How Vancouver is building the next generation of game developers

so we're here at Pocket Gamer connects London I'm with Nancy Marty's from the Vancouver economics Commission watch is the vacuum economics commission it is the arm's length agency of the city for business development and my file is digital entertainment and interactive which includes filmmaking visual effects animation and games that's quite a broad spectrum and I know that you guys have been around for about 30 years which is insane amount of time in games and film and visual sex so yeah I think that that's been part of the ecosystem for games annal all entertainment is that they are cross pollinating the industries with film people and and software people artists and so we've been able to maintain kind of an edge in in all things digital effects animation games and animation so seeing a lot of

that how three strands seem to be feeding in with each other and I mean how much has it evolved especially over the last kind of 5-10 years with the introduction of mobile and all these different environments in gaming well it's interesting because two things kind of happened the 2008 crash put a wrench in basically everything mostly money mostly clients which we were very service-based we were very service based in filmmaking and very service based in games then after 2008 we saw people wanting to continue games but opening up their own independent studios and trying to find ways to do that so mobile was great because it was cheaper it wasn't triple-a and it wasn't a 30 million dollar proposition you were able to make a game get it out there quickly fail quickly if you needed to and and now we're just growing and now with VR VR in Vancouver is just growing too so again it's like the next phase and games and because you work a lot with obviously

the Canadian government what is the Canadian government doing to support this next wave of gray well I mean I think that support in tax credits is really good but the most the most support we receive is talent so this could be education immigration I mean we have to move quickly when it comes to gearing up for projects so being able to retain attract and and train talent has been a big thing at the King government's been hell would I think we've seen that across the world this is trying to really encourage and then you wait with talent to come into the industry right what's some of the ways that we can do that well what we've done recently is we started targeting the high schools because what we were finding is the educators didn't know what the opportunities were we we especially in visual effects animation and games need thousands of positions filled and we want to hire locally so we started working with the high schools in

training the teachers as to what was happening energies we did a kind of studio tours where we grab them during a professional development day and took them to three different studios and had HR people and and talent talking about how they got there and not just in in artistry talent but you know you need people for operations and finance and everything and so now that the teachers understand that there's opportunities now we're going straight to the students and do a kind of a traveling road show for them as well that's with the fast staff isn't it get hired yes well because the students look to the teachers for guidance and if they don't know it exists that it's a problem yeah and now this is a really exciting time because obviously we're on the cusp of 2016 moving into this year so what are some things you guys are gonna be working on this yet well as government or yeah yeah you know in games specifically um I think there's what we're finding is I I mean I just helped half a dozen VR companies start up or or

establish in Vancouver so I think that that's where the big opportunities are and I think it's not just in games it's in education it's in you know training for difficult jobs it could be in health and movies and I think that we're poised perfectly because we have the background in filmmaking and visual effects and animation and games and I think that for any company who wants to get into VR you have to have gamers who understand user interface understand how to engage and so I think that's going to be the next big thing for us listen sounds like an exciting year thank you so much for coming thank you very much you