Interactive Ontario's Ian Kelso

Convergence has come and gone as a dirty word – whether we call it 'transmedia' now or 'cross media' – it's still really the next-next-generation of where we're going in the games industry. If we can capitalise here in Ontario alongside some of the traditional games and film industries, and bring some of the confidences and talents of writing, directing, acting and bringing the emotional engagement into the games industry, I think that's where we'll start to see more of a collapse between the casual and hardcore games players - more games with narrative structures that are much more compelling to play.

Look at a director like David Cronenberg and consider how he might make a game. I would love to see a world that he would create in a videogame. That's the area we need to support and Ubisoft is definitely grasping that as a core philosophy in where they are headed. It's great with them coming into Toronto and the vision they see for the future, coupled with the infrastructure of the city, is going to be aligned. I'm excited by that. Look at (Silicon Knights') Denis Dyack, he's a games creator that has always brought heavy story-telling elements to his games.

The film studios in Hollywood are becoming very competitant and hiring good talent for their games projects now. Look at Paramount hiring John Kavanagh from Kuju America as a good indication of a change in thinking in Hollywood. And Jay Cohen, who used to work for Ubisoft, who took a senior role at Bruckheimer Games recently.

The two challenges we face are money and talent. Demands for great talent are huge around the world. To be a successful cluster and successful industry you've got to be magnet for talent. You definitely need to have a critical mass and if you ask somebody to move halfway across the country or from the other side of the world, if it doesn't quite work out there's somewhere else for them to go. Especially mid-level talent that have families or are starting to think about having families. We've been sending animation graduates out of Ontario for 15 years to Industrial Light and Magic and LucasArts because they have such a great pipeline with some of the colleges here.

We're doing the same thing to Montreal and Vancouver now. Ubisoft in Montreal is a corridor for people from Ontario. We're letting capital leave. There's a lot of talent coming out of colleges at a low level, every college has a game course on some level, so it's the mid-level talent that's becoming a rare commodity. The project managers, the team leaders. They are the people we have the potential to lure back to Ontario once we've got a strong, vibrant community.

It depends how successful we can be in attracting talent back and attracting talent from all over the world. Hollywood is Hollywood because it became a centre of gravity for film. It's the place to be and having that Hollywood brand is what drove the enterprise and momentum. There's an opportunity here to do something similar with momentum around Ontario. Tax credits aren't the final consideration, everything else has to be there. What's you standard of living like, what's the cost of production like, what kind of supportive industries, creative communities do you have? What's that like for employees? That's how to build a successful platform for a thriving games community. You've always got to push the envelope on terms of upping your innovation and the services you have on offer, the flexibility in your production.

Looking at a future you can't just create one program, with Ontario you see a whole host of programs from all areas - finance, trade, research and innovation. You've got to have that holistic approach. What do you want to be when you grow up? That's what it takes to be a great game developer - fix on the market, understand what type of game you're making, but also be adaptable along the way.