At Hamilton’s Achimostawinan Games, founder Meagan Byrne specifically targets Indigenous women, a traditionally under-served audience.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Entrepreneur and video game designer Meagan Byrne’s first foray into game development didn’t necessarily start from a place of love, but rather one of financial necessity.
“I didn’t even realize you could get paid to make games until I was actually looking to switch careers,” Ms. Byrne says.
She originally worked in theatre design and live production, but after the 2008 recession, she was looking for more stability. The big question was, what would that look like? It wasn’t until she read an employment forecast for the next five years that she found the answer: “the first [job] was software developer and then the second was game designer.”
Just eight years later, in 2016, she launched Achimostawinan Games, a Hamilton-based Indigenous-owned and -operated video game company. The company’s first game was released in March, 2023. Hill Agency: PURITY/Decay is a futuristic detective mystery game that follows Meeygen Hill, an Indigenous “tough as nails P.I.,” as she tries to solve crimes in a post-colonial world.
The game’s ethos was a simple but unique one: What would it look like if LandBack happened tomorrow, and with our current resources? The Indigenous-led movement advocates for restoring sovereignty and reclaiming stewardship of traditional territories. The theme of reclamation shows up in both the setting and the storytelling – the game takes place in a futuristic dystopian city that has been reclaimed by Indigenous folks, and revolves around collecting interviews and evidence to solve a mystery.
Gaming is an important – and growing – industry in Canada, according to a 2025 Statistics Canada report. Between 2013 and 2022, the number of video game firms more than doubled from 775 to 1,628, and revenue rose from $2 billion to $7 billion. These firms are largely focused on video game design, not publishing, and are concentrated in regional hubs, with Ontario home to the most (638), followed by British Columbia (426) and Quebec (338). What’s more, the industry employs about 60,000 Canadians, more than twice as many compared to a decade before. According to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC), video games contributed $5.1 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2024.
Still, Byrne says, only a small percentage of creators are Indigenous. In fact, when she first started in the industry, she inadvertently launched one of very few Indigenous-owned companies in the sector. But that is slowly changing.
“I’ve seen a really steady growth in Indigenous-owned studios or Indigenous artists being fully ‘out’ as Indigenous within the game space, which I think is because of all the support,” Ms. Byrne, an Apihtawikosisân artist, notes. That includes Indigenous Game DEVS, a grassroots organization that connects Indigenous video game professionals from all over the world, as well as the creation of more informal communities of support among artists, who meet up for coffee or to share ideas.
Ms. Byrne’s first game, Hill Agency: PURITY/Decay, features a hardboiled P.I. and themes of Indigenous futurism, cybernoir and reclamation.Jalani Morgan/The Globe and Mail
Indigenous storytelling also lends itself to the gaming space and medium, notes Jeremy Nelson, a Red River Métis creative and the founder of Toronto-based Little Buffalo Studios.
“There’s a variety of different traditions in terms of thinking about the connection of the past, present and future, and reflecting a broad array of stories,” he says. While this doesn’t always work in a linear form, this tradition works perfectly for games. In fact, he adds, “that’s actually what people want in a game.”
This has proven true for Achimostawinan Games, too. Hill Agency has collected fans among players and pros alike; prior to its release, the game won the grand prize in Ubisoft’s 2022 Indie Series Spotlight. Post-release, it was awarded the Digital + Interactive Award at the 2023 imagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival and was selected as one of eight “Best in Play” games at the 2024 GDC Festival of Gaming.
Importantly, the game is first and foremost for Indigenous women, a largely underserved market overall, and isn’t necessarily intended to be an educational tool for non-Indigenous gamers.
“It was very difficult to find work by Indigenous groups or artists that was a video game and not educational,” says Ms. Byrne, who came into the industry during a time when any diverse faction was expected to bring education with them. “When I came in I [said], I’m going to make non-educational games; I’m going to tell new stories. It was very important for me to not be pigeonholed into that education module.”
However, by virtue of engaging with these stories, she says, people will inevitably learn about Indigenous traditions and history.
“Too much in today’s society we almost force people to learn,” Ms. Byrne says. “Education happens all the time and I find the best education happens when people get personally excited; they have an internal reason for doing it… There’s just so much work people can do themselves when they’re personally invested in stories.”
While there might be fears around the fact that creating with their communities in mind would mean limited success and sustainability compared to the wider industry, both creators say that’s not the case.
Little Buffalo Studio’s first game Akiiwan: Survival, is currently in the demo stage. An open-world survival crafting game, it steps outside the genre conventions of drama and jump scares and takes a more honest approach to survival crafting, presenting something different for all lovers of the genre.
Mr. Nelson recalls hearing from an 82-year-old West Coast Elder dealing with mobility issues. They’d played the game six times in a row to relax at the end of the day. “The spirit of the demo, [and the] honest approach to what it means to live off the land, really resonated with them and filled this place for them that they weren’t necessarily able to do physically at all times,” he says, noting that feedback from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous players has been positive. “When you hear something like that, you [think], We’re on the right track.”
But that doesn’t mean that it has been easy to build in this sector – especially when it comes to accessing funding. While Achimostawinan Games was able to secure grant funding from the Toronto Arts Council, the Canadian Media Fund (CMF) and Ontario Creates, plus $12,000 from Kickstarter and $50,000 in prize money from Ubisoft, the budget for Hill Agency was “barebones,” especially considering its six-person team and the four years it took to develop. This limited the speed of development – the team couldn’t always afford to work on the project full-time – which in turn delayed the game’s release date. For example, Ms. Byrne’s original vision was for a layered narrative with interconnected plotlines, but she didn’t have the budget to execute that level of complexity.
Still, players’ response to the game has been heartening.
“It’s like anything in the indie space; people are craving novelty on one hand, but on the other hand, they’re also interested in learning different ways of looking at the world. That’s why we engage with art,” Ms. Byrne says.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Indigenous Enterprises section. If you have suggestions for future stories, reach out to IE@globeandmail.com.