Jeff Mundee has had an incredibly prolific career. Over the course of several years, he worked on such popular games as FIFA, Dragon Age, Dead Space, Skate and Sleeping Dogs in B.C. That would have been impressive enough for any CV, but over the past nearly 10 years, he’s been in Fredericton, New Brunswick, to help grow the province’s burgeoning gaming scene.
While it’s not uncommon for game makers to move from AAA to indie development, it’s that journey to a comparatively smaller Canadian city — which took Mundee back to his home province — that’s particularly noteworthy.
Jeff Mundee. (Image credit: University of New Brunswick)
“In deciding to make different kinds of games, there was a lot of different directions to go in. And I’d say I went in lots of different ones,” he explains. “There was a couple of co-founded companies in Vancouver that I was a part of, and lots of learning about industry and deals and engines and publishers and those kinds of things.”
He says all of this led him to a “very different” mindset about what he wanted to do next. Part of that included continued teaching for many years at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), but eventually, he realized he could also marry both education and game development.
“When I came [back] to New Brunswick, there wasn’t much of a game industry. So getting in with the colleges and universities to try and build up capacity in the area, to then have a company, was an approach that was presented and my best option at the time.”
It was during this period that he met a UNB student group that was passionate about making games. The students — Jade Yhap, Rebecca Goodine and Elliot Coy were taking part in a contest to “make a game for good” — in this case, a platformer called Guide about anxiety. Before long, this caught Mundee’s eye, and together, he helped them found Reframe Games in Fredericton.
Guide. (Image credit: Reframe Games)
“Effectively, I was just there to sort of cheer them on,” he admits. “But as time went on and they wanted to get more serious and to incorporate or to publish and do all these kinds of things, I wanted to be a part of it.”
To help with that, Mundee acquired Reframe — in part using funds acquired through his own gaming solutions company, Spandrel Interactive — and became CEO to give them more financial security and guidance after a few projects had been abandoned. From there, the team set out to continue with that mantra of “games for good.”
Getting the ball rolling
For Mundee, there were a few specific goals he had in mind with Reframe. In particular, he noted that there were “no runaway hits or behemoth companies in the educational game space.” As both a veteran game developer and educator, this was something he wanted to tackle.
“What is it about educational games that makes them significantly different and all this kind of stuff?” he says. “And so the idea is, ‘What if you could make a successful retail game that also had the intention of doing well by its players or well by society as a whole, or culture or environment — whatever it is?”
Of course, he’s aware that it will take several attempts to achieve that, and it’s an ongoing process to this day.
“We’re still looking at marketing trends and emerging genres and trying to identify those that won’t just be the most lucrative, but also ones that would be readily receptive to these kinds of outcomes that we want to explore.”
But as any developer will tell you, just shipping a game is a feat unto itself, and Reframe has already released a few. Following Guide, Reframe offered outsourcing services to various companies to maintain an income. But earlier this year, the team put out another game of its own: Noxia Somnia, a 2D horror adventure experience about a young man dealing with mental health struggles. The lead developer was Keenan Dignam, a former student of Mundee’s who wanted to make a game inspired by his own anxieties.
Noxia Somnia. (Image credit: Reframe Games)
So far, Mundee says he was he’s been “pleasantly surprised” by the reaction some players have had.
“I think there was a few streamers who tried it early on, and they either wept or opened up somehow. And it was really cool to see,” he says. “Many of them will cry, they’ll reminisce and they get emotional. And I think that’s a big gold badge on the production of the game. It’s not something that I could easily replicate, I don’t think — find game designers who want to tell their personal story. But we had the opportunity to do that, and it was super interesting.”
Meanwhile, he says the team worked closely with psychotherapists and counsellors to ensure a proper depiction of mental health struggles.
“Something a counsellor will tell you that naming ‘it’ — whatever it is — is really important. So we had a lot of help to name things appropriately, deal with themes in ways that avoided doing harm, made things more accessible for people,” he said. “Sometimes, the game would cut to the chase and skip some exposition that would allow people to more knowingly engage with the topic at hand. So in those ways, the collaborations [with the experts] were really cool.”
Growing the local gaming scene
In addition to his work at Reframe, Spandrel and UNB, Mundee is passionate about growing New Brunswick’s gaming sector. He says when he first went back to N.B., there were only a few game colleges that were teaching people who would then leave the province. This, he says, led to a “glut of junior and mid-level” talent.
The breakdown of video game studios by province in 2021. (Image credit: Entertainment Software Association of Canada)
However, a combination of the pandemic and overall rise in cost of living led many more people to move to New Brunswick, which he says was a catalyst for something Reframe helped kickstart: Interactive New Brunswick. Like Interactive Ontario, the organization aims to support digital creators in New Brunswick through funding opportunities, government advocacy and more. He says the group also works closely with equivalents in other Maritime provinces, like the Interactive Society of Nova Scotia (ISNS).
“The thing in New Brunswick is that there’s a lot of communities spread out, and so it’s hard to get people to group and do something more. There’s a lot of hidden game development talent and a lot of game development projects that are hiding out,” he said. “And I believe that we are stronger together. I want to really push for bringing the groups together and making a go of New Brunswick of being more than just a supplier of talents, but making more games here”
He says some of the ways he’s trying to do this is through Eastern College is working with people from ISNS and other groups to make sure they have quality gaming programs. At UNB, there’s Significant Play and Research in Games Lab (SPRIG), which aims to be a gaming-focused hub for scholars, teachers, designers and more. Scott Preston, another teacher at UNB, also has Resolve, a group dedicated to board games for good.
“Game jams for sure, but also meetups and guest speakers, talks and stuff like that, and resources, especially providing resources to the indie developers around discoverability, marketing, financials, all those kinds of things,” he said. “I’m trying to make those resources and those roadmaps and those connections for people as we grow our membership will be a focus going forward […] Because like I said, it’s not like there aren’t game companies here; they’re just small and struggling.”
He cites the old “rising tides” aphorism, which he says is especially popular in the Maritimes. To that point, he notes that Reframe just worked with fellow Frederictonian team Ravonix to release the puzzle game Cubix Elements, as well as a partnership with Halifax’s Red Meat.
These partnerships are especially important, he says, because N.B. doesn’t have the flat tax credit for digital media that’s offered in other provinces. That said, he says he’s optimistic N.B. will eventually get such incentives, given the province’s tech talent in other spaces.
“Being the bilingual province, there’s an obvious opportunity from an international standpoint to foster digital growth,” he says, noting that NB is already big in the “cyber and IoT and IT” spaces.
“It seems like all the pieces are kicking around, if we could just put them together. I think a digital media tax credit of some kind, like the one in Nova Scotia and PEI and other places, is certainly in the cards for New Brunswick.”
And looking ahead, he encourages more companies will pursue “games for good” like Reframe has. In recent years, some of the biggest examples include Assassin’s Creed’s Discovery Tour, Hellblade’s exploration of psychosis and Vancouver-based Extremely OK Games’ Celeste examining depression, the likes of which have Mundee hopeful for the future.
“I think that’s all trending in a more positive direction. If we’re going to be playing games, then what are our games doing for us? I don’t think any game is exempt from being serious. They’re all selling some concept or belief or whatever. They’re all teaching us things. ‘What are they teaching us?’ I think, is the question.”
This interview was edited for language and clarity.
Guide can be purchased on Steam. Noxia Somnia is also now available on Steam, with an ‘Ultimate Edition’ featuring additional content coming in 2025. Cubix Elements, meanwhile, is available on Android and iOS.
Image credit: Reframe Games
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