't know what it was. I had never been to the East Coast of Canada, ah but we were working with a studio that was the champion of that event.
00:21:30
Speaker
conference uh iron fox games based in prince edward island in charlottetown and they were kind of the we were giving them a platform but they were bringing the identity and the vibes of the region so that it could resonate um genuinely with the attendees and give it a a special spin so everywhere we go like going back to my my that identity is the the community gets reflected in the conference and even when you look globally, GDC feels and looks very different than Gamescom, even though both are these massive events where, you know, how can you build an identity with tens of thousands of people there?
00:22:05
Speaker
They do feel different because of where they are located geographically, um where they are in the time of the year, you know, what happens at the show, all those things are part of the identity. yeah i i love that and there's a few notes i took during this right but the last part you just said it's like every community has a different flavor every city has a different flavor how do you infuse that flavor into what you're building to make sure that people people resonate with it right it'll get them more excited to go out it's not gonna be that perfectly strange experience because i know this studio or i know that there's other things you said i want to touch on is uh an interesting concept because i love it right you mentioned i think
00:22:40
Speaker
might say the words wrong, but you said you're kind of too important to be pulled away to do some of these tasks these days. And I think that's a hard thing for people to understand as a founder is that, you know what, I might love being in the weeds and getting my hands dirty, right? It might be the most fun I have during the day, but I also realized that my time is better spent elsewhere. So I'm curious on how out of one to 10, how would you rate your delegation skills?
00:23:03
Speaker
Um, it's a great question. Uh, I wonder what my team would, would rate me. ah I like to believe I embrace delegation. i I want to give it away and I want to train people to um you know to to take on more roles, to take on more ownership and to be more independent.
00:23:25
Speaker
um So I do feel I embrace that. So if one to 10, I'd say I'm probably eight at delegation. um But at the same time, you have to be cautious that not have not ah a founder will have five roles.
00:23:41
Speaker
You can't just dump those five roles on one person. You have to um i'll delegate properly and help and support those individual, those team members to grow into those roles.
Leadership and Team Growth in Event Management
00:23:53
Speaker
um And I think the hardest part is letting them make mistakes. um You know, it's like watching, i don't know if you have kids, but it's like watching a toddler um walking for the first time and holding back catching them when they're going to fall. like they need to They need to fall. They need to understand what that feels like um and learn from that mistake of, if I do this, I fall. So let's correct for that.
00:24:20
Speaker
um I know that sounds terrible. Hey, my my message is let your kids fall. But um ultimately, your teams will will make mistakes, and you have to let them make those mistakes, and you have to let them feel the consequences of those mistakes because um failure is the best teacher.
00:24:36
Speaker
And as a founder, we all like founders here will all know that ah the best founders are the ones that fail fast. they're They don't fear failure. They embrace it. They know what's going to happen. And when it happens, you're just like, oh okay, let's just get through it and fix it. And let's not do that again.
00:24:51
Speaker
um So there's there's this ah tension, I think, when you are delegating of ah you want to protect your team. You you know you want to warn them.
00:25:02
Speaker
um and And by all means, if you see a catastrophic mistake, sure, get involved. ah But also, you know the the the only way that you can really step away is letting them make those mistakes so they know how to own that that role.
00:25:13
Speaker
And eventually, they'll know how to own it better than you. And at that point, you just become a liability. And that's the best feeling as a founder is when you realize you become a liability to ah when you get involved, because that means the process now works more efficiently without you involved. and And that's the goal.
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, the house is on fire, get get the house off fire. but But I had a podcast the other day with a gentleman, Thad Sasser, and he he said, you know, he he didn't want his team to fail at first. So anytime they bring him a project, he would help finish it and fix it for them. And then he realized that he's doing it for everyone. And he's creating so much more work for himself. Whereas if he would have just helped them and enabled them to do it themselves, he could have saved him at the time. And he said, that was the biggest learning experience is that as a leader, you need to learn embrace failure because that's how they're going to grow as a person and his career development, then it's hard, but the toddler example is perfect.
00:26:02
Speaker
And also like creating the safe space for people to fail is also another challenge. Like at the end of the day, a lot of people, work for a paycheck, right? they They're employed by a company and um there is this unspoken truth of if you don't perform or if you if you cause too many mistakes, like it could be your job on the line.
00:26:19
Speaker
So I think they're it's important to also reinforce that communication and and helping the team understand what is their what is their boundary, their freedom to to experiment and to fail. Like if someone is afraid of failing because they're afraid of their job, they're you're not going to get as much creativity out of them or as much risk taking out of them.
00:26:35
Speaker
um And, you know, different companies can can weather different risks. So that's where founders and managers can really ah bring their own touch to it and and dial in and adjust the the settings for the optimal number amount of risk and comfort level for employees to really thrive in those environments.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. You know, you're you're going to stifle the creativity or the ability to create if you're going to scare people into kind of taking those chances. I never really looked at it from that angle, but that makes a ton of sense.
00:27:05
Speaker
um The other thing you mentioned I really wanted to kind of dig into just a high level is exit surveys. You know, we talk about feedback for games. You you have Discord, you have all this, and it's important to get that feedback. But when you're running a conference, putting on shows, you have tracks going on, right? You want to understand what sessions hit, what sessions miss.
00:27:22
Speaker
How have your exit surveys evolved over time and how is the success rate of them, would you say? Ooh, that's a very good question. um So we have a lot of ways to collect data from our shows. The exit survey is one of them.
00:27:36
Speaker
um And it's'd I'd say it's it reflects maybe 10% of our audience. um People just don't like ah writing surveys. i don't write my survey I don't fill out my surveys when I go to events. lot the times I go to too many and it's a lot surveys to fill out.
00:27:50
Speaker
ah So the people who will fill out the survey are either the people who love the event, who love your brand, or you've made a personal connection with, or the opposite. They absolutely had a terrible time and will hate it. So the exit survey will provide oftentimes very polarizing responses. You're going to get either the worst of your negative feedback or the best of your positive feedback.
00:28:10
Speaker
um What ah you feel that, you know, having um my events be what I like to call intentional intimacy, as in they're not 30,000 people, they're all under 2000 people.
00:28:23
Speaker
um It allows me to walk the show floor, talk to people and and create genuine connections with people. And i let them know like, hey, if you like this, you know, some of the resources we have are based on the data we we collect.
00:28:36
Speaker
And if you have a good time, if you have like, if you strike some good deals, let me know whether it is through the exit survey or or you you reach out to me. And I'm starting to get that reputation now that people even if they don't do the exit survey, they'll reach out to me by an email and they say, oh, that event you put on five months ago, I met this person and we got a deal going and it just closed today. And they're excited to share it with me because we get to share that success. They recognize that you know us putting on the conference created this opportunity for them and now they're successful.
00:29:06
Speaker
And they want to pass that on to others of making sure the event sticks around so other people can can get those successes. um So that that's one kind of way we collect data.
00:29:17
Speaker
um We have platforms in all of our events. We work with meet to match. There's some data on the back end where we can see um what sessions people are putting into their calendars, which ones are more popular.
00:29:28
Speaker
ah We also have started putting in counters in our rooms. um So it's literally a person that's there counting people sitting in the room just to understand how full the sessions are. And those are always made at the same point in time. We always count the rooms at about the halfway point to get a real sense because there's always sometimes ah a spike at the beginning or at the end of a talk.
00:29:48
Speaker
um And we collect all of that. And you know based on all of that feedback and not just the attendees, we also talk to our sponsors and our partners and our exhibitors. ah Sometimes it works great for some people. Sometimes it doesn't. And that's a conversation of, you know is the problem the show? Is it the mismatch of a demographic and and who you're looking for? Is it the way you're activating at the show that's not working?
00:30:08
Speaker
So there's there's a lot, you know, I wish I had more data, of course, as an engineer, I always want more data. But um we're getting better every time. And the more we we build those genuine relationships with people, the more they're willing to open up to us and and share their success stories.
00:30:24
Speaker
I'm with you on the data side of things, but I'm also completely with you on filling out surveys, right? every we We often don't eat our own dog food when we're trying to get people to do this stuff. And I'm always trying to think, what's a better way to try and get this content from people? Is it maybe just a QR code or yeah the airport has those little smiley faces or frowny buttons when you're like leaving the bathroom or something like that? yeah, that's one.
00:30:46
Speaker
It's just so hard to your point. going leave a comment, you're going to either polarized one way or the other for the most part. Right. And it's just funny to think about how how do you break this down? But to your point, again, someone comes to you, I closed the deal or or you hit great numbers in attendance or saw a lot of posts about something. You're like, all right, we did something right. And that's a win. Right. And that's what you got to look for.
00:31:06
Speaker
Yeah, and sometimes our our collection systems aren't set up to get the feedback. Like a great example, after my first conference in Toronto, like six months later, there was a person that I kind of, i knew of them, but we didn't really have much of a relationship.
00:31:20
Speaker
And I saw on LinkedIn, they shared a story of how they were laid off. They had, um you know, the their savings were were were running thin. ah They were expecting their first child.
00:31:32
Speaker
They were stressed out of their mind and they saw our conference in Toronto, which at the time had no reputation. it was a fairly new one. um But they decided to invest you know the hundreds of dollars to attend the conference and through that got a job because they they organically networked with someone, got a job and it secured their life. And as as far as I know, two years later, two or three years later, they are still there and thriving.
00:31:58
Speaker
And, you know, I think back to how stressed I was organizing that event and how lot of things didn't happen the way I wanted to. And, you know, financially, it was probably not great.
00:32:09
Speaker
um But I think back to stories like that, I'm like, if I hadn't done that, where would this guy be? Or, you know, what? That event literally changed his life. Of course, he betted on himself by attending.
00:32:20
Speaker
um But that those those life-changing stories are just touching. like I need to get a bunch of screenshots and I just got to build like the wall of wins is what I want to call it. ah Just to remind myself that like you know these things impact people and it's hard to, it's easy to forget that.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, it says something about you as a leader where you knowre you're enabling others to take that next step and and you're trying to proactively put them in the right position and just the pure excitement when it happens, right? Like when you can make as the connector that connection happen,
00:32:51
Speaker
That's just like that light bulb moment where it makes your heart sink because you're or in a good way, right? you're just You're just like happy that you made that connection. And the power, it's one of those things that like this person will remember this moment. Like this is great and this is perfect. And that's more powerful to what you said in the beginning. You don't do this for the money. yeah Obviously, you want to get paid, but like it's things like this that like.
00:33:12
Speaker
That connection is made. If you ever need something, God forbid, right, you need to reach out to this person, right? They'll be there for you. And I think that's the most amazing part of networking and building this community that we've we been talking about.
Empowering Speakers and Balancing Opportunities
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, and another thing you made me, um you reminded me, you know we focused a lot on the on the sponsors and the attendees and all that. um But these events, whether you know we organize them or whether they're your local events about you know getting 10, 20 devs in your community together every Thursday of the month or something, um creating a platform for people to ah present our speakers, you know I don't talk enough about those.
00:33:48
Speaker
um There are so many knowledgeable people out there and I get asked a lot, how do I um how do i get into your programming? Because, you know, especially in North America, the the opportunities to speak on stage are relatively limited or they were even more so limited ah five years ago. oh And a lot of people, well, first, there's a group that's looking for those opportunities.
00:34:11
Speaker
And oftentimes, if you're not connected or you're not in the know, it's kind of hard to, like, you know, how do I submit my talk about this thing I did that nobody knows about? And then the other aspect is where we're a relatively pretty introverted community in game development.
00:34:26
Speaker
And so given the, opera like, a lot of the times people... are not going to be excited to say, yeah, yeah, like put me on stage. But if they can get a community of like, oh, you really know this, you should share it with people. and giving them that comfort and that safety to like, yeah, you know your stuff. Get on stage and talk about it with a like-minded community that can resonate with you and that can maybe even give you feedback.
00:34:50
Speaker
um That's been another very empowering experience. tool of having a platform to to give voices, do you say, to give people a voice that maybe otherwise wouldn't.
00:35:02
Speaker
um And you know it's it's a double double-edged sword because ah there's only so many slots. So of course, there's a lot of people that I cannot put in our programming. And so for as much as we are empowering set number of voices every year, ah we are also having to pass on a lot more voices, unfortunately.
00:35:20
Speaker
um But that goes back to that importance of community. We can't do all the events out there. Not all events need to be 30,000 people or even a thousand people. Events that are 15, 20 people are just as important and can create that sense of community as well.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, you know we're we're trying to find out who is the most extroverted introvert of all of us. right I think everyone in this interest industry is introverted and it's hard for people to go out and speak. I'm one of those people, right? And people are always like, oh, but you host a podcast. yeah Well, it's really easy to talk to someone from across the screen, right? But once you're a room with someone, unless you, yeah for me personally, I need liquid courage and then I'm good to go. But like,
00:35:58
Speaker
You know, it's hard to break the ice. And once the ice is broken, luckily, all you talk about is mostly gaming. That's the beauty of the industry, right? We just talk about gaming, but it's always still that first move. Like, I think we all live with imposter syndrome in some degree, right? It's how do you get over that hump of saying, all right, i know what I'm talking about, right? it's It's a weird place to be, but at some point you realize that you're good at what you do. You can start to talk about it.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, and its we we had the most funny accidental um networking event happen at MIGS. I think was last year or the year before. ah We had um an after party, a happy hour, like, ah yeah, no, an after party for the event. And we set up this this room, and there was a jazz band playing video game music. And you know there was a bar, and people could drink and socialize.
00:36:43
Speaker
And we had set up Smash Brothers off to the side. With some couches, it was almost like a side activation. And um you know so some people started gravitating towards that. and they And they picked up a controller, and they were playing. And you know strangers were coming in. And they weren't really talking, but they were they were laughing and having a good time and bonding over the video game.
00:37:02
Speaker
Fast forward four hours, that was the hottest spot where there was just crowds around. And there was this one player that nobody could defeat in Smash Brothers. And funny enough, he also worked at Nintendo.
00:37:13
Speaker
And everybody was taking turns you know trying to defeat him. And as people were getting closer, like everybody was cheering, everyone was on the edge of their seat. And it just reminded me, like I grew up in the 90s, reminded me of that couch co-op day of trying to fight a hard boss and I can't do it. And then like you try and it's passing the controller back and forth.
00:37:32
Speaker
And that common memory for everybody and bonding, like I've now dubbed that the introvert lounge. And now I try to design and build one in all my events because I recognize that is a way of connecting. That is probably the most organic way gamers connect. And I just hadn't realized until I saw it.
00:37:48
Speaker
And the best part is from a business perspective, that's where business gets done. You make these relationships in these casual places, with like hanging out, talking games. like You build this friendship, this relationship, and maybe you're not trying to sell something today or tomorrow, but we have this relationship now that that's beyond just us talking.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, ultimately, business people do business with people they like. Yeah. If you don't like someone, you would have to have a very good product ah for you know to support that business. But if you really like us a business, you'll you'll try to go out of your way to see how can I support this person? How can I find a way to work with them?
00:38:25
Speaker
So I got two more questions here, I think, for you, and we'll see where we go.
Global Conference Inspirations
00:38:30
Speaker
I'm curious, do you get to other conferences? Do you do some competitive analysis and get to go around and say, hey, I love what they're doing here or there?
00:38:38
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. um I try to attend three conferences minimum per year. And I always try to make new ones. So I usually kind of get tired out of a conference after two years.
00:38:49
Speaker
So I go once to kind of you know scope it out, research it, get inspired, ah collect new ideas. And then I go back the second year oftentimes with a more strategic approach of, OK, how am I going network? How am I going to do business at this event?
00:39:02
Speaker
And then by the third year, it's, let's pick a new region, a new event. um And that's so short answer, yes. And you know that's where I get a lot of my inspiration because if you're always going to the same events, um that's not you're going to get new ideas. And I think there's over like 300 game conferences around the world.
00:39:21
Speaker
And all of them have have unique vibes. And when you talk to people, like i always talk to people before scouting, which event should I go for? which one is what What's this one like? What should I expect from this one? um And they're all very different. you know They have a very similar core. You're going to network. There's talks. There's sometimes exhibitors.
00:39:38
Speaker
um But they all feel and ah look different. And some some are very creative. Sometimes I'm like, oh, that's a great idea how they did that. And then I bring it and I add my own creative spin to it and I put it into my events.
00:39:53
Speaker
So it's a very important part to to travel the world and and attend other events. I didn't see that when I started. I remember my first international event was Nordic Games in Sweden. And I was like, oh, I'm so busy. i have so much money. Can I really afford like to make a trip to Europe to see this?
00:40:08
Speaker
And it was my first time in Europe, and it was just so eye-opening. And I made connections there that I never would have thought. like I didn't even have a real... I did have a goal, but I met people so ah serendipitously.
00:40:21
Speaker
And some of them are actually like really good friends of mine today. And I met them in the most random way. Like one person I met, I was waiting for a meeting at a table and I was standing waiting for the table to clear.
00:40:34
Speaker
And there was another gentleman who who was waiting there for some reason. and there was a confusion around the table. But while we were waiting there, we spoke for five minutes. I learned what he did and I thought it was really interesting. I grabbed his business card and we didn't really talk until two years later when I thought of him for something. And we've reconnected, we've worked together now. We have a very genuine relationship.
00:40:51
Speaker
um you know, friendship. And then there's just someone else that I just met there and like he was very genuine off the bat and I brought him to Canada, not like the year after. And we're we're very good friends to this day, just like sharing notes, visiting each other when we have the chance. So yeah you just never know what's going to happen. um But putting yourself out there is always is never a bad idea.
00:41:12
Speaker
That's what I really love about the industry is you can make some best friends at some of these events. And it's funny to talk to some of my friends that go to conferences in other industries and they're like, No, there's not that many after parties at our events. I'm just like, really? like ah There has to be somewhere. maybe they're just not Maybe they're just introverted like me and they don't go out to other parties. But I'm just like, there's got to be something. but But the more I see it in gaming, is everywhere. it's just that It's that vibe, for better or for worse.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah, every industry kind of creates its own identity and and how to operate. um And that's kind of the beauty of the video game industry. Not only is the products we work on fun, but so are the people who work behind the scenes.
00:41:49
Speaker
You really got this really cool, cool job, right? You get to go look at conferences, you're building conferences, you're doing all this networking stuff. My question is, what do you dislike about your day? Well, what's what's the one thing you need to do that just kind of sucks?
Challenges of High-Risk Conference Planning
00:42:06
Speaker
Oh, boy. um Where to start? Let me pull out my laundry list. What sucks the most um in this type of business, I think it's really the high-risk nature of it.
00:42:21
Speaker
Like, conferences are expensive. um i've I've worked on some that are, I think the cheapest I've been able to make them are you know, in in the just shy of 100,000. And I've worked on some that are a million dollars.
00:42:36
Speaker
ah And putting up that risk and then trying to bring everybody together and bringing the support together. And it's almost like every year having to re-justify your existence. I think that grind gets tiring. you know I would love to just be able to say, i' built it, they will come.
00:42:59
Speaker
and um and And just like have rebookings and all that. And I've had people from other industries say, you know why don't you book ah partners over like three years or something like i'm like, the game industry doesn't work like that. It changes and morphs so much. Nobody wants to commit.
00:43:14
Speaker
for three years, but there are some industries that have the, you know, I know some event organizers that they're able to book their venues 10 years in advance. Like they have 10 years planned with their dates and everything, and they have partners involved.
00:43:27
Speaker
um ive maybe Maybe it's because of my size, maybe like the larger events are capable of doing this in the gaming industry. I have personally not seen it where um we can build that level of resilience of of knowing, okay, the next three years we're secure.
00:43:41
Speaker
It's always, kind of almost like an exist existential crisis. um And there's a lot of ways to navigate that. But yeah, that that's probably the thing I hate the most. um And that's ah that's a pretty big one.
00:43:52
Speaker
Actually, i like to compare it a lot to, since audiences game developers, I like to compare a lot to a video game. um Building an event is not that different from a video game in some ways, where a video game, you will spend two to three years developing, ah investing money, investing resources, all for one launch date, one moment to capture the attention and to make back all your money.
00:44:12
Speaker
And something could happen. you know There could be a AAA game that launches just before your game, or you you you launch in in the worst window possible, or there's an economic crisis that you didn't foresee three years ago. like All of these patterns, and that could happen to us too, where you know anything could happen in the world that shuts us down, a ah weather event, to a global pandemic, things like that.
00:44:35
Speaker
um So that that's the that's the worst by far. But if we're talking a little bit more mundane of like, what what do I dislike um in the day-to-day? It's probably drafting contracts. um And my team hounds further. They're like, did did you write the contract? Like, no, like they're in, they're committed. and But you know doing the paperwork and ah that's monotonous and boring.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. i just you know and It's just not very rewarding. It's important, but boring. yeah know You compare it to a video game and it's funny, again it comes down to modeling, I think at the end of the day, right? You build all this stuff for this one moment, right? Whether it be a launch, whether it's always a launch of something, right? It comes down to understand how the market dynamics is going to work. Maybe to your high hockey stick analogy earlier, right? With your with you, you know it's going to come in the last two weeks with the game. Maybe you start slower with wish lists and it's a little different of ah of a shape, but you know it all comes down to this one moment of launching and and how do you prep for that? I think.
00:45:34
Speaker
And then your your your trend, you know, maybe you started your game five years ago and you bet on battle royales because they were hot. Now here we are five years later and it's like, whoops, battle royale fatigue has happened and your game is is less appealing all of a sudden or there's now too many competitors.
00:45:48
Speaker
Well, Jason, I can't thank you enough. I know you have a busy bunch of weeks coming up, so I appreciate you taking an hour were here and let sharing your story and what you're building up. Before we do end today's episode, is there anything you want to share? Let us know where we can find you or MIGS or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. If you're interested in checking out any of the events we're planning, they're always listed in full on xpgaming.biz.
00:46:11
Speaker
ah It's our website. I will say it's a little outdated, but all the events are always updated on what we're working on there. And especially if you're on the East Coast, come check out um MIGS, the Montreal International Game Summit. It is the second largest game conference in North America, second only to GDC.
00:46:27
Speaker
And um it's going to be a good one. where We're seeing a lot of international presence, a lot of great talks, um and a lot of business being made there. Awesome. We'll have all the links that Jason mentioned on our Player Driven blog. Again, thank you, Jason. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and best of luck with everything.