Did you think GDAA president Tom Crago's comment on the local industry tripling in size if a rebate was granted was a bit of an exaggeration? Well, here's something interesting to ponder over.
Kotaku journalist, Logan Booker, had a question for Ubisoft Montreal's creative director Patrice Desilets while he was here promoting Assassin's Creed on the impact on the Canadian games industry when their Government supported them with a rebate. The growth was amazing, however, they did not see the industry expand three times the size.. but twenty. Granted, the industry was pretty tiny beforehand and they had a decade to gestate, but there's no question that Government support has made Montreal one of the epicentres of game development in the world. Patrice, quoted on Kotaku...
So Ubisoft grew bigger, and since then EA came, now we have Eidos. Smaller companies of Quebec became larger. Right now, I think it's 4000 people in the Montreal area are working in games. When I started [in July 1997], it was maybe 200 people, maybe a little bit more.
4000 people in the Montreal area working on games! To put this in comparison to our industry, we have 1,600 people working in games across Australia. How many people were in the local industry in '97 compared to Montreal's 200? I would guess that it was roughly the same, particularly with numbers at Melbourne House at that time.. Read the full article at Kotaku...
1. Anonymous Sat, 27 Oct
& only 3 are actually Australian yay. No seriously why tell us this do you want us to get angry or what? Do you think telling me this is going to put a smile on my face? Because it has obviously don the opposite.
Yes its good for Canada good for them. But it makes me want to by a sniper rifle & blow howard's head of. I can't stand it much longer. Watching as every single nation but my own grow & prosper from the industry.
While Australia is way back in 1907 yay. In a few more years the howard tribe might discover the internet on computers.
God why must Australia suck at all the cool industries? movies video games what else.
Another interesting factoid I just read in The Economist (October 27th to November 2nd, pg 48). The conclusion is that Australia is better than Canada at attracting educated talent from overseas, and that Europe is hopeless and needs to pick up its game.
"In Australia nearly a tenth of the employed population are highly qualified foreigners, in Canada more than 7% and in America just over 3%. The EU manages a paltry 1.7%"
So if we assume that we can get the talent, then the other parts of the equation are the funding and the customers. The customers are worldwide and demand is strong. From these stats it would appear that we can do pretty well in attracting talent in general. So the only gap left between Australia and games industry greatness is funding.
Yes the money if only we could get our hands on it. It's so close yet so far.