GameBiz Lab Ideation | Creating a Game Concept and Fixing the One You Have

GameBiz Lab is bringing education and consulting around the business side of video games. Join us for our next event!

This program helps new and aspiring video game studio owners or anyone interested in the business of video game development.

For the Spring 2026 program, NMM is focused on studio foundations and game ideation. NMM is excited to have Gem Johnson give a session on market validation to create or fix your game idea.

Event Agenda:

Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:30 PM
StudioLab xR, 201 Portage Avenue #c100

5:30 – 6:00pm Doors open and networking

6:00 – 6:15pm Welcoming remarks

6:15 – 8:00pm Session by Gem Johnson

8:00 – 8:30pm Wrap up & Event concludes
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Speaker: Gem Johnson

Gem is the founder and CEO of Corvian Marketing, a marketing agency built from the ground up to serve indie game developers. With nearly seven years in the marketing space, Gem pivoted from corporate digital marketing into games to work with people that love what they do. Corvian’s philosophy is simple: a video game’s greatest marketing asset is its community. Rather than chasing clicks and impressions, Corvian builds lasting, self-sustaining communities around games by showing the human effort behind them before ever asking for a wishlist. It’s marketing built for an audience that is, as Gem puts it, borderline allergic to traditional marketing. Corvian currently works with studios ranging from solo devs to double-A teams, including Richard Garfield’s Popularium Games, and has partnered with the Canadian Game Awards, the Toronto Game Expo, and Interactive New Brunswick to bring accessible marketing resources to developers who otherwise wouldn’t have them.

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New Media Manitoba is thankful to the Canada Media Fund and Ubisoft for their support of GameBiz Lab.