Game On: Full Indie Takes Over Our Campus

Picture this: over 100 developers, coders, and lifelong gamers flooding through our doors, laptops in one hand, controllers in the other, all buzzing with the same electric question "Wait, have you tried this one yet?"

That was the scene when our campus was selected to host the Full Indie meetup, and for one day, we were the epicenter of the indie game development scene.

From the moment the doors opened, the campus transformed. Stations popped up across the space, each one a portal into a different world, some pixelated and nostalgic, others sleek and futuristic, and a few old-school card games thrown into the mix, all of them built by hand, by passion, by people who just wanted to make something fun.

Developers moved from station to station like kids in the world's best arcade, plugging in, playing around, trading feedback, laughing, taking notes, and moving on to the next.

Our Students, Front and Center

Here's the part we're most proud of: while the room was packed with talent from across the industry, from independent studios still finding their footing to teams with AAA credits behind them, our Game Design and Game Programming students weren't on the sidelines. They were right in the middle of it, showcasing games they'd poured months of work and debugging into, watching real players react in real time to worlds they'd built from scratch.

There's no classroom simulation that replicates that feeling, a stranger sitting down at your station, picking up a controller, and actually getting what you were going for. That's the moment student work stops being a project and starts being a game.

More Than a Meetup

This is what studying game design and programming at LaSalle actually looks like in practice: students aren't just learning the fundamentals in a classroom, they're getting put in the room with the industry itself, working alongside indie developers and AAA veterans, and walking away with real feedback on real work.

That connection runs deeper than one event. Aryo Nazaradeh, President of Full Indie, also teaches at LaSalle College Vancouver, proof that the people running the community our students are stepping into aren't distant industry names, they're already in the classroom with them.

As Rob Stefanson, Program Director of Media Arts at LaSalle College Vancouver, puts it:

"Hosting Full Indie's monthly meetups at LaSalle College Vancouver has been a genuine win on every front. For our game design, programming, and audio students, it's an invaluable chance to connect with working developers, see real projects in progress, and start building the industry relationships that launch careers. For the wider Vancouver game dev community, it's a space to gather, share work, and playtest, and for us at LCV, it's a chance to open our doors and show the kind of environment our students are learning in every day. We're proud to support Full Indie and Vancouver's indie game scene, and we're excited to see where this collaboration goes next."

That's the kind of access and network most people don't get until years into their careers, and it's exactly why events like this matter.

Discover our Game Design and Game Programming programs at LaSalle College Vancouver.