The next meeting of the IGDA’s Montreal Chapter will take place at the SAT on Wednesday, the 26th. With 20 presentations limited to 6 minutes each, I’m expecting it to be a super condensed version of last November’s Montreal International Game Summit. GameCamp, like MIGS, appears to draw on a large spectrum of topics and presenters. Heri pointed out that at least one of the topics appears questionable — and there probably will be a few thinly veiled sales pitches — but I also expect some really informative and entertaining presentations (I’m personally looking forward to Clint Hocking’s “Games and Meaning”).

Click here for more info, including a full list of presenters and presentations.

7pm, Wednesday, March 26
The SAT, 1195 St Laurent
$5 entry fee, at the door

Mark Greenshields has written a brief criticism of the government tax credits used by Quebec (and recently Ontario) to attract developers and foster industry growth. I found it to be an extremely interesting and surprising article, as I had previously never read anything but praise and support for the tax credits offered to companies in Montreal and the rest of the province. His points are honest and hard to argue with, given what I know of the companies that exist in Montreal and the types of games being produced. This is the kind of candor you just won’t find from the CEOs of Ubisoft or EA or Eidos:

“Montreal is not an efficient place to run a video games development business. Personal taxes are high, and a good number of the available staff do not have the required attitude. There are some commercially successful games coming from Montreal studios, but can you show me one that did not cost many millions and require a huge team? Unless you have big pockets you’ll need to spend a lot of money developing your games using bigger teams than are necessary, a situation created partly by the tax credit system and partly by the speed of growth in Montreal.”

Read the full article at Develop: Tax Breaks – Panacea or Pestilence?

Greenshields is one of the founders of Glasgow-based DC Studios. He operated an office in Montreal for several years before closing up shop and deciding to focus solely on racing games with his new company, Firebrand Games. Still based out of Glasgow, Firebrand’s North American office is now located in Florida.

IGDA-Montreal is now making a call for mini-presentations to be given at the upcoming GameCamp on March 26th at the SAT.

The “GameCamp” night is a format inspired by events like BarCamp, 20:20, PechaKucha, FooCamp, etc. GameCamp will feature up to 15 mini 6-minute presentations on a multitude of topics/formats, like:

• rant or rave
• game/tech demo
• learning lecture
• research
• etc…

When? March 26th

Where? SAT

Cost? $5 for non-IGDA members

Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developer’s Association and Montreal resident, was recently honoured with the Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

The award was given to Jason in recognition of his efforts towards “connecting developers with their peers, promoting professional development and advocating on issues such as quality of life, creative freedoms, workforce diversity and credit standards…”

The script Jason prepared for his acceptance speech can be found on his blog. In it, he tells game developers that they are already ambassadors for games and game culture, and they have a responsibility to make the most of their influence over the medium and millions of people who are touched by it.

It’s interesting to note that Jason Della Rocca was on the Montreal Mirror’s list of Noisemakers for 2007, and this year it was indie developer Phil Fish who was named a 2008 Noisemaker. Both received awards in recognition of their work last Wednesday in San Francisco. I think we should all start paying more attention to what The Mirror has to say about the state of the video game industry.

A new gameplay trailer for Fez, the 2D-no-wait-it’s-3D puzzle/exploration game primarily being developed in Montreal, was revealed earlier this week at the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco. The game involves navigating a 3D world from various 2D perspectives. Puzzles and obstacles are overcome by rotating the world and shifting your 2D character’s plane of existence. Just…watch the video below. It’s actually very intuitive and amazing to see in motion.

This past Wednesday, the IGF, a self-described “Sundance for independent game developers,” selected Fez as the recipient of its award for Excellence in Visual Art. The team behind the game received a $2500 cash prize and, presumably, enough exposure to help secure a distribution deal. It was also a finalist in the category of Design Innovation.

Originally attached to the Montreal-based experimental game collective Kokoromi, the virtual team behind the game is now calling itself Polytron Systems Corp. This international team consists of Kokoromi member Phil Fish (design and art), Renaud Bédard (programming), Graham Lackey (animation), and Jason “6955″ DeGroot (producer, music and sound effects).