Jesse Knapp

Looking into getting into iGaming in Canada? The rules are changing and I'm in the trenches of so many new movements across the country. Want to know more? DM me! Canada’s New Interactive Digital Media Rules, Why iGaming Should Pay Attention On March 1, 2024, Canada quietly introduced major policy changes under the Investment Canada Act (ICA) that could reshape the future of iGaming. These new rules expand the definition of Interactive Digital Media (IDM) to include online casino games, poker, esports betting, social casino, and other interactive platforms. That means iGaming is now firmly within Canada’s “cultural business” category, triggering much lower thresholds for foreign investment review and much higher scrutiny when foreign-controlled capital is involved. Why this matters now: Ontario’s iGaming market has exploded, $200B in wagers and an $8B industry in just three years. As the sector grows, the Government of Canada is signalling it wants more Canadian control, Canadian IP, and safeguards against “hostile” foreign influence. Key takeaways for iGaming: ⚡ Lower review thresholds mean even smaller deals can trigger ICA reviews. ⚡ National security risk factors now include online chat, streaming, and in-game purchases, all common in iGaming platforms. ⚡ Canadian-first IP and governance will be critical to passing “net benefit” reviews. ⚡ Smaller studios and startups that rely on foreign funding may face new barriers unless they structure deals carefully. In an $8B market that is still expanding, these policies aren’t just a regulatory footnote, they’re a playbook shift. If you’re an operator, supplier, or investor in Canada’s iGaming ecosystem, it’s time to assess your structure, partnerships, and compliance approach before the next big move. Things are about to change! #iGaming #Canada #InvestmentCanadaAct #InteractiveDigitalMedia #OntarioGaming #CanadianTech #DigitalEconomy #casino #onlinecasino https://lnkd.in/gf8ByT8v

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The delay of GTA VI to May 26, 2026 will have a number of impacts. Among them: - Revenue projections for the industry were based around the launch of this massive game. It’s exceedingly rare that a single title delay will have a tidal wave impact on the entire space. - Fall 2025 is suddenly a safe(r) moment to launch. The unknown of the specific release date was causing marketing challenges. - There is kindness in the delay coming with a specific release date. This is ultimately very helpful for the industry in planning for calendar 2026. - Take-Two investors have had to recalibrate since the Zynga acquisition. There was a level of expectation around this fiscal year’s performance (ending March 31, 2026). It will be interesting to see how investors react. Ultimately, this will yield a better GTA VI (which is the only thing Rockstar and Take-Two can and should be expected to prioritize). It will cause some additional industry-wide adjustments with regard to financial expectation. The firm release date is so helpful, however, that any downward effect can be mitigated in the long term as GTMs can now fully contemplate the biggest challenge in the release calendar.

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If you're looking for work now or later, here’s how to write a great LinkedIn post, based on what’s worked for thousands of successful ASGC hires ✅ What to include in your post: 1. Highlight your experience Names of studios, shipped titles, platforms. Anything that instantly tells someone where you’ve been. Example: “Senior Producer at Bungie (Destiny 2 expansions), also shipped live content for Apex Legends.” 2. Say what you bring to the table. Cite metrics Get specific with tools, systems, or responsibilities. Avoid generalities like “hard-working” or “team player” or "passionate" Example: “Skilled in Unity, C#, and LiveOps systems. Built seasonal pipelines used by 5M+ MAUs.” 3. Be clear about what you’re looking for Roles, titles, level, remote/onsite, locations you’re open to. Clarity helps people help you. Example: “Open to gameplay designer roles (mid or senior), remote preferred, but open to relocation in North America.” 4. Include one sentence about what drives you Let people understand what motivates you or what kind of game/team you love. Example: “I’m most energized when working on cooperative gameplay and systems that reward team skill.” 5. Share a link to your resume and/or portfolio Make it easy. This is essential. 6. Thank those helping and ask directly for engagement to drive more engagement. Be explicit: “Thank you to everyone who’s offered advice or support. If you’re willing to reshare this post or tag someone hiring, I’d deeply appreciate it.” 7. Tag 5–10 key allies or organizations Past collaborators, trusted managers, recruiters. Not 50 names. You want people who are likely to engage. The LinkedIn algorithm punishes you for non-engaging mentions. 8. Optional extras that help: Mention your visa/work authorization if relevant (I find more openness upfront, for all things, is better) Share 1-2 favorite accomplishments or stats Add a clear headline to the post for visibility (e.g. “Open to work: Narrative Designer | Remote or LA”) --- ❌ What not to do: 1. Don’t play the empathy card Framing your post around how hard this has been or your pain won’t drive the engagement you’re hoping for. Keep the focus on your skills, experience, and what you want next. 2. Don’t say how long you’ve been looking / how many applications It can make people ask questions, fair or not. 3. Don’t be vague Avoid lines like “open to opportunities” or “seeing what’s out there.” Get specific so people know how to help. 4. Don’t write a novel or something too short 3-6 short, clear paragraphs is the sweet spot. Too long, and most people won’t finish it. Too short (like a 3-4 sentence post) likely won’t have enough detail to spark meaningful engagement. --- Need more help? Find always free CV, portfolio, and LinkedIn reviews daily in our Discord: discord.gg/asgc. Find volunteer-led support and tens of other resources at asgc.gg Find 1,000 annual helpful posts by following me on LinkedIn We’ve helped 4,500+ people land roles. You're next!

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🕹️ We’ve Lost the Gumption of QA 🎮 Once upon a time, QA wasn’t just a department; it was a proving ground. QA folks didn’t just test games, they lived in them. They learned how systems worked, how they broke, and, more importantly, how they could be better. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, during a wave of industry upheaval and transition, we saw some truly creative voices emerge from QA. People like: ☆ Chris Cross – from QA to Creative Director on Medal of Honor ☆ Lyndsay Pearson – started in QA, now VP on The Sims ☆ Michael Stout – QA on Ratchet & Clank, now a lead designer ☆ Darren Monahan – QA at Interplay, co-founder of Obsidian ☆ Adam Boyes – from QA to VP at PlayStation, now founder of Vivatro ☆ Leanne Loombe – QA to Executive Producer at Riot Games and currently at Annapurna Interactive Back then, QA was seen (by some studios) as a launchpad. QA testers moved into production, writing, level design, UX, and biz-dev because they knew the game inside and out—and had the drive to do more. But now? ▪︎ QA is outsourced more than ever. ▪︎ Entry-level testers are kept in the shadows, with no path forward. ▪︎ Titles like “QA” often disqualify candidates from roles they’re fully capable of doing. ▪︎ Meanwhile, the doors once open to QA are often reserved for folks from marketing, journalism, or influencer pipelines—valuable skill sets, sure, but rarely the ones who’ve lived and breathed a game through its darkest launch bugs. Let me be clear: QA IS a career. It deserves pay, security, and respect. But it’s also often the only way some folks can break into the industry, and if we keep people tied to test plans forever, or dismiss their contributions because their title doesn’t include “design,” we’re losing some of our best and brightest. I've seen QA testers write better design specs than the docs they were given. I've watched them run internal playtests, design live ops events, debug with engineers, and help patch broken pipelines mid-launch. These are not “just testers.” They are developers. And we are failing them. We need to reopen those doors: • Build ladders from QA into creative, production, and leadership roles. • Celebrate QA voices publicly—not just when games ship, but during development. • Recognize QA as a space full of future founders, narrative leads, and game directors. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. Let QA rise. Let them build. Let them lead. #GameDev #QA #LetQARise #DeveloperEmpathy #IndieGames #Production #GameDesign #GamingCareers #DevCulture #DesignFromWithin #GameIndustryReflections

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I sat in on a great panel yesterday during the 1st day of the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS): “Visions of the Future for the Canadian Video Game Business”, hosted by John Nguyen and featuring Joshua Nilson, Christopher Chancey, and Lysane Perreault. It was an insightful and grounded conversation which gave a clear snapshot of where the Canadian industry stands today. Some of my key takeaways from the talk were the following: - After a tough 18 months or so, the market seems to be stabilizing with new projects and studios emerging, but the tone is more measured. - There’s a shift towards a stronger focus on productivity, profitability, and marketing. While the creative drive is still there, it's now more often being paired with business discipline. - Funding and publishing are shifting as risk tolerance is down, but that also means developers who prove traction (like strong wishlists or engaged audiences) enter those conversations with larger leverage. - Smaller, focused teams are becoming the new normal with a return to building steadily, rather than scaling recklessly. What stood out most to me was the emphasis on treating games as both creative and commercial ventures. I've written about this a few times already. That balance has always been a challenge for our industry but it’s exactly where long-term sustainability lives. A big thanks to the panelists for a candid and forward-looking discussion! I for one very much enjoyed it.

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For everyone who is not attending GDC: Relax. It’s not a big deal. You’re not missing any "incredible opportunities." Your opportunities come from how great and desirable your products are, not from the conferences you attend. Networking matters, but it’s not just about party invites. Your online presence is just as powerful (if not more). P.S. And yes, I'm not attending GDC either. Instead of spending days on flights and nights in overpriced hotels, I’d rather get some work done.

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The closure of Ubisoft Halifax and the layoffs at Rockstar are stark reminders of how quickly talent availability shifts. For Studio Heads, this is a signal to update your headcount planning immediately. When a studio closes, you have a window of about 2-3 weeks to engage pre-formed teams. These are groups of developers who already have shorthand, established workflows, and trust. If you have the budget, "acqui-hiring" a functional pod from a closing studio is one of the most efficient ways to scale. Don't wait for them to apply to your portal. You need to be proactive. #TalentStrategy #Hiring #GameJobs

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Curious: Nintendo's initial reveal of the Switch 2 touted 4K, 120FPS, and VRR support. However, a notable change has been spotted on several of Nintendo's official regional websites: the removal of VRR mentions. Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie highlighted this on the Canadian, US, and Japanese sites. As of posting this, the European site still includes this feature at present, suggesting a potential ongoing update across all Nintendo platforms...

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There was a recent(ish) article in Canada highlighting how indie studios in Canada are faced with critical coverage gaps with their insurance. To be honest, you can probably replace Canada with any country. Indie studios are usually created by people who have a passion for making games, but are not always aware of the potential risks it involves. The article says: " Smaller developers – especially those operating with lean teams and limited budgets – often struggle to find comprehensive packages that address the full spectrum of exposures they face. Cyberattacks, intellectual property disputes, and business interruption events can all hit indie studios hard, particularly when they don’t have the scale or reserves to absorb a significant loss". It also goes onto say "The industry has yet to deliver flexible, right-sized solutions for this segment – a missed opportunity given how central indie development is to Canada’s gaming ecosystem." Well. . . . I disagree. What's missing is a fundamental understanding on how games studios operate, the complex challenges they face and how to translate that into the potential risks. Which is why we see time and again, companies being categorised under "generic tech policies" which ultimately wont pay out if they need to be activated. The cost for this kind of cover for small teams isn't high, finding someone who can arrange the right cover for them can be. That's the precise reason we exist, year on year, more companies trust us to protect them and they stay with us. If you want a quick chat to go through your studios cover and what you should think about when taking out insurance. I'm here all day, every day :) https://lnkd.in/eYEAPyyk  

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There’s been talk lately about how publishers are “dead”. I heard it again during a recent GDC panel I was on, so I feel compelled to address a narrative promoted by some non-publishing companies and individuals. Their declarations remind me of “the PC is dead” or “Consoles are Dead”. Both of these statements of shuffling off the gaming coil have been going on for almost 20 years in some cases. They appear to be somewhat premature. They also don’t seem to take the evolution of a product or service to meet the consumer’s needs into account. The truth is, we all need to make adjustments—publishers, investors, everyone—to meet the future’s needs, not yesterday’s problems. When I talk with developers, they generally focus on two things: The need for funds. The need for marketing and publishing expertise. Funding requests come in many forms: full funding, finishing funds, marketing, QA, localization, porting, you name it. Every deal is different, and we get hundreds of inquiries each month. We’ve said this for years: we operate under two types of currencies—Cash and Time. Sure, some teams self-publish successfully, but the ones we partner with often need one (or both) of those currencies. In just the last three weeks, we’ve sent out four term sheets—three already signed—and we’re working on five more. These deals follow what some might call a “traditional” publishing model, at least from an indie perspective, but we strive to make ours more flexible, collaborative, and fair. Real-world interest and tangible deals suggest that developers still want—and need—publishers who can evolve alongside them and support them in their goals. As a publisher, my viewpoint might seem biased. “Look at me, we’re still relevant!” But if the conversations I’ve been having over the last 12 months are any indicator (running DB) or the last 10 years (running Versus Evil), publishers and investors in games are still very much needed—especially today. I’m happy to talk more about it with anyone directly, but we can and will continue to show that the publishing model is alive and well. Is the publisher dead? Let me know what you think. #GameDev #Publishing #IndieGames #GameIndustry #DigitalBandidos #RebootBlue #RebootDevelop

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I've seen people talk about the "deprofessionalization" of game dev - that large game companies are becoming unsustainable and that smaller and indie devs are going to rule the market. Not that long ago, people were complaining about the reverse. The problem then was that all the smaller game companies were dying off and game dev was becoming "winner takes all". All the smaller companies were closing and everyone was going to have to go work at large mega corps. The return of smaller game studios can be a good thing, both for work, as well as the games created. more people taking more risks means more innovation and more "weird" games instead of only safe bets. Don't stress, the pendulum is just swinging back the other way.

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The gaming industry is facing a self-inflicted talent crisis. The trend? "Seniors only." By freezing entry-level and mid-level hiring, studios are cannibalizing their own future. When every studio demands 10+ years of experience but no one is willing to mentor the next generation, we create a bottleneck that drives senior salaries to unsustainable levels and leads to massive burnout. Surgical recruitment isn't just about finding the veteran; it’s about strategic organizational design. If your team is 100% seniors, who is doing the work that keeps them from leaving? #GameDev #StudioLeadership #HiringTrends #TalentCrisis #GameIndustry

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Playtesting is the most valuable tool in game production, and yet so few teams leverage it to its full potential. I've met plenty of veteran game developers who don't understand why game teams playtest. Some think it's only for finding bugs, while others see it as a morale-building activity. They're both wrong. There is only one goal of playtesting: collecting design feedback. There are other ways to find bugs or celebrate the team, but playtesting is the only opportunity for designers to assess what's working and what's not. Another commonly missed opportunity is skipping daily playtests. Daily playtests are a key success indicator in part because so many other good practices are tied to it. A team that can playtest every day must also have a new stable build daily, as well as the ability for designers to deliver a meaningful gameplay increment worth testing every 24 hours. That means efficient tools and an iterative design process. And so if your team isn't playtesting daily because they can't, it's time to fix those problems. But even among teams that could playtest daily, many still don't, citing that they need time back to work. This is a mistake. Devoting an hour to playtest every day is the most valuable time investment your team can make. The biggest time-waster for game teams is building the wrong thing and having to throw it away and start over. Playtests are the antidote to that, because you can get immediate feedback and pivot. Teams with a daily playtest habit rarely waste more than a day on a failed idea. In the future, I'll share some principles for playtesting I've learned over the years. For the game developers out there, how often do you playtest? If you don't playtest every day, why not? Is it build stability, team availability, lack of updates, a desire to get time back, or some other reason?

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There is not one "game industry" - there are multiple versions of the game industry that collide and overlap because they all have something to do with games, but game development is very different if you're talking about hobbyist / self-funded development vs. published / highly-capitalized development. In the latter case, money is quite literally the lifeblood of a game development team. And, in my experience, whoever brings the money to the table gets to decide. Because if the money goes away, so does the project; in most cases, so does the studio. If you want to be in the room where the decisions get made, you have 2 options: 1) Bring the money. 2) Offer real value to the people who do. One of the things I did not understand as a junior developer is that it does not matter how right you are about something (anything), if you make the lives of the people who bring the money more difficult on a regular basis, you are not going to be in the room when decisions get made. My career is weirdly falling into two halves these days. In the first half, I fought for creative control, and I learned how to play both of these roles because that's what I needed to do to have the influence I wanted to have over the games I was making. In the second half, I'm not fighting for creative control at all, but trying to harmonize all of the other people who are. I'm not sure that any of this applies outside of the particular kind of Western, US-based game development paradigm that I've worked in over the last couple of decades, but in my experience, if you want to get beyond the reactionary mode of "people are always making decisions I don't understand or have control over" - follow the money. Decisions are being made somewhere. If you're not in the room, ask yourself why not. If you want to be in the room, identify how you can add value for the people who are.

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There’s a myth in the games industry that just won’t die: “QA is just a stepping stone into game development.” (But if you’ve worked in Live Service games — you know better.) Quality Assurance isn’t just bug-checking. It’s live triage. It’s design feedback in real-time. It’s the only team that touches every system, every day. So why do we keep treating QA as if it’s “entry level”? Truth is… In modern game development, QA is as critical as Design, Engineering, and Production. • They don’t just test features — they keep them from breaking millions of players’ experience. • They don’t just report issues — they help prioritize what gets fixed. • They don’t just “check the build” — they protect the brand. Yet somehow, they’re still the last to get credit — and often, the first to go. That needs to change. If we want stable, scalable, player-first games, we need to start treating QA like what it actually is: Essential. ⸻ QA isn’t a pipeline step. It’s a partnership. If you’ve worked in Live Service games, you know: Good QA doesn’t just improve games — it saves them

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