Scaffold helping Alberta’s gaming scene with PrairiesCan funding

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Alberta’s video game development ecosystem is about to get a massive upgrade thanks to Scaffold, an initiative that connects fledgling game studios with industry veterans and investors.

Scaffold is a multi-year ecosystem development program from Shred Capital that offers Alberta’s emerging game development studios instruction, mentorship and workshops, bolstering the overall video gaming industry all across the province.

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Along with $750,000 from Alberta Innovates, Scaffold also announced a $1-million investment from PrairiesCan, a federal department that supports economic growth and diversification in the Prairie provinces.

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“Our government is making investments that empower innovative entrepreneurs across the Prairies to bring their ideas to market and grow their businesses,” said Dan Vandal, minister for PrairiesCan, in a news release.

“Our partnership with Scaffold will bolster the capacity of Alberta’s tech firms to commercialize their digital media products and help drive the growth of Alberta’s interactive media sector.”

“Scaffold serves as a catalyst for growth, bridging the gap between talent and global capital in gaming,” Doug Holt, associate vice-president of capital development at Alberta Innovates, said in a news release. “We see this as an essential opportunity to grow the gaming industry landscape in Alberta with a clear focus on creating investable gaming companies.”

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Analog solutions for digital-age problems

The Scaffold program operates on a cohort system, with each cohort made up of multiple participating development studios, said Matt Toner, managing partner of Shred Capital. He says Scaffold’s resources are focused towards solving the more “analog” challenges games studios face, like attracting investment, successful marketing techniques, and networking opportunities.

Since January, roughly 10,700 game developers have been laid off across the entire industry this year — mainly due to cost cutting and studio dissolution — already surpassing the 10,000 layoffs that occurred in all of 2023. For Toner, Scaffold is the kind of program up-and-coming studios desperately need, now more than ever.

“The game industry is clearly in need of initiatives like Scaffold to reshape the industry landscape,” Toner said. “In a sense, our timing in many ways couldn’t be better. Out of the ashes of this generation of companies, and we’re already seeing it, there’s going to be another generation of hopefully even better companies, especially in Alberta.”

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Toner also hopes the program can add a depth of diversity to Alberta’s game development ecosystem by including rural cities and post-secondary institutions, as well as a soon-to-be announced internship opportunity for Indigenous creators.

“I’d like to see more diversity in terms of geographic location,” Toner said. “But if you look at the diversity of our founders and our first teams, we’re actually about twice the industry average when it comes to equity-seeking groups. But there’s always more work to do.”

Toner says the ultimate goal is to launch 100 small- to mid-sized game development studios through Scaffold in Alberta by 2026.

Scaffold will host its inaugural Scaffold Game Investors Summit in Banff in October. The summit will bring together industry experts from across the world to assess, discuss, ideate and invest in the new landscape of Alberta’s gaming industry.

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