Inside Canada's Talent War

For a developer like Bedlam, with only a single game release to its name, the necessity of a company the size of Ubisoft in the area is more difficult to rationalise. Quebec is fast becoming the global centre for AAA development, but Ontario has always been defined by the 90 or more independent developers that call it home. With Eidos also planning to expand its Canadian presence with another large studio in Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto, there is a growing sense that Ubisoft's arrival could damage the existing ecosystem.

"We knew that, as an independent developer, in the short run, that was going to cause some pain. They're gonna go round and ask everyone that's out of jobs, and they're still not gonna have enough people. Then they're gonna go to California and find people who want to come back to Toronto... Eventually, they're going to have to come back here and find people who are already in the industry. Like people who work for us."

According to Henderson, the problem is exacerbated by the difficulty of recruiting from other countries. Until recently, a government pilot project allowed videogame professionals with certain areas of expertise to skip the part of the process where their employer has to prove the need for those skills in Canada. But despite there being more available jobs and less quality applicants than at any time in the last six years, the government closed the program.

It's tough to work in an environment where your staff is being poached on a weekly basis

Remi Racine, Behaviour Interactive

"The short answer to that is it's very difficult," says Henderson. "It takes a long time to go through that process. Say we need a new director of production, by the time we actually get round to doing something about it we needed one last month, and when you add a year to that process, most studios just can't afford to wait that long... I see that as a real threat to us."

The implication is that, no matter how insistent THQ, Eidos, Warner Bros. and Ubisoft are that they will look outside of Canada for new staff, a significant proportion will necessarily come from within, and very likely from the workforce of competing companies. With that in mind, do Toronto's independent developers feel betrayed by the amount of money the government promised to lure Ubisoft to the area?

"I wouldn't say I feel betrayed, because the government has been very supportive. However, I will say it is frustrating when I talk to someone who is leaving the studio for Ubisoft and find out that they're getting a 30 percent pay bump. I know that's not what the market deserves, and I know that the pay bump is probably being paid by me as a tax payer as part of that $263 million... If they have a short-term problem they can solve it with money in a way that I can't."

The resolve of companies like Digital Extremes and Bedlam Games has been tested, but their response is admirably positive. The areas where they can't hope to compete with a company the size of Ubisoft are clear, so instead they are focusing on the unique benefits of working in a smaller organisation: more responsibility and creative control, a flatter structure, and, in the case of Digital Extremes, the opportunity to live in London, Ontario, where a three-bedroom house with a large garden costs around $250,000. For older developers burned out on the scale of a Ubisoft or a THQ and wanting to raise a family, it's a compelling argument.

In Montreal, the presence of top-tier publishers is nothing new. After all, Ubisoft is widely credited with kick-starting the Quebec industry when it opened its Montreal studio in 1997. But Behaviour Interactive predates Ubisoft by five years, and founder and CEO Remi Racine claims that there has been a marked change in recent times.

"When Ubisoft came in I was the only guy in the local industry thinking that it was a good thing," he says. "Having said that, when Eidos came in and after [THQ and Warner Bros.] it's more difficult than ever, because we've outgrown our pace of producing people and talent."

"As much as those companies say they are going to import people, they don't do it enough. It's tough to work in an environment where your staff is being poached on a weekly basis. I'm saying that, but I know the others feel the same way. We have a pool of talent, but that pool is not growing at the same pace as the industry. There are a lot of young people, but in the short term that doesn't improve the quality of the studios... For us to grow in Montreal is difficult."