This spring I helped organize and run a video game development competition for Skills Canada Saskatchewan. It is the first of it’s kind competition in Canada, expanding on the strong line-up of digital skills competitions in the Skills Canada system. It was great to not just bring it to life, but to do it first, here in Saskatchewan, and area that’s unfortunately been often overlooked for digital talent and industry, and another one of the many things we’ve done to try help grow the industry here. For those unfamiliar with Skills Canada, it’s a work-skills competition for secondary and post-secondary students with provincial, national, and even international skills! Helping students succeed is a big part of what we do here at Massive Corp and was why we were so interested in getting Skills Canada to include video game development. We know games are a great industry, and a great way for students to learn (we’ve talked about that a few times, such as in this blog post: Are Games Good For Learning?)
Building For Success
This was our second year running the competition and I’m glad to say we were able to grow the event. Not only did we have five teams of post-secondary competitors, but we also had a trial run of a high school level competition! It’s great to see not just an interest in game development here, but a significant attendance, skill and passion for it even extending to our high school students. And we were very impressed with what we saw!
With only 2 days to create a video game entirely of their own making we saw teams come up with not just programming, but graphics, sound effects, writing and music for their games. This is a grueling feat even for professionals in the field!
Why We Do It
A big reason for pushing for this event is it really helps develop new talent for the industry. Being able to make a game from scratch in just 2 days is an amazingly challenging feat. It helps push competitors to learn and practice skills, but it also ends with something they can show to people. In video game development hiring is mostly centered on portfolios – companies want to see what you can do. Events like game jams, which we based this competition on, help would-be game developers show off their talents and creativity to professors, industry professionals and the public. They’re intense, but short, ways to stretch abilities and end up with something that people can see and they can be proud of (hopefully). As a team event it’s also an important way to push students to work on their communication and teamwork skills – critical, and all too often overlooked, skills for digital careers.
We’ll be back next year for another year’s competitions, but we’re also hoping to expand the competition to other provinces and eventually to a nation-wide competition! Thanks to the Skills Canada Manitoba and New Media Manitoba teams, we also saw the first competition held in Manitoba this year! So we’re heading in the right direction!
The Games!
And last but not least, of course, you can take a look at this year’s competition! We had competitors post their games to itch.io, a great free hosting service for games, so the whole world can check them out!
Secondary Level Competition:
Gold – Lil Sparky’s Repair Shop; Alaxandre Chalifour, Ian Herperger, Kyle MacLean
Silver – Controlled Chaos; Anakin Aymont, Andy Hu, Dominic Trollope
Post-Secondary Level Competition:
Gold – Internal Spark; Na Wang, Alitha Good, Monchida Rujimethapas
Silver – Don’t Spark Something; Connor Legault, Mason Harding, Danae Hallett, Kieran Bute
Bronze – Cargo Pilot; Chin-Wei Lin, Oghenevwarhe Onosakponome, Oluwafemi Ogunrinola
Runner Up: Sparktacular Adventure; Melanie Adkins, Juan Pablo, Mejia Sanchez, Gerardo Luis, Sravya Kamineni
Runner Up: Camping Safari; Sudip Karki, Sujal Shiwakoti, Gaurav Kunwar, Gaurang Desai
Congrats to all the participants!