Behind the busy B2B meetings, indie showcases, and the panels hosted by leading voices in the gaming industry is a collaborative effort heavily anchored by Jason Lepine, the founder and CEO of XP Gaming. Rather than seeking the spotlight, Jason has focused on the quiet, steady work of building a series of dedicated business-to-business conferences designed to better connect Canada’s fragmented gaming ecosystem.
During the 2026 XP Game Summit in Toronto I had the privilege of sitting down with Jason to trace his journey from a passionate gamer outside the industry to a master builder of Canada’s most vital professional gaming events. We touched on everything from the summit’s hard-fought evolution to the delicate balance of running both Toronto’s XP Summit and Montreal’s MIGS, and his grand vision for the future.
Meet Jason Lepine: From Telecommunications to Founding Game Summits Across Canada
Before he was bringing together thousands of gaming professionals across the country, Jason Lepine’s career trajectory looked entirely different. Coming from a non-gaming corporate background, he spent his time working in telecommunications with an engineering background. He wanted to shift to the gaming world but despite applying for numerous gaming engineering roles, his resume was routinely overlooked because he didn’t fit the classic mold of a video game programmer.
Driven by an unwavering passion for the gaming medium Jason took matters into his own hands. He began attending local industry meetups, eventually teaming up with peers to build early gaming shows. By 2016, he officially left his day job to jump into the gaming world full-time on the media and event side.
Spotting a massive, underserved demand for a pure business-and-networking business event, he set out to build a professional conference. By 2022, following the hurdles of the pandemic, the XP Game Summit (originally the XP Game Developer Summit) was officially born in Toronto. Now celebrating its milestone fifth anniversary, the event has grown into a stable, uniquely defined powerhouse with a life of its own.
Listening to the Market Over Forcing Ideology
One of the most fascinating segments of our conversation revolved around the expansion of XP Gaming’s footprint across Canada, including smaller one-day events on the East and West coasts. When asked if his ultimate goal was to grow these regional events into massive, sprawling conventions to rival the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Lepine offered a refreshing, humble take on event scaling.
“I can politely say no. I don’t think the industry needs another GDC. I think people love interacting in a more intimate setting… It’s ultimately the market that teaches us what people want. And so I’ve learned to be very attentive and not force my own ideology.”
Rather than focusing on bloated attendee counts, Jason prioritizes creating small, hyper-focused environments where developers can actually secure meaningful business partnerships and grow their companies.
Balancing the Titans: Toronto vs. Montreal (MIGS)
In 2023, the license owners of the historic Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) approached XP Gaming, looking for a new producer to revitalize their show and pivot it toward a more structured, business-first hybrid model. Having managed both iconic Canadian shows for years now, Jason has carefully cultivated completely separate identities for each so they complement, rather than compete with, one another.
“[We look at] MIGS as our International Hub to Canada for games… it has the international destination of developers, and there’s no way Toronto can replace that.”
“Whereas in Toronto… We are still the smaller event, you cater to the Ontario ecosystem and capitalize on the spring energy while MIGS is a winter event…Toronto is more indie-focused with a little bit of AAA, whereas MIGS they’re going to expect a more international model and a larger focus on AAA relationships.”
By targeting different timelines and developer tiers, with Montreal serving as a beacon for European traffic and Toronto operating under the tagline “Canada Connected” XP Gaming has created a brilliant multi-province synergy.
Navigating the Early “Virtual” Pandemic Hurdles
Keeping an event ecosystem alive when the world shuttered in 2020 was no small feat. Jason pulled back the curtain on how he kept the dream of XP Gaming alive during the height of the pandemic by pivoting entirely to free, virtual broadcasts.
“We had our first show planned for April 2020 with speakers lined up, when the world shut down I thought, ‘What if you guys want to do this virtually?’ It’ll be a free show… We did it again in 2021, albeit a little more rushed. Once we were able to host a live event again in 2022 we went ahead with all the plans and visions we had before and leveraged what we had learned from our online shows.”
This financial and operational resilience ensured that when the world finally opened back up for in-person gatherings in 2022, XP Gaming hit the ground running with an established, deeply loyal digital audience ready to transition to the show floor.
The Triumphant Return of the Canadian Game Awards
A massive talking point for this year’s summit was the fortuitous pairing with the Canadian Game Awards. After a turbulent period of shifting schedules and a brief hiatus, XP Gaming worked closely with the awards’ original founder, Carl-Edwin Michel, to integrate the gala directly into the summit’s May timeline. Jason admitted there was initial industry anxiety about moving an awards ceremony celebrating the previous calendar year to a spring date.
“You’re so concerned that it would be stigma celebrating the industry in the spring… and I told Carl the founder, ‘Because I think people will always take an excuse to celebrate our industry. No matter what it is.’ … The energy once we announced the collaboration was insane.”
The gamble clearly paid off. Moving the awards away from winter eliminated the threat of classic Canadian snowstorms that plagued previous iterations, replacing it with beautiful spring weather and an electric collaborative atmosphere.
The Future: Taking Canada to the Global Stage
As our chat wound down, Jason looked ahead to where he wants to steer the XP Gaming banner over the next 5 to 10 years. With existing partnerships blooming across Europe and a rapidly rising international reputation, he doesn’t just want to run local shows—he wants to build a global gateway.
“I think our show can play a part in better connecting people… If I have it my way, in the next 5–10 years I see XP as a portal connection throughout the world where people see it as a means to further their goals, whether it’s to grow their company or their games.”
Sitting down with Jason, it’s abundantly clear why XP Gaming has succeeded where so many other post-pandemic conventions have faltered. It comes down to a leadership style that rejects corporate ego, embraces small-scale, high-value intimacy, and fundamentally believes that the Canadian gaming industry deserves to be connected from coast to coast and recognized Internationally.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.