Ubisoft's announced arrival brings hope of growth to Winnipeg's tech sector

Global game giant Ubisoft's arrival in Winnipeg could cause a boom to the city's game development industry that will have ripple effects in other tech sectors as well, say some industry-watchers. 

Julien Lavoie is vice-president of public affairs with the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC), a trade association that represents video game console makers, publishers, large and small independent developers as well as national distributors.

He says Winnipeg isn't a major player in the country's game development industry yet, but last Friday's announcement that Ubisoft plans to open an office in the city could change that.

"It's not uncommon to have some of these larger studios be at the centre of a smaller ecosystem within a city," he told CBC News.

"We see that model happening in a lot of cities where you have what we call anchor tenants that really help train people in a certain way of doing things, and then it empowers employees to go on to do their own studios, or other large studios may also want to follow suit and capitalize on the expertise and the know-how that's been developed in a certain studio.

"There's a synergy and people will move freely from one company to another."

A booming industry

Numbers from ESAC show gaming companies added $3.7 billion to Canada's GDP last year, up 24 per cent from the $3 billion reported two years earlier.

By comparison Statistics Canada reports the Canadian economy as a whole grew by roughly four per cent over the same time period.

It's a booming industry that's attracting a skilled labour force with annual full-time wages now averaging just over $77,000, says Lavoie.

While Lavoie said Manitoba's contribution to those numbers are too low for the ESAC to track, Louie Ghiz from New Media Manitoba says the province's interactive digital media industry, which includes game developers, brings in nearly $200 million annually.

Lavoie says the addition of a company like Ubisoft is likely to bring increase in those numbers.

The company says it expects to invest $35 million in Manitoba and said the new studio will create 100 new jobs over the next five years.

It's a small start, says Lavoie, but one he's seen kick-start the country's three largest game developing cities — Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal — over the last two decades.

"Ubisoft was one of the first large studios to set up shop in Montreal," he said, noting the Quebec government was the first in Canada to introduce a tax credit for the industry in 1997.

"Now we have almost half the industry in Canada centred around Quebec."

A similar tax credit is offered in Manitoba, which provides a 40 per cent rebate to companies that pay at least 25 per cent of their wages to Manitoba employees. It's one of the reasons Ubisoft picked Winnipeg for their new studio, said Yannis Mallat, president of Ubisoft Canada.

The company started a recruiting campaign for employees to fill its Winnipeg office Friday.

Lavoie says 21,700 Canadians are directly employed in the industry nationally, with the bulk of the them — around 10,000 — working in Quebec.

Another 5,900 work in the industry in B.C., and a further 3,800 are employed in Ontario.

Hope for Manitoba

Thomas Lepp, 3D computer graphics instructor at Red River College, says there are currently about 150-200 people working at four or five small studios or as freelancers in Winnipeg.

He hopes Ubisoft's arrival will help spur the industry's growth in Winnipeg.

"I think what this says is the talent in Winnipeg is on par with anyone in the world," he said.

But it's not just the game development sector that will benefit from a boom in Winnipeg, says Lavoie, who notes the sector creates nearly 19,000 indirect jobs nationally.

He says the skills needed to land a job in the game development world are desirable and transferable and that has led to benefits to other tech sectors in cities and provinces where the gaming industry is already flourishing.

"These are really innovative jobs that will lead possibly to careers in other sectors," he said.

"This clustering effect will not only have an effect in terms of the video game industry, but if you have programmers that are doing something innovative on video games their skills are transferable in other sectors, it could have an impact ultimately on the broader tech sector for Winnipeg."

On its website, Ubisoft says it has the largest in-house development staff in the industry, employing more than 12,000 people.

The firm is known for publishing several acclaimed video game franchises, including Far Cry, the Assassin's Creed series, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rayman and a series of games based on the work of author Tom Clancy.

The firm already has more than 30 studios in 18 countries. It employs 4,500 people in Canada at offices in Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax.

The new office in Winnipeg will work on AAA games — an informal classification indicating the blockbusters of the game-design world, the company says.