Meet the faces of gaming in Canada

Gaming is a $2-billion industry and these Canadians are making fascinating plays in it.

Canada’s gaming world is here to stay — but it needs a boost to thrive

Dr. Kris Alexander

When he was a boy, Kris Alexander told his parents, "All I want to do is play video games for the rest of my life."May Truong/The Globe and Mail

Professor of Video Games: Design, Broadcasting, & Esports Infrastructure at the Toronto Metropolitan University

Dr. Kris Alexander’s passion for gaming began when he was just an eight-year-old with an Atari 2600 and a big brother who showed him Street Fighter at a Markham, Ont., arcade. “I said to my parents, ‘All I want to do is play video games for the rest of my life,’” recalls Alexander, and at 42 he’s kept his word, gaming daily on top of his work, music (he’s a classically trained pianist) and being a dad of two daughters. Known among students and colleagues as the “Professor of Video Games,” Alexander is also a two-time globally ranked gamer.

In 2006, when a colleague asked him to teach a game-design class at the University of Toronto, Alexander accepted, even though “I had never programmed or built a video game in my life,” he says. Within a week, he taught himself using the software GameMaker and was soon helping students learn to code, too. Alexander went on to do his PhD at Concordia University on game design as a framework for pedagogy and classroom instruction, and today, he’s at the forefront of digital learning, with projects as varied as helping create interactive VR simulators to train paramedics on disaster response to designing a game called Bread Type, aimed at teaching elementary school students both how to type and bake a nice sandwich loaf.

He likes to keep things fun in his lectures, too. “I have a roulette I spin, and among the 270 students, one gets selected to play a new game on my machine in front of all their peers. And that’s how we dissect game design,” he explains. “It allows me to teach in the way I wish I had been taught back in the day.”

Nicolas Guérin

Writer and Creative Director at Thunder Lotus Games

Nicolas Guérin, 43, wrote and directed Spiritfarer, which sold an impressive million copies in the year after its 2020 release. It is a visually stunning and narratively profound game about end-of-life care. “In a nutshell, it’s Charon, as seen by Hayao Miyazaki,” Guérin says.

Yet, there was a time when Guérin wasn’t quite convinced video games could be art. In 2006 he left his native French Riviera to take a job as a game designer at Montreal’s Electronic Arts, where he spent his days honing violent scenes in third-person shooters and making virtual snowboarding look cool. Guérin eventually moved to Ubisoft, where he recreated the ancient city of Constantinople for 2011′s Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. But it wasn’t until he played Journey, a game by California developer Thatgamecompany, that he realized games could be more than just entertaining – they could tap into something intuitive and emotional.

When developer Thunder Lotus hired Guérin as creative director in 2017, he began crafting something artistic himself: a game about the complexity and mundanity of death. Through the mechanics of Spiritfarer, “You feel what it’s like to perform taking care of someone, building a house for them, growing their food,” and ultimately saying goodbye to them, says Guérin. “You could not have that experience just seeing a movie or reading a book – games have a different power.”

The success of Spiritfarer means Thunder Lotus is able to produce its next game – also fundamentally about interpersonal relationships – with a bigger budget and more time for Guérin to perfect its nuances.

Marissa Roberto

Sports & Esports Media Personality

When Marissa Roberto was growing up in Saskatoon, her strict Italian parents bought her video games as a consolation after forbidding her from attending bush parties. But what started out as a way to keep her safely occupied at home blossomed into a career path when Roberto moved to Toronto to pursue a journalism degree at Seneca College, focusing her reporting “on the things that made me happy, which were baseball and video games,” she says.

Eventually, Roberto hatched a plan to make connections in the world of gaming journalism by sneaking into a fan expo with a rented video camera and conducting interviews with the people she met inside. It worked – she was asked to audition for what would become her first esports hosting gig.

Roberto has been a presence in esports broadcasting ever since, hosting a slew of shows, including her own Heads Up Daily, and covering countless esports tournaments and events. She also creates content for her own YouTube and TikTok channels. Today, she hosts The Sports Network’s Digital SportsCentre show, where she covers traditional sports and pop-culture news. “I would love to see the worlds of gaming and traditional sports collide more,” Roberto says. “There’s just so much talent in esports.”

Pokimane (a.k.a. Imane Anys)

Imane Anys, alias Pokimane, is known as the 'Queen of Twitch,' with more than nine million followers.ADAM RINDY/Supplied

Celebrity Streamer

Today, Imane Anys, alias Pokimane, is known as the “Queen of Twitch,” with more than nine million followers on the content livestreaming platform and another 6.6 million subscribers on YouTube (and another 6.6 million on TikTok – we could go on). But once upon a time, the stream queen was just a girl using her family’s basement PC to connect with a world beyond her hometown of St. Catharines, Ont.

“Online, I could reinvent myself and socialize how I pleased,” says Anys, now 27. Her love of streaming didn’t end when she began a degree in chemical engineering at McMaster University. “You know how in college they say, ‘School, sleep, or socializing, pick two out of three?’ The two that I picked were school and streaming,” she says. But by the end of her second year, it became clear that Anys would have to choose between classes and the beginnings of a potentially very lucrative career. Advertisers were joining Twitch, she says, “and in one month I was able to pay off like half of my student loans.” So she decided to take a year off, “And I just never went back.”

Instead, Anys moved to L.A., where her popularity surged as people logged on in the 100,000s to watch her play games such as Fortnite and League of Legends. “Streaming leaves you on such a high – a very intense buzz. And it’s really, really fun in the moment, but it’s very easy to get lost in that as well,” says Anys, who takes breaks from content creation to ground and check in with herself. For now, Anys is planning her next big project in L.A., but she’d like to live in Toronto or Vancouver eventually. “There are just such good vibes in Canada,” she says.

KREW

Youtube Creators: Kat, Betty, Kim, Wenny, and Allen La a.k.a. Funneh, Rainbow, Gold, Lunar, and Draco.

As teens and preteens in Edmonton circa 2011, the La siblings had to help out at their family restaurant, but when customers were scarce, they would play a fun new game: Minecraft. Because the game allows players to make different characters and voice chat through them, the siblings used it to create digital versions of the kinds of comedy skits they enjoyed acting out for family members. “Then one day we were like, ‘Hey, should we upload these to YouTube?’” recalls Kat, 27, KREW’s ringleader. The next thing they knew, they were famous.

As of April, 2023, 10 million people have subscribed to KREW’s fun, family-friendly channel, where they post content made in Roblox, Minecraft and other games. The revenue they generate through YouTube, mobile game KREW Eats and merchandise sales has changed things for the family: “Our parents are retired, we pretty much just take care of them now,” says Kim. Life is sweet, if surreal: “When we go outside, fans recognize us and they cry and it makes us want to cry,” says Betty, 30. “It’s just really cute.”

What are the gaming world’s insiders excited about now?

Planet of Lana: “I’ve had my eyes on the project for a long time, and it looks superpromising,” says Nicolas Guérin of the sci-fi puzzle game with hand-painted scenery. $23.99, Steam.

Octopath Traveler II: This fantasy RPG is what Dr. Kris Alexander is obsessed with right now. $79.99, Nintendo Store.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Both Marissa Roberto and Pokimane are giddy about the long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild. $89.99, Nintendo Store.

Fashion Dreamer: Wenny La of KREW can’t wait to play this style influencer-themed Switch game releasing sometime this year. Nintendo Store.