Info Session Info Session Info Session

eileen mary holowka and Jennie Robinson Faber, Co-Executive Directors, Baby Ghosts

eileen: Welcome to the info session for the Cooperative Foundations spring 2026 program, running from April 8th to June 3rd. If you want, you can add your pronouns in your name by clicking on it, but no pressure to do so. And if you'd like, feel free to jump in the chat and say where you're coming from today.

Baby Ghosts operates out of Winnipeg on Treaty 1 territory and Toronto/Tkaronto on Treaty 13 territory, but we do work all across what we now call Canada on unceded Indigenous territory. And we know that acknowledging this is really only one part of addressing settler colonialism in Canada. We aim to resist colonialism by prioritizing the support of Indigenous creators, centring social impact within the games industry, and supporting alternative collaboration models that are different from what we've had to deal with. We're committed to learning and growing and adapting our methods to meet these goals however best we can. And since we started in 2021, our program has shifted and developed a lot, and we intend to keep developing and growing.

Baby Ghosts is a nonprofit with a board of six amazing people who support us. Jennie and I are executive directors. Our mission is to advance cooperative and worker-centric labour models in the Canadian interactive digital arts sector. What we do is provide low-barrier peer-led cooperative education to diverse teams. We conduct research on worker-led studio models in Canada and we foster an engaged community of studio members and their peers. And we really thrive through our peer support program, which we'll talk about in more detail, as well as all the indie devs and studios who have offered their experience, time, and space to support one another. We're really grateful to Gamma Space Collaborative Studio for their support with our programs and for providing the Slack platform that we operate out of. We're really a community effort, and this has been made possible thanks to support from the Toronto Workforce Collaborative, Infinite Ammo, the City of Toronto, Ontario Creates, and others along the way.

We're interested in the question of how we can define value in different ways. As we've seen, this capitalistic approach to game development hasn't exactly been a great time. The state of the industry is not so good. Between 2022 and 2025, more than 35,000 layoffs happened in the industry. 74% of workers say that there's not equal treatment and opportunity in the games industry. And while the industry itself is extremely profitable, that's often at a cost to workers, meaning that the main profits go to the few at the top. How familiar. Funding is hard to access and there is a massive disparity in how that funding is allocated. There's been a lot of writing and research on who gets funding and the gaps that are there. And as we know, there are many toxic cultures of crunch and burnout and exploitation that are built into the very fabric of the industry. So it's not surprising, thanks to this, that there is a growing interest in alternative business models and work structures, which I'll pass it over to Jennie to talk a little bit about.

Jennie: Thank you, eileen. I want to get into why we focus on cooperatives at Baby Ghosts. The core of our work is a belief that cooperative and worker-centric development environments are actually fundamental to creating games ethically. And of course, this represents a big shift away from those traditional hierarchical structures that have contributed to all those industry problems that eileen just outlined.

But I want to clarify what we mean by these terms because they might be unfamiliar to you or you might not know what we mean by them. A cooperative is a business that is jointly owned and democratically controlled by and for its members. And the key distinction between a traditional shared corporation structure and a cooperative is democratic governance. Each member has a vote, and the focus is on benefits to members rather than just profit maximization. In this program, you'll learn about the seven internationally accepted principles for cooperatives and also how they can be applied specifically to game development.

When we talk about worker-centric, we're describing environments that place the well-being, rights, and needs of game workers at the centre of game development decisions and processes. We're talking about concrete practices: ensuring living wages and transparent salaries, rejecting crunch culture, prioritizing work-life balance, and making real efforts to support people from marginalized backgrounds. It also means creating accessible workspaces, providing mental health support, implementing flat organizational structures, and giving workers a genuine say in what projects the studio takes on. We think these are just the baseline requirements for a studio, not perks or just elements of workplace culture.

We prioritize these structures because they align with our values, but also because they directly address many of the industry issues eileen talked about. Worker-centric models help create a more sustainable and resilient game development ecosystem, and they empower creators to have real agency in their work. In traditional structures, like eileen said, important decisions come from the top with limited input from the people doing the actual creative work. What we do with cooperative models is flip this dynamic so that power and responsibility is distributed among all members.

Now that I've talked about what cooperative worker-centric practices sound like, we'll talk about the Cooperative Foundations program and how we aim to support those principles. Our program has four key goals. First, we want to equip studios with both knowledge and practical tools to implement cooperative principles in their daily operations. Second, we aim to create a supportive community of cooperative game developers who will continue to learn from each other beyond the program - just because the program is over and you've graduated doesn't mean we boot you out of our community space. Five of our previous cohorts are still in that space and you can become their friends and talk about cooperatives. Third, we see ourselves as contributing to a broader movement for workplace democracy and worker empowerment across industries. And finally, we want to demonstrate that cooperative models are not just idealistic, as they're sometimes talked about, but actually viable and beneficial approaches to game dev that can create sustainable studios and amazing games.

Let's talk about the financial support that we offer as part of the Cooperative Foundations program. Each studio that is selected receives a $5,000 unrestricted bursary. This money is yours to allocate as you see fit. You can use it for member stipends to cover their time, you could pay for studio expenses, tools, professional development, or any combination of those things. We don't prescribe how you divide this. Some studios split it evenly. Others allocate based on who has more capacity to contribute or who has a greater financial need. And some set aside a portion of it for future shared costs. How you make this decision is actually one of your very first governance exercises as a cooperative - you'll need to discuss your values, your circumstances, and come to a collective agreement. And we'll ask you to document that decision.

To be super clear about what this funding is and isn't: it's not compensation for your time at market rates because $5,000 over 10 weeks won't replace anybody's income. We know that. It's support that should make participation possible without creating financial hardship for your studio or its members. The goal is that financial pressure doesn't force you to rush decisions or skip sessions. It's meant to help you engage fully with the program and with each other.

eileen: I'm going to go into a bit of detail about what the structure of the program looks like. It's an eight-session intensive, and as Jennie has mentioned and will get into even more, it involves tailored peer support. Each team is matched with two peers who help them explore all the aspects of running a cooperative studio. We offer you a private online space, tools, workshops, weekly mentorship, and that $5,000 stipend.

We explore a number of core themes throughout this program. The first is anti-capitalistic alternatives to the growth-at-all-costs model. We often joke that this is sort of like a decelerator program - it's all about slowing down and really thinking about your values. We also talk a lot about democratic decision-making, the different ways of doing that, things like consent versus consensus. We explore financial transparency and what it means to compensate each other equitably. We talk about conflict resolution - everyone's favourite thing - and how conflict can be a form of care rather than a failure. We really concentrate on this idea of patience for the pace of trust, this idea of moving slowly with intention rather than rushing to some sort of conclusion. And we're always thinking about horizontal power structures versus the hierarchical defaults that we all know so well.

Over the program there will be eight sessions, not including a kickoff where we just get to introduce ourselves. These are 1.5 hours on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific time, 2 p.m. Eastern time. I'll go over what those look like.

The first is on co-op principles and power. We go over the principles adopted in 1995 by the International Cooperative Alliance, which now form the ethical foundation for cooperative work. Then we talk about how those principles can actually be turned into values. You're going to hear us say the word "value" so many times that you're not even going to know what it means anymore.

The second session is about shared purpose and alignment. We confront that fast pace that the industry sets for us and then we challenge it. We think about how we can find true alignment as a team without that pressure.

Then we talk about actionable values and impact. In those first two sessions, we really explore why cooperatives matter to game developers who are challenging industry norms, and what we want to build through shared purpose and values. In this session, we dive into the how - the day-to-day tools that you need to make democratic work work. How do you intend to take your goals and make them actionable?

Then we get into co-op structures and governance. This session introduces the different governance models that you can start to use immediately.

That leads us to decision-making in practice - how to talk about how you make decisions, who has a voice, how you handle disagreement, all the things that will shape the kind of co-op that you become. We offer some tools and wisdom to help with that decision-making.

Then we have a fun session - maybe it doesn't sound fun to people, but it is actually quite fun - the equitable economics session, which is the workshop on everything financial and how we can make money transparent and ethical. Money can be a really scary thing to talk about, and so we explore that.

Then we'll talk about everyone's favourite thing to not talk about, which is conflict. We've been taught that conflict is to be avoided and that ultimately it means failure, but in healthy cooperatives, disagreement is valuable data. It tells us that there's an opportunity to create something better for everyone. This is something we need to address head-on as an act of care.

And then finally, we talk about a reflection of everything you've taken in during the program, pathways for what comes next, and we celebrate everything that we've done together.

You might be asking what happens afterwards. We really encourage folks to stay in our community. We don't want you to go through this program and just disappear. Our peer supports are made up of people who have been through the program before, so that's always an opportunity for you. We are building a membership program where we hope to have more workshops for people who have gone through the program to share in, to lead, and to learn from. Cooperatives are all about cooperating with other co-ops, so we really like to see our teams getting to know each other, working together, sharing resources, saving each other the time and effort that it takes to do something alone.

I've talked about peer support a few times already, but I'll go into more detail. It's a bit unique to our program. We replace this idea of traditional hierarchical mentorship with something that we believe is more valuable: mutual peer-to-peer learning. Rather than positioning experienced studios as experts and newer studios as students, we recognize that everyone has valuable knowledge and experience to share. One isn't superior to the other, and there is a lot to learn from other people's journeys, which might look similar or different.

During the program, your studio will be matched with two peer supports who have game development experience and understand cooperative principles. The peer support approach also helps build our community of practice, creating connections that last well beyond the program, and importantly prepares you to potentially become a peer support for future cohorts - continuing that cycle of mutual aid and cooperation.

Who are the peer supports? They are primarily alumni of previous cohorts who have game development experience and a solid understanding of cooperative principles. They have experience working with underrepresented groups and their goals and motivations align with our mission. This is really about a horizontal learning environment where everyone's knowledge and experience is valued.

What you can expect from this relationship is facilitated deep dives into the program topics, a sounding board for your ideas and challenges, and consistent support from the same people throughout the program. You'll have the ability to develop some trust so that you can share these things. And just remember that they're peers - they're not coaches or teachers. They're there to collaborate and think alongside you, not to tell you what to do. We make the initial matches between the studios and the peer supports based on what we know about your needs and their strengths, but we're always open to feedback, and this can be adjusted to best support your studio. The goal is to create supportive, productive relationships that benefit everyone involved.

Let's talk about what we expect from you if you join this program. One of the key things is that it's really important that all your team members can participate in the workshops and the peer support sessions - not just one or two representatives from the studio. It's just not possible to make a co-op without cooperation.

If you want to be in the program, we need folks to come in open to discussing your challenges, concerns, fears, and experiences. The program works best when studios are willing to be vulnerable and honest. I know this can be challenging, but we expect active contribution to discussions and workshops as well as regular check-ins in your Slack channels.

We ask for roughly a two-to-four-hour per week time commitment. This will vary depending on the week and your team. The live sessions are an hour and a half, your peer support sessions each week are one hour, and then leave some time for asynchronous work - documenting what you're doing in the Slack channel, talking to your studio about what you've learned, doing the exercises, reflecting. It's really up to you; you can invest more time in this if you want and if it's valuable to you.

I really encourage everyone to carefully consider these expectations and ensure that they align with your studio's goals and capacity before applying, because it is a significant commitment. It's a program that works best when you can really fully engage with the content and the community and each other. The value that you get out of it is a lot more than just that bursary money. Also, we run this program twice a year, so if the timing isn't good for you right now, it might be the next time around. Think about it, evaluate what you need, and I'll pass it back to Jennie to talk about the application.

Jennie: If all of that got you really excited and you like what you've heard so far, let's walk through how you can apply to be in our next cohort.

First, eligibility. Your studio must be based in Canada and have two to six members. More than half of your team must come from underrepresented backgrounds, and you should have been working together for at least six months. There's a bit of fudge room there - we just want to make sure that you have an established relationship with the people you're coming into the program with. If you are just two people, please note that we require you both to identify with an underrepresented group, and we strongly encourage you to find a third member.

We're looking for studios that show genuine interest in cooperative or worker-centric models and can commit those two to four hours per week to the program throughout its full duration.

The application process has a couple of steps. First, review the pre-program assessment questions on our website - it's a little quiz that helps you understand whether or not your group is ready to apply. Then we have a values, goals, and pain points Miro exercise, which is linked in the application. It gives us really critical insight into your studio's dynamic, and we actually use that board throughout your time in the program so that we can see how you're building on those initial values and goals and addressing your pain points over time. After that, you can complete the online application form. It's one page. It'll ask you about your studio information, your interest in co-op models, how your team collaborates, and how you handle challenges.

If you're selected after the application comes into our inbox, we'll ask you to join us for a 30-minute first-round interview. This is just with me and eileen - a quick get-to-know-you, get a sense of who the team members are. After that we'll decide whether we want you to advance to the second-round interview stage, which is 90 minutes at maximum. We bring in some peer supports for that second interview, and we don't want you to feel intimidated or put on the spot, so we send the questions we're going to ask ahead of time. It's more of a discussion - we don't want you to feel like you're being grilled or interrogated.

Those stage one interviews will take place now through March 11th. If you were to apply today, you might hear from us in the next couple of days to get you scheduled. We really want people to schedule as soon as they can so that we have enough time to get through all the applications. Stage two interviews will take place between February 23rd and March 20th. You can find all of the application resources and links on the program page on babyghosts.fund, and there's an "apply now" button so you can do this today.

When we're doing that first review of applications, what we're looking for is a commitment to exploring and applying cooperative principles, evidence of good communication and collaboration within your team, studios that care about social impact and align with Baby Ghosts values, and readiness to engage fully with the program curriculum and the peer support structure. Something that we emphasize is that having other supports in your life really helps this process go well.

We'll make final selections based on your studio's potential for structural development and impact, how you'd contribute to the diversity of the cohort, and your alignment with the program's goals and structure. Something important to keep in mind is we are building a community as well as supporting individual studios. How you might contribute to and benefit from that community is an important point we consider and something you should definitely talk about in your application.

Worker cooperatives have a really long history, globally but also in Canada, across many industries, and it's really exciting for us to help build that tradition for game dev.

Applications are open now. They'll close on March 6th at midnight Pacific time. First-round interviews are happening now, second round after February 23rd. Final notifications will go out to selected studios on March 27th. There is a very quick turnaround between that and onboarding and starting the program - we want to be really upfront about that.

Q&A