Ontario has become a hub for video-game development and its large talent pool, sound economy and regulation have helped push Canada ahead of the U.K. in gaming innovation, according to the Ontario Technology Corridor.
Canada trails only Japan and the United States in the highly lucrative and growing digital entertainment industry, the group representing innovators spanning the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa region, Waterloo region, City of London and the Niagara region, says the Ontario Technology Corridor.
But Ontario isn’t the only Canadian province making a name for itself in digital entertainment. Quebec has become a hotbed for of 3-D innovation.
Earlier this year, Warner Bros. announced it was setting up shop in Cite de Multimedia, a small technology park just west of Old Montreal, to tap into homegrown D-Box, a company specializing in 3-D effects.
Still, it was a big win for Toronto when game studio UbiSoft announced a few months back it would open up shop in the city to work on Splinter Cell and other high-profile projects.
Targeted incentives have made Ontario the ideal place for top developers, the group says.
Take for example the $107-million shared research lab called the Communitech Hub: Digital Media and Mobile Accelerator in Kitchener.
Last week, search-engine giant Google announced it would take over two floors at the government-funded facility, virtually doubling its staff in the region from 70 employees to 140.
Meanwhile, classes will begin for the first time this fall at the University of Waterloo’s $20-million Stratford Institute for digital media.
And over at the Generator at one, a $3-million cutting-edge digital interactive media production centre in St. Catharines, Ont., developers are able to complete projects using the Vicon T160 Motion Capture System thanks to a mix of federal and provincial government dollars.
In all, Ontario’s entertainment and creative industry produces $15-billion in revenue, employs more than 200,000 people and contributes more than $12.7 billion to the province’s GDP.
Ontario graduates go on to work at companies like Pixar Animation Studios, Electronic Arts, Walt Disney and Microsoft.
"Our job now is to add to our tremendous home-grown crop of companies and help demonstrate that Ontario is a prime destination in North America for gaming investments," said Gerry Pisarzowski, vice-president of business development for the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, an Ontario Technology Corridor partner.
Ontario’s Media Development Corp. also offers tax incentives targeted at creators, including a 30% refund on eligible early stage development, a 35-45% refund of production costs, a 20% tax credit on labour costs and up to $150,000 in project production funding.
Ontario Technology Corridor executives are attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC Europe 2010) in Cologne, Germany, this week.
