Starting in the fall of 2009, you will be able to get games made in the Saquenay area for your Nintendo Wii and DS! In fact, Wendigo Studios of Chicoutimi has obtained the accreditation required to create six Nintendo games asa result of their partnership with a French company already authorized by the game console giant.

“It's pretty prestigious, and it’s difficult to obtain accreditation,” claims company president and CEO Éric Trudel, “especially for a company like ours that had just started and, for all practical purposes, had no experience in video game design. We were very lucky that they had confidence in us.”

Usually, to obtain accreditation, a company has to have a team that has already designed games for that platform or an already-accredited customer that orders games for Nintendo. Once accredited, the company has to acquire a development console that costs several thousand dollars in order to produce games.


It all started when the young entrepreneur participated in the junior Chamber of Commerce trade mission in Paris and Brussels from March 29th to April 5th, 2008. Accompanied by some fellow entrepreneurs from Perséïdes and Agricom, two other area companies that specialize in different areas of Web technology and software development, Mr. Trudel met several potential partners, including the one that led him to designing games for Nintendo.

“Our French partner, Zig-Zag Island, had won several videogame contracts for Nintendo DS and Wii platforms. They were looking for a reliable partner to help them deliver their titles within the timeframes established by their game publisher. They found that partner in Wendigo Studios,” says Éric Trudel.

The agreement, worth nearly $1 million, allowed the young company to practically double its personnel to 24 full-time employees within a few months.

With negotiations underway that could lead to a new contract of more than €1 million ($CDN 1,600,000), this businessman in his 30s expects to increase his workforce to 45 by 2011.

“We've already rented the ground floor of the building to accommodate new offices for 20 additional employees. For the moment, we had to send some animation designs to China for sub-contracting in order to meet our deadlines,” the young CEO states.


Born on the campus of the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC) in 2006, Wendigo Studios, the only company designing video games in the area, set as its first objective to explore the downloadable game market. Last May, the company moved into a new, very high-tech location on Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, where about 20 young people work industriously before their screens wearing earphones. A friendly atmosphere prevails in the large open room despite the stress of tight deadlines.

With a Google-type management perspective, pinball and foosball games are set up at the end of the room so that employees can discuss ideas on their breaks.

The company is growing visibly and is currently managing a games division and a services division, which develops complex websites, Internet programming, 3-D modeling and flash animation. This variety allows them to expand their market prospects. All employees are trained for both divisions so that the company can adapt to the fluctuations in demand.

Wendigo Studios has received several awards since it was formed. In 2007 it won three prizes in the national final of the Quebec Entrepreneurship Contest, including the Ingenio prize awarded by Loto-Québec, for the best company producing interactive entertainment products.

Left photo caption: Wendigo partners: Martin-Pierre Beaulieu, Assistant Artistic Director; Dominic Mercier, Services Division Manager; Pierre-Yves Savard, Programmer-Analyst; Éric Trudel, President and CEO; 2nd row: Éric Laberge, Vice-President; Jules Robichaud-Gagnon, Producer

Right photo caption: Last May the company moved into a new, very high-tech space on Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville where about 20 young people now work industriously in front of their screens wearing earphones.





Finding a qualified and experienced workforce to design video games does not seem to be easy in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Therefore, several employees working for Wendigo come from outside the area: Montreal, Ontario, the Montérégie and even France. They’re in their 20s and now live in the Saguenay.

“It was really important for us to create career opportunities for people with the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC) bachelor's degree in video games and counter the youth exodus in some way,” relates Éric Trudel, the young entrepreneur who is originally from the Mauricie but has been living in the Saguenay for several years.

After they get their bachelor’s degree, young people have to go to large cities because there are no career opportunities in the area. UQAC was a key partner in the company’s start-up by providing premises with computer equipment and institutional support.


Currently, thanks to the brand-new bachelor's degree program in video game design at UQAC, which the first graduating class will complete this year, Wendigo Studios is sure to have a qualified local university-educated workforce in the future.

“Because the video game industry is growing throughout the world and Quebec is currently a prime location for the design and development of new games, we need qualified workers. UQAC’s proximity and the fact that we're the only ones in the area to offer employment directly related to a university education in video games puts us in an advantageous situation for hiring high-level employees,” Éric Trudel stresses.


In order to strengthen its team of designers, Wendigo went to look for people experienced in video game design at various companies in Quebec City and Montreal. For example, Dany Savard, who is originally from the area, had been working as a Gameplay programmer at Ubisoft in Montreal for three years when the Saguenay company approached him.

“It was very attractive to me because not only would this new job allow me to move back to my home region, but I would also become a lead programmer for Nintendo Wii platforms because I had worked on major projects such as Prince of Persia, a video game that came out in December 2008 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Those consoles are more complex than Nintendo's. It wasn't the same environment because there were about 300 of us working on designing a game. So I was prepared to take on new challenges by coming back here to lead a team of designers,” he tells us.

Wendigo is still looking for an artistic director with the required videogame experience to complete its team, however. In the meantime, different team members are taking care of artistic direction on an interim basis.


The first game entirely produced by Wendigo Studios features extreme snowmobile races. Known as X-Sled Hillclimb, this game allows you to drive a powerful snowmobile on a racecourse like those used by western Canadian snowmobile associations.

The Wendigo team plans to present their baby at the next Game Connection videogame fair in San Francisco in March 2009. That annual show brings together major video game publishers, distributors and designers from all over the world. Wendigo hopes to find a partner interested in distributing their games on the international market or on the Internet.

“We are very confident in this game. Several publishers are already interested. There aren't a lot of snowmobile games on the market, and those there are not very good, so we're hopeful. It might even be possible that a publisher will be interested in developing the game for iPhone or iPod touch platforms. Then our game would be downloadable on the Internet at the iTunes site,” explains Mr. Trudel, president and CEO of the young company.

Be that as it may, Wendigo artists already have a full calendar until September 2009. If they form a partnership at Game Connection, they can only start working on the new project when their other games have been submitted to Nintendo and approved.

Caption on laptop: The first game entirely produced by Wendigo Studios, X-Sled Hillclimb, could find a place in the iPhone games market.

Dany Savard caption: Dany Savard, who is originally from the area, was working as a Gameplay programmer at Ubisoft in Montreal when the Saguenay company offered him a position as a Nintendo Wii platform team leader.