Candev’s initiatives

 

CanDev is a volunteer group supporting and bringing together Canberra’s game development industry. Over the years we have done this in a variety of ways, such as…

  • Running monthly game developer meetups since 2014

  • Growing a game development community of over 800 people (and counting!)

  • Providing workshops on Managing Finances, Marketing and Gamification

  • Contributing to government submissions seeking industry support for the industry

  • Appeared on ABC Radio multiple times, to promote the Canberra industry’s work

  • Collated Canberran games on canberra.games to showcase the industry’s work

  • Created and manage a Discord server for Canberran developers to share and chat

  • Brought our meetup to the National Film and Sound Archive Game Masters event

  • Held public playtest sessions, known as the Pre-PAX Warmup at Reload Bar

  • Created lanyards for developers to represent CanDev at home and away

  • Gained support from local co-working spaces to host our meetups

  • Organised Global Game Jam Canberra (& co-organised Australia’s online site)

  • Organised CanDev meetups at PAX and GCAP

👋 HELLO, GRANT PROVIDERS & FUNDING BODIES!

Local developers applying for grants and funding may have told you they can access a steady stream of playtesters for their project through CanDev. Absolutely, that’s true!

We’ve had all manner of small and professional games (including multiple Screen Canberra and Screen Australia grant recipients) playtested over months and years at Pizza & Pixels, providing a great benefit to the quality of these games and the development skills of the teams. Each month we have 5-15 games tested by dozens of eager attendees.

If a Canberran game developer is pointing your to CanDev and telling you that they can tap into a community of playtesters and shared industry knowledge, we can confirm that they’re able to do that, as long as they follow our rules.

Learn more about CanDev and our meetups here.