Development and Publishing

The top game-producing nations are the US, Japan, Britain, Germany, and France--followed by Canada.

Canada is home to some world- renowned gamed developers and studios. For example:

· Edmonton’s BioWare is one the most famous developers of role playing fantasy games, with best selling titles such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

· Vancouver’s Relic Entertainment created Homeworld an original PC title viewed as a benchmark in game aesthetics.

· Digital Extremes, located in London, Ontario, co-developed Unreal, a celebrated shooter.

· The Montreal studio of French publisher UbiSoft. produces the highly succesful SplinterCell games, based on Tom Clancy novels.

· Electronic Arts Canada, the Vancouver branch of US computer game giant, is one of the largest game development studios in the world, and focuses on the production of EA’s famous sports games.

In total, there are about 100 Canadian-based companies primarily devoted to interactive game development, publishing or distribution.

Of these there are some 25 in Quebec, 35 in Ontario, 30 in British Columbia, 4 in Alberta, 1 in Saskatchewan, 1 in Manitoba, 1 in Nova Scotia and 2 in New Brunswick.

In addition, there another 50 or so companies that include game development as a subsidiary activity—e.g. alongside web design or other multimedia business services. Their distribution follows a similar pattern to the companies listed above.

The major centres of the gaming industry are Montreal and Vancouver. They owe their position largely to the presence of large development studios of multinational publishers (UbiSoft, EA), providing a hub that other, smaller companies revolve around or spin off from. Although there are many developers in Ontario, the province lacks a “hub” of comparable stature.

Some game industry success stories occur in unlikely places e.g. Bioware in Edmonton. Geographically, the industry is characterized by a tension between “regional innovation milieux” and “death of distance” dynamics

This core group connects and with other high tech sectors: postproduction services, computer software and peripherals, animation and special effects, “advergaming,” web design, etc. Some standouts are --Mad Catz (game accessories, annual revenues $83 m.), ATI Technologies ((video cards, annual revenue $1 b.) and various “middleware” and authoring tool producers, such as Alias Wavefront, Discreet, Softimage..

Canadian based companies dedicated primarily to developing and publishing video and computer games account for between 3,500 and 4,000 jobs. This employment is heavily concentrated in BC and Québec, which each account for at least 1,500 jobs.

The majority of development companies are small. Most employ less than 10 people, many fewer than 5 there is high degree of “churn”; many are start- ups that fail.

The largest development studios are: Electronic Arts Canada (Vancouver, 8-900), UbiSoft (Montréal, 450), Radical Entertainment (Vancouver, 200), Bioware (Edmonton, 135), A2M (Montréal, 140), Microids Canada (Montréal, 90).

Other large employers are the publishers Strategy First (Montréal 100), Hip Interactive (170) Smaller but important developers, employing between 120 and 50 people are Microids (Montreal), A2M (Montreal), Artech (Ottawa), Strategy First (Montreal), Relic (Vancouver), Black Box(Vancouver, recently acquired by EA), Barking Dog (Vancouver, recently acquired by Take Two), Digital Extremes (London),Digital Illusions (London), Silicon Knights (St. Catherines).

Many of these large companies are foreign owned, by multinational developers and/or publishers based in the US (EA, Take Two/Rockstar, THQ), France (UbiSoft, Microids) or Sweden. (Dice)

Mid-size Canadian companies are increasingly being bought up by multinationals: e.g. Black Box by EA, Barking Dog, by Take Two, Relic by THQ.

There are three notable Canadian-owned publishers: Toronto’s DreamCatcher Interactive, Montreal’s Strategy First , and Hip Interactive of Toronto i--a major national distributor of game software and hardware that recently branched into publishing.

These three publishers, although correctly regarded as Canadian breakthroughs in the global games business, are not remotely in the league of internationally organized publishers based in the US, Japan, or France. The Canadian games industry is centered primarily on game development rather than publishing

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