Publishers are game to Canadian talent

[Tami]

Publishers are game to Canadian talent
By BLAINE KYLLO

Burnaby, B.C.'s Electronic Arts Canada and Montreal's Ubisoft account for the majority of the video games developed in this country, but the foreign-owned giants aren't the only games in town -- not by a long shot.

The Electronic Software Association estimates that in 2005, worldwide consumer spending on video games -- hardware and software -- will hit about $28-billion (U.S.). PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP predicts that figure will rise to $55-billion by 2008, and more and more of those games are coming from small -- but growing -- Canadian developers. In the past year, more than 40 of the top 200 games in North America were made or worked on in Canada.

Edmonton's BioWare Corp., for example, was named as one of Deloitte & Touche LLP's Technology Fast 50 with a five-year growth of more than 650 per cent, and one of Profit 100 Canada's fastest-growing companies with revenue of more than $16-million (Canadian) for the fourth consecutive year. DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. of Toronto also made the Deloitte and Profit 100 lists, with a five-year growth of 1,743 per cent and revenue topping $32-million.

In recent years, international video game publishers have also been scrambling to set up shop in Canada to take advantage of the growing game-development talent pool. It started when Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. set up a second studio in Canada three years ago, buying Vancouver's Barking Dog Studios Inc. and renaming it Rockstar Vancouver (Rockstar Canada was in turn renamed Rockstar Toronto to avoid confusion). Electronic Arts Inc. acquired Vancouver-based Black Box Games the same year.

Then in April, 2004, THQ Inc. acquired Vancouver's Relic Entertainment; reported to have been started on an initial investment of $5,000 (U.S.), the THQ purchase price topped $10-million.

The buying has heated up in recent months. Vivendi Universal Games purchased Vancouver's Radical Entertainment in March. In May, Ubisoft announced plans to buy the development assets of privately held adventure game maker MC2-Microids, and Activision Inc. acquired Quebec City's Beenox Inc.

And those that aren't buying or expanding existing studios are opening new shops of their own. Koei Corp. is converting its Toronto localization studio into a primary development house, and Buena Vista Games is funding the creation of a new studio, Propaganda Games, staffed by former EA Canada employees.

But why is all this happening in Canada? A number of factors have combined to make us a game-development hot spot. First on the list is an overstocked talent pool, according to industry sources.

"There is a wealth of developer talent in the Canadian marketplace," Buena Vista Games Canada's Michelle Liem says. Chalk it up to a highly connected, highly educated population, she says.

"[The industry is] training better people," says Lynda Brown, executive director of New Media B.C., an association representing new media companies.

On Tuesday, Ubisoft signed an agreement with the Université du Québec to develop games and train developers. As part of the deal, Ubisoft will invest up to $16-million (Canadian) in the development of various training programs, and the partners said they plan to focus on script development, project management and distance training.

Ms. Brown points out that the more development activity there is, the more activity there will be in the future as companies come looking for experienced talent. It's like a gravitational effect -- the more talented developers who are pulled in, the stronger the pull gets on others.

"Having reached critical mass," Radical Entertainment's president Ian Wilkinson says, "we now attract world-class talent from all over the globe."

In other words, the brain drain that has hurt other tech industries in Canada hasn't happened in the video game business -- in fact, Canada is drawing talent from south of the border and overseas.

In part, this is because the people who work in video games are in demand, and in turn they have high cultural standards and demand a high quality of life -- a reason Montreal and Vancouver are so attractive. Montreal is hip, European-chic; Vancouver is relaxed, outdoor-active. And they both drip with multiculturalism.

"There's a sense of community, of commonality," adds Ms. Brown, who says Vancouver is now one of the largest video game development sectors in the world.

The exchange rate of the Canadian dollar is attractive, too. Video game publishers, who are watching their development costs skyrocket as the competition to build hit games increases, are taking a page from Hollywood studios and setting up in Canada. Most appealing are the tax credits being offered to high-tech firms by the provincial governments in B.C. and Quebec. Jean-Pierre Faucher, partnership development manager for Alliance NumériQC, a business network for Quebec's multimedia industry, says the rate of the Quebec tax credit for multimedia titles can be as high as 37.5 per cent toward labour costs.

Ms. Brown shrugs this off, saying it's not the most important element in Canada's rise on the game-development front. "[Publishers] don't buy games because they're cheap," she says, "but because they're a great entertainment experience."

The more likely reason for the growing importance of Canada in video game development circles, she says, is that Canadians have a flair for coming up with content that is internationally appealing and entertaining. They've done so as actors and producers in the movie and television industries, and the same thing seems to be happening with games.

"We have a long history in storytelling," Ms. Brown says, "and in using technology to communicate those stories across distance."

[url=\"http://www.globetechnology.com\"]source: Globe Technology[/url]