Video game brain gain? Why two American developers chose to move to Canada

They're lauded as great Canadian game designers, but Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias, the creatives behind Black Tabby Games, only arrived in Toronto a few years ago. 

Black Tabby (a portmanteau of Tony and Abby) burst onto the scene with Scarlet Hollow in June 2021. It's an episodic visual novel, which follows its hero as they return to their creepy ancestral home for their aunt's funeral and encounter all sorts of bizarre goings-on. 

Their next title, Slay the Princess, debuted in October 2023. It's a narrative-focused, time-looping adventure that achieved phenomenal critical and commercial success. Gamalytic.com estimates that, to date, more than 500,000 copies have been sold. GameSpot called it "a dazzling game, dripping with charm, brilliance, and emotion."

So what led two Americans with burgeoning careers in a competitive field to hop across the border? It's a move that has recently been happening more, with professionals in the fields of technology, academia and health sciences leaving the U.S. to live and work in Canada, resulting in a brain gain for the latter. Black Tabby's story is one that suggests the country's creative industries could be benefiting as well. CBC Arts spoke to Tony and Abby about their career paths and the social, economic and practical motivations that led them to move to Canada.

Abby is an artist and writer. She has a background in comics, which she drew on while discovering animation. "In comics I learned to draw really fast," she says, "because you have to do a lot of art. It's been fun getting into animation proper, accidentally. I didn't think it was something I could ever do."

Originally from North Carolina, she completed her undergraduate degree in evolutionary biology at McGill University in Montreal. "I really liked Canada," she says. "McGill was about half the price of the American schools I'd gotten into, and it was way better. Montreal is a beautiful city. Canada is a very welcoming place. I also always loved snow and I still do!"

As for why she pursued science and not art school, "I didn't want to draw a sphere for a year and have my artistic desire siphoned out of me," she says. "So I decided to go for a career that would pay better, but it didn't work. I just wanted to draw comics. Thank god my career took off."

Tony is a game designer and writer, who was born in New Jersey and lived in New England before moving to Canada. He studied screenwriting at Brown University in Providence, R.I., dropped out of law school because of the expense and then worked in analytics for a while. "And now here I am, using my unemployable degree and doing quite well for myself," he says.

"Even if you don't make it, you can't have any regrets down the line. I've seen plenty of people over the years who were passionate about something creative, and they let the world beat them down before they really tried to do anything. That thought terrifies me."

Their creativity certainly isn't being squashed. Their games feature meta-narrative, twists that happen mere minutes into the experience, and storytelling that, to quote RPG Fan on Scarlet Hollow, "pulls you into the world … allowing you to experience the rot within."

Before moving across the border, Tony had been to Canada just once before, on a school trip to Quebec. "I liked it …  but felt intimidated. They teach you Parisian French in the U.S., so eighth-grade Tony came to Montreal with a bad Parisian accent, speaking unconfident French." 

So why move?

"The two of us met in Boston," Tony explains. "Abby left McGill to pursue her career in comics, so was in Seattle for a while. Boston was the nearest big city to Rhode Island, and where everyone I knew post-graduation wound up, and [Abby's] sister wound up there. Abby and I dated for a few years before going into games together."

They had to find a home — that much was clear.  

"Boston, unless you're in academia or biotech, is stunningly expensive for the culture that you get out of it," says Tony. "It's [one of the] top five most expensive cities in America. For context, the last time I looked, a one-bedroom apartment was $3,000 USD [approx. $4,100 CAD] per month. It's San Francisco levels of expensive, but everything shuts down by 10 p.m."

"Everyone we knew moved, and COVID-19 made wherever you were living at the time a bit of a bummer," he adds.

"A lot of your favourite restaurants were probably struggling and you feel so trapped in a tiny square area," Abby says. "Friends really make a city. If you have a good core group, you can make any place great."

"We knew a huge number of people in Toronto, and we have a globalized income, so based on the social aspect we decided Toronto was a good fit," Tony says. There were also great incentives to move up. "Unlike the U.S.A., which is a Libertarian Wild West where everyone is in competition with each other, the Canadian government does actually support and fund the arts," he says. "And there are generous tax credits, grants and external funding for game development. It supports an ecosystem, and allows folks to pursue weirder, more interesting, perhaps less commercial ideas."

"I like living somewhere that supports that kind of thing," Abby adds.

"It's also nice to live somewhere with socialized healthcare," says Tony. "Below an income threshold, Massachusetts is even better than Canada, but once you earn enough, you have to pay a lot. We had to think about that. If you get really sick, that shouldn't threaten to ruin your career forever."

Asked about the influence of the political landscape, Tony comments: "It's cozier up here. If there's something to really hammer in about how much more comfortable it's been to do work up here, it's the effect of the chaos induced into global markets by the current [U.S.] administration in the past year. We make digital goods, so we're pretty insulated from tariffs, but all of our income is in U.S. dollars, and constant changes to economic policy really have caused some stressful fluctuations. What's the exchange rate going to look like on a given day? How closely am I going to have to follow this versus sit down and do some work?"

"I was in the States for the [last] election," Abby says. "That was North Carolina which was a battleground state, and we were in Durham — a very progressive area. Overnight, the feeling of walking around changed. It felt good to cross back into Canada."

They're not the only developers to make the move up either. Joel Burgess, originally a self-described "US Air Force brat" from the South, worked for Bethesda Games in Dallas for 11 years. In 2016, he got a job with Ubisoft and moved to Toronto, eventually becoming a Canadian citizen and launching his own game studio there.

On becoming pillars of the Canadian design community despite their American origins, Tony says: "Canada, like the United States, is a nation of immigrants. There's an inherent strength in multiculturalism, and I'm happy to take the parts of my home that mattered to me up here, and I don't think there's an inherent contradiction in the two things colliding."

It's very clear that both Tony and Abby are happy with their decision to live in Toronto. Of course, Vancouver — with its bustling creative scene, particularly in game development — might have been another logical choice.

"Vancouver is a much more vibrant city than Toronto for indie games right now," says Tony.

"We're going to change that," says Abby, grinning widely.