Wendigo Studios was founded in October 2006 by six young entrepreneurs just out of university. Lead by Eric Trudel, a 12 year veteran from the multimedia and serious game industry, they set about demonstrating to the gaming community that they had the passion, the knowhow and the dedication to make good games. By combining a flair for business opportunities and good knowledge of favourable local government help in company and job creation, they were able to develop a working prototype for an original intellectual property for a snowmobile video game. Starting with a small team of 4 full time employees in 2006, the Wendigo team is now 25 strong and expanding. Veterans from the gaming and comic book industry were gradually added to our team and now our team boasts an impressive wealth of experience, with ranges of up to 13 years of relevant professional experience.
With its snowmobile prototype, Wendigo Studio was able to demonstrate their technical and artistic knowhow and get work for hire contracts for Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS video games. This new certification enabled Wendigo Studios to expand their service offer to the gaming industry and establish themselves as one of the most rapidly expanding independent game development studio in eastern Canada.
In 2009, Wendigo Studios established two important partnerships. The first one was with ZigZag Island, another independent game development studio located in France. The partnership enabled the two studios to combine their work force of 50 employees in order to bid for bigger projects. The two studios also agreed on joint research and development projects in order to better position the companies in the industry.
The other partnership is with the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi (UQAC), a university located in the same city as Wendigo Studios, with head offices in Saguenay. UQAC is the only university in eastern Canada with a technical bachelor degree specialized in video game design and programming. The two entities agreed to renewed bilateral efforts in order to promote the bachelor degree, to transfer Wendigo Studios’ knowhow to the classroom and to make available a fixed number of internship positions to the universities students. From Wendigo Studios’ point of view, this will help to insure the recruiting of an increased number of talented and better trained new employees.