February CGDA Meetup - Alessandro Canossa

Welcome to the February 2026 Christchurch Game Developers' Meetup!

Location:
EPIC Innovation, 106 Manchester St, Christchurch 8011

The meetup will also be streamed online:
[Link to be added on the night!]

Don't forget to check us out at:
Website: chch.gamedev.co.nz
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/chchgamedev.bsky.social
Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/christchurch-game-developers-new-zealand
Discord: discord.gg/68YqqFZ
If you like our meetups, consider supporting us on Patreon:
patreon.com/CHCHGameDev
***

Speaker - Alessandro Canossa
Alessandro Canossa employs psychological theories of personality, motivation, and emotion to design interactive scenarios to investigate individual differences in behavior among users of digital entertainment. As a Senior User Researcher and Data Scientist at Ubisoft, he enjoys investigating occult behavioral patterns and is happiest when he can triangulate data-driven insights with surveys and lab observations to provide reports to production teams.

6:10 PM - KICK OFF
Welcome to the Christchurch Game Developers Meetup, with news from around New Zealand!

6:15 PM - MENTAT: Supporting Game Devs' Strategic Decisions
MENTAT is a strategic decision-support tool and self-maintaining database designed to help game developers bridge the gap between production and market reception. Presented by Alessandro Canossa, the tool leverages data from hundreds of European game companies to correlate specific game characteristics—such as genre and business models—with critical outcomes like profit margins, user scores, and financial resilience. Rather than acting as a predictive "crystal ball," MENTAT functions as an analytical companion that provides developers with data-driven associations, helping them navigate complex industry variables and gain clarity on market processes they may not be familiar with.

The research behind MENTAT evolved through several collaborative projects, including Game Hub Scandinavia and BSG-GO, moving from qualitative interviews with studios in Denmark and Sweden to a massive quantitative analysis of over 360 games. By condensing 201 parameters into 86 core metrics across company business, team structure, and game content, the tool offers actionable insights into how strategic choices—like platform exclusivity or monetization styles—impact success. Looking forward, the project aims to integrate Natural Language Processing and sentiment analysis of player reviews, further empowering developers to make informed decisions in an increasingly competitive landscape.

7:20 PM - PIZZA
Enjoy some refreshments (AKA pizza) and catch up with/meet other game dev enthusiasts.

Event Photography Notice: The CGDA occasionally takes photos and/or videos at our events for promotional purposes. If you would prefer not to have your image recorded for marketing purposes, please make your wishes known to the photographer, and/or reach out to a committee member, and we will accommodate your request. Thank you!
***

Massive thanks to all our supporters for making our meetups possible!
Our Corporate Supporters:
Yoobee College of Creative Innovation - a tertiary institute committed to developing creative and technical talent across New Zealand.
https://www.yoobee.ac.nz/courses/

HIT Lab NZ - a multidisciplinary, Human-Centred Research environment that collaborates with industry.
https://www.hitlabnz.org/

CerebralFix - a Christchurch-based game development studio specializing in work for hire from some amazing companies.
https://cerebralfix.com/

Screen Canterbury NZ - a Canterbury-based film office helping creatives get their projects delivered to the screens of their choice, providing fantastic resource-sharing & advocacy for our screen production industry.
https://www.christchurchnz.com/screen-canterburynz

And our awesome Patreon Supporters:
Matt Barton
Leith Caldwell
Samantha Cook
Nik Scarr
Carl de Visser
Alexander Swords