So, some friends of mine tried “Fragpunk” last night and dragged me into trying it. Short version - don’t bother, I didn’t last 2 hours. It’s insanely jam packed with currencies and predatory micro-transactions, the most boring character designs I’ve ever seen in the genre, AI Slop art, insanely ugly weapon models, and it’s published by NetEase. That’s like a hundred red flags for what is, at best, a competent 5v5 hero shooter.
But one of the ways they talked me into at least giving it a shot was one friend was convinced (by AI lying to him) that Bad Guitar Studios was Canadian. Upon scrutiny that wasn’t even a little true but it DID get me thinking, are we making any cool games up here in the North?
I found some stuff with basic Googling. Compulsion games just released South of Midnight and that looks pretty good, though it’s owned by Microsoft. Pheonix Labs made Dauntless, I didn’t know they were Canadian. There’s a bunch of tiny mobile developers. But I thought maybe other people might have more insight. Does anybody have an awesome game made by Canadians that they can point me towards?
Vancouver and Alberta (for graphics) are world leader communities for game development. Unfortunately, most of the second and third stage development money is from America, so even if the game was designed and created in Canada, it is usually marketed in America. It’s all about who distributes the game, not who first develops it, that determines ‘country of origin’.