Marcus Chen
Game Development Expert at PixelForge Games Ltd
14 years shipping games. 8+ million downloads. Now teaching the next generation of developers how to build cross-platform mobile games that actually work.
What We’ll Cover
The skills that matter in modern game development
Mobile Game Architecture
How to structure games that run smoothly on both iOS and Android. We’ll dig into scene management, resource pooling, and memory optimization—the stuff that separates apps that get deleted from games people actually play.
C# & Gameplay Programming
Writing clean, performant code for game logic. You’ll learn patterns we use in shipped titles—state machines, event systems, input handling. Code that’s easy to debug when something breaks at 2 AM before launch.
Cross-Platform Optimization
One codebase, multiple devices. Different screen sizes, different processors, different networks. We’ll show you how to make games that feel native on every platform without maintaining three separate projects.
Analytics & Player Retention
You can ship a beautiful game and still lose 90% of players in the first week if you don’t understand what keeps them engaged. We’ll look at retention metrics, cohort analysis, and how to use data to make games better.
Unity & Unreal for Mobile
Both engines have different strengths. We’ll cover when to use each one, how to set them up for mobile, and the gotchas that’ll save you weeks of debugging later on.
Shipping & App Store
Getting your game from your laptop to millions of devices. Building for release, signing certificates, dealing with app store reviews, and what to do when something breaks in production.
The Story
How a basement modder became a game developer
Started at 16 in Vancouver, modding Half-Life 2 in my bedroom. That’s where I figured out I loved game development—the problem-solving, the creativity, the fact that your code actually affects how people play. Most of my friends were doing homework. I was learning C++ through trial and error.
Went to the University of Waterloo for Computer Science in 2006. Good school, but honestly the game development education lagged behind what I was already doing on my own. Finished in 2010, then jumped straight into the industry. First real job was at Bandcamp Games in Montreal as a gameplay programmer.
Those five years were intense. We shipped three mobile titles. Two of them hit the App Store’s Top 25 in Canada. I learned more in those first two years than in my entire university degree—how to optimize for Android’s fragmentation, how to work with artists and designers, how to ship under deadline pressure. The things they don’t teach you in school.
In 2015 I went freelance. Spent three years bouncing between projects—some small indie stuff, some consulting work with studios like Minority Media. That’s when I realized something: there’s a massive gap between what computer science programs teach and what the game industry actually needs. New developers come out of school knowing data structures and algorithms, but they’ve never shipped a game. They’ve never optimized for memory constraints or dealt with fragmentation across 10,000 different Android devices.
That gap frustrated me. Still does. So in 2019, I started PixelForge Games Ltd here in Ottawa. The idea was simple—teach game development the way it’s actually done in the industry. Not just theory. Real projects. Real constraints. Real feedback. I wanted to build something where geography doesn’t limit your opportunities. You shouldn’t need to move to Vancouver or Toronto to learn game development properly.
We’re still small. But we’ve trained over 200 developers in the past five years, and I’ve watched them land jobs at studios across Canada and beyond. That’s the real win—not just teaching people to code, but preparing them for the actual work.
Education & Credentials
Formal training meets real-world experience
Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Graduated 2010
Game Engine Architecture
George Brown College, Toronto
Completed 2014
Gameplay Programmer
Bandcamp Games, Montreal
2010–2015
12 Mobile Titles
8+ Million Downloads Across All Platforms
2010–Present
Teaching Philosophy
Why I teach the way I do
Real Projects, Real Constraints
You won’t learn game development from tutorials that say “assume unlimited memory” or “pretend network latency doesn’t exist.” You’ll learn it by building something, shipping it, and dealing with what breaks. That’s why our course is built around a real capstone project—a game you’ll actually complete and publish.
Industry-Ready, Not Theoretical
We don’t spend time on computer science concepts that don’t matter for game dev. We focus on what you need to know—optimization techniques that matter on actual devices, debugging strategies for mobile fragmentation, how to structure code so your teammates don’t hate you. If it’s not something you’ll face in the first three months of a real job, we don’t teach it.
Hands-On, Not Lectures
I learn by doing. Most people do. So we’re not sitting through PowerPoints. You’re coding from day one. When something doesn’t work, we debug it together. You see how mistakes happen and how experienced developers actually fix them—not the polished version you’d read in a textbook.
Geography Shouldn’t Matter
When I was learning, you had to move to the Bay Area or Montreal to work at a real game studio. That’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t need to uproot your life to get proper training. We’re in Ottawa, we’re online, and we’re training people to land jobs anywhere in Canada or beyond. Talent is everywhere. Opportunity should be too.
Latest Articles
Thoughts on game development, optimization, and shipping
Getting Started with Unity for Mobile Games
Setting up Unity properly for mobile is harder than most tutorials make it sound. We’ll walk through project settings that actually matter—build targets, quality settings, and optimization flags that’ll save you weeks of debugging later.
Read ArticleDesigning Interfaces That Actually Work on Mobile
Mobile UI is different from desktop UI. Fingers aren’t mice. Screens are tiny. Networks are unreliable. We’ll look at design patterns that work across different devices and how to make interfaces that don’t frustrate players.
Read ArticleUnderstanding Game Analytics and Player Retention
You shipped a game. Great. Now 85% of players are gone by day seven. We’ll look at what that means, which metrics actually matter, and how to use data to make your game more engaging without turning it into a casino.
Read ArticleCross-Platform Development: iOS and Android in One Codebase
Writing once and deploying to iOS and Android sounds great. In reality it’s complicated. We’ll look at what’s actually possible with Unity and Unreal, where you’ll still need platform-specific code, and how to structure your project so you’re not maintaining three separate games.
Read ArticleReady to Build Games?
The course starts with the basics and moves fast. You’ll ship a real game by the end. No prior experience required, but bring your curiosity and your willingness to debug at 2 AM.