The inaugural Game Developers Conference Canada wrapped up today at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Part of Vancouver Digital Week, the two-day GDC Canada spawned from the Vancouver International Game Summit, ran with enthusiasm but middling success by Victoria’s Greg Spievak and his Reboot Communications for three years.

GDC events, produced by San Francisco’s Think Services, are held annually in Austin, Texas; China; and Europe, with the flagship GDC held in San Francisco each spring.

Think Services brought the GDC brand to Vancouver by partnering with Reboot. I spoke with Kathy Schoback, executive vice president of global events for Think Services, at the media centre, and she told me that she had just booked space for next year’s GDC Canada.

The video-game development community in Vancouver, she explained, had been wanting VIGS to be more of a GDC-style event, and Think Services had been considering Vancouver as a conference site. Morphing VIGS into GDC Canada was a simple solution which benefitted all parties.

Schoback admitted that there was concern that attendance at GDC Canada would be low because of Vancouver’s proximity to San Francisco and the fact that the events were a scant two months apart. Developers from Eastern Canada who had sent staff to San Francisco, she said, were reluctant to send more people across the continent.

“I think that’s a first year out problem,” said Schoback, who is encouraging developers next year to send some people to San Francisco and some to Vancouver. But, she said, GDC Canada is intended to be by Canadians for Canadians, so the themes and topics of the two conferences will be different.

The original theme for this first GDC Canada was “big budget, big team, multiple SKU, international deployment,” said Schoback. “That made sense year ago.” Nobody expected the contraction the industry has faced in the past six months.

That’s why conference organizers decided to make free passes available to unemployed game developers. It was a wise decision, because while GDC Canada could have been an “exec-fest”, according to one attendee. Instead the rooms and corridors were filled with T-shirt and sneaker-wearing developers, and circulating among the crowd at the convention centre, I picked up the same creative energy that I’ve sensed at the popular and busy San Francisco conferences.

While exact numbers weren’t available at the time, conference director Izora de Lillard said that attendance was higher than expected, and that everyone from speakers to vendors to advisory board members were excited about the success of the inaugural GDC Canada.

GDC Canada 2009 kicked off with an onstage interview with Don Mattrick conducted by Electric Playground founder and co-host Victor Lucas. Mattrick, the founder of Distinctive Software and one of the instigators of game development in Canada, once led Electronic Arts, the video-game publishing giant, and is now a senior vice president at Microsoft in charge of its Xbox business.

The affable Mattrick was a good choice to lead off the show. A native Vancouverite, Mattrick has always been an advocate and cheerleader for the industry in this city, and led the cheers when Lucas offered that “Canadian game developers kick ass”.

After a short video bio of Mattrick, the two got into conversation and started by running down the laundry list of rumours that have been floating around about what Microsoft might be showing off at E3 next month.

Motion controls for the Xbox 360? “No comment,” joked Mattrick.

Metal Gear Solid 4 coming to the Xbox? “No comment.”

Next generation console, Xbox 720, being debuted? “No comment.”

Then they talked about topics ranging from the history of game development in Vancouver to shifting models of development and publishing to Mattrick’s belief in the importance of people above all else.

Leading off the second day at GDC Canada was a keynote presentation by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, the duo who founded and lead Edmonton’s BioWare, now a division of EA. The two medical doctors, who started their company while still attending the University of Alberta, talked about the importance of narrative in video games, using examples from their successful games Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, and the forthcoming Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.

Other GDC Canada sessions included lectures about creating game characters, designing games to elicit emotions in players and taking advantage of digital distribution channels, to panels discussing how companies can best adjust to uncertainty, best practices for audio production, and working with outsourcing vendors.

For a first-time event – because even though GDC Canada came out of the VIGS this was the first time the sessions were organized and programmed by a company with expertise in game conference production – GDC Canada was a good start.

What will be more telling, though, is how much next year’s GDC Canada grows and improves. Vancouver, as an important hub for the video game industry, deserves to have an event like this. It’s not a trade show, but an opportunity for smart, passionate people to talk about how they create and craft interactive experiences.

GDC events, Schoback told me, are about “learning, networking, and inspiration”. That was certainly true of the first GDC Canada, and I hope that it will be true for future GDC Canadas as well.

[Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight’s tech blog. ]