At Pocket Game Connects Vancouver 2016, a panel of expert Canadian game industry professionals covered the trends in the country’s mobile game sector.

The panellists included IGDA Head of Partner and Member Relations Jillian Mood, Roadhouse Interactive Game Director Kayla Kinnunen and Icejam Games Founder and CEO Stuart Duncan. The panel was hosted by Unity Consultant and Evangelist Oscar Clark.

Funding for everyone

Topics covered included Canadian culture in games, tax breaks and funding. Though it was noted that Canada is lucky given its array of funding options and generous tax relief, Kinnunen said one of the problems the country has is how open its funding is to developers of all sizes.

“Roadhouse hasn’t really done many projects that have really qualified for the Canada Media Fund or anything, so we haven’t really been able to take advantage of that,” she said.

"So I think that’s one of the problems that we have. The CMF solves one particular style of project problem, and there’s a lot of great success stories that have come out of that. But we definitely haven’t solved the overall how do we get really good creative work coming out of all the studios of all the different sizes.

“There’s definitely a funding problem overall in terms of just getting great stuff made.”

You can listen to the full panel discussion in the video below.

You can see all our videos from Pocket Gamer Connects Vancouver 2016 in this YouTube Playlist.