Denis Dyack Part One

Where I see some more growth for Silicon Knights in the future is I can see a very strong recruiting campaign that will say “come back home to Ontario”. And I won't be surprised if other companies says that too. Niagara is wonderful, it's wine country and it's an hour out of Toronto. If I want to go the US and order buffalo chicken wings it's 45 minutes away.

We're around 100 now. It all depends on projects working on and what we're going to announce, but I can't talk about that.

We've started an undergraduate program in collaboration with Brock University that teaches you how to create non-linear media. We're putting together plans for something called the Institute of the Eighth Art. Not only is videogames an art, it's the eighth artform. Film is referred to as the seventh art form. The first film critic claimed film was a combination of the six previous art forms all put together through the motion picture. Well, we want to create an institute here that's a combination of companies like Silicon Knights , Niagara College, Brock University all in a co-op program where we're all in the same complex or campus so that people live and breathe making videogames and other forms of non-linear creations. So imagine a place where not only will you be instructed about how to make videogames, but you would have people in the industry teaching you.

We already have people at Silicon Knights who teach at Universities, and they don't do it for the money, they just want to have fun and talk to students – we can interact and help form programs that would help us get the right people out of the university systems. And from the universities we've had a couple of professors here who have been collaborating for over ten years here now. We also have a lecture series here. These guys have told me over the past ten years that they're excited to be here because it keeps them current. They get to do leading edge stuff and research where they can apply knowledge and do what researchers want to do. And Niagara College is looking at is as a place with applied programs where people came come out with real work experience. We can bring in these co-ops that are working on real games, you can graduate out of these programmes with the combination of a university degree, a college diploma and actually have a game on your resume. That's our dream.

We started talking about that recently over the last few months and we're putting a proposal together. You've head of EA having these campuses. This is a real campus. This is not about tennis courts. We're looking to do something that really affects people in a positive way and if you ask me, this is what our industry and our educational system needs. Quite frankly, I think one of the big problems we face with all this new technology that's affecting out lives, is the universities and colleges need to get up to speed with it to. That's my dream, that's what I want to do.

It's at the proposal stage. We're speaking to various members of the government now, we just put some meetings together over the past three or four weeks and hopefully it will happen over the next few years. Everyone seems very excited about it. If you look at all the recent ideas and subsidies in Ontario it's all built around the three pillars of government, industry and academia. This builds upon that whole plan. I would love to see it become a world centre of excellence for videogames. Videogames can happen anywhere so having it here would be fantastic. Where Ubisoft might have a campus of 900 people working on videogames. We'd have a campus of maybe that many along with university and college professors, all teaching students and everyone in a very different environment.

Yes, a hybrid as close as you can get. There's ideas and course here like a co-op accounting course. You go to be an accountant and learn all the educational stuff, but four or eight months out of the year you do a term at an accounting firm. You're literally working in an accounting firm. It's the same idea. They did things similarly in Detroit at General Motors – programs and universities where you'd come out with experience of engineering for GM. It's not a completely revolutionary idea, it's something that's very practical and achievable and has been done before, just not in this industry.

Some of the obstacles those company's have is you need a champion who really, really believes in it. I actually really believe in this. One of the problems with large companies like that is you have someone who starts it and leaves. And it falls by the wayside. I'm rooted here.