Welcome to Greater Montréal's World-Leading Video Game
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Welcome to Greater Montréal’s World-Leading Video Game Hub The world's best economic promotion agency at your service 2 Content 01 02 03 04 A World-Leading Video A Deep and Growing Pool Attractive Operating Costs Montréal International’s Game Hub of Highly Qualified Talent and Incentives Personalized, Free and Confidential Services 3 Top reasons to develop video games in Greater Montréal A leading edge A very creative & Competitive costs & A great ecosystem specialized workforce tailor-made incentives quality of life ▪ 200 studios ▪ 15,000 video game workers ▪ 28% cost advantage ▪ Best city in Canada and compared to the average of 6th in the world ▪ A complete ecosystem ▪ 17,000 university students the 20 largest metropolitan (TimeOut, 2019) with key players in tool enrolled in IT related areas in Canada and the development and service programs and more than ▪ Most affordable major U.S. for video game providers (e.g. audio 2,300 in arts related city in Canada and the development services, quality assurance, programs U.S. (UBS, 2018) publishing, localization, etc.) ▪ Advantageous salaries for ▪ 3,300+ college students ▪ Best Student City in the companies ▪ Ubisoft, EA, WB Games, enrolled in technical Americas (QS, 2019) Eidos, Epic Games, programs related to video ▪ Up to 37.5% tax credit of Gameloft, Take-Two and game eligible expenses and many more chose Montréal salaries to develop globally successful games 4 01 A World-Leading Video Game Hub Downtown Montréal © Henry MacDonald Among the top five largest video game development hubs in the world 200 studios 15 000 workers A complete ecosystem with key players in tool development and service providers (e.g. audio services, quality assurance, publishing, localization, etc.) Ubisoft, EA, WB Games, Eidos, Epic Games, Gameloft, Take-Two and many more chose Montréal to develop globally successful games: ▪ Assassin’s Creed Origins (from Ubisoft) ▪ Batman Origins (from Warner Bros Games) ▪ Deus Ex and Rise of the Tomb Raider (from Eidos) Winner of the Gaming and Visual Effects Specialism Award from the Financial Times' fDi Strategy Awards 2019 Source: “Game Industry career guide”, Best cities for video game development 6 jobs, 2015; LinkedIn, 2020: La Guilde, 2020; ESAC 2018. Deus Ex – Mankind Divided © Eidos A collaborative video game ecosystem With its 245 member studios, La Guilde du jeu vidéo du Québec’s mission is to promote the Québec video game industry.It is the largest association of its kind in the world Private initiatives such as GamePlay Space founded by Jason Della Rocca contribute to the dynamism of Montréal’s video game ecosystem Initiative committed to helping more women make and change games. It offers monthly workshops, mentoring program and game jams Initiative of Québec Ministry of Education and Higher Education to support the growth and training of cutting-edge expertise in the digital sector and create better synergy between the various players 7 © Gameloft Birth and growth of the video game industry in Montréal Over the past 25 years, Greater Montréal became Canada’s most important video game hub and the 5th in the world Three waves of development 1 – Birth of the industry 2 – Emergence of Montréal content 3 – The future of the industry ▪ Before Ubisoft and Autodesk became ▪ The wave of handheld games created a ▪ Montréal has emerged as a global influential players in Montréal’s industry, paradigm shift in the development scene leader in new video game niches, locally owned Behaviour Interactive such as VR/AR and gamification in ▪ Thanks to cheaper tools, a mature talent (BHVR) and Kaydara anchored the local fields such as health care and base and the opportunity to self-publish, development scene education along with the demand for smaller and ▪ Thanks to the implementation of the more addictive games, the stage was ▪ Montréal is also making a name for Multimedia Titles tax credit, in 1997, set for the emergence of a local, itself as a world AI and deep learning Ubisoft committed to Montréal and took independent development scene hub, which will revolutionize the video the industry to the next level game development ▪ Studios such as Outerminds, Riposte ▪ As a result, Ubisoft, along with EA, Games, Compulsion Games, Red Eidos, Gameloft and WB Games grew Barrels, Panache Digital Games are at large studios in Montréal the vanguard of this trend 8 Many major successes developed in Greater Montréal 9 Montréal’s ecosystem: some of the major players Full-service industry made up of academia, tool developers, animation, sound, production and post- production studios, etc. Source: Montreal Studio/Tech Mapping, CBRE, 2018; Montréal International, 10 2020 Successful tech, services and game developers to create great games Technologies Services Developers The Montréal office is at the Post production services The world’s biggest game core of Unity’s animation like localization, quality development studio with a systems and emerging AI assurance and live rich portfolio of globally technology operations for games renowned brands Game development teams Specialized in audio and Two studios in Montréal: Eidos and Unreal Engine tech team motion capture services Montréal and Square Enix for industrial applications known for titles such as Lara Croft GO and Deus Ex GO Creates and distributes cross- Software services for the Quality assurance, platform digital games with architecture, engineering, localization, live mass consumer appeal construction, manufacturing, operations support, data media, and entertainment analytics, test automation Studio specializing in the industries and consulting services production of 2D and 3D action/adventure games Cross-platform audio Customer experience, middleware solutions for the quality assurance, Developer known for Contrast interactive media and gaming localization, engineering and We Happy Few industries and audio production services … and more than 200 others! 11 Major global players have recently chosen Montréal Montréal’s video game industry has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years, through the expansion and setting up of international subsidiaries of companies from around the world (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) (expansion) 12 12 A powerhouse IT industry Sample of major companies located in Greater Montréal ▪ 179,000+ IT workers and 7,000 companies in Greater Montréal ▪ Lowest operating costs in North America for software development ▪ Broadly diversified industries related to video game: #1 Top 3 Top 5 Digital creativity Best places to Highest hub in Canada invest in AI in concentrations of and a world North America tech jobs among leader Canadian and U.S. metropolitan areas And at the leading edge of mobile technologies, VR/AR, data analytics and FinTech Source: Montréal International’s estimate based on the 2018 TECHNOCompétences’ Labour Diagnostic in ICT in Québec; Statistics Canada, 2020; fDi Benchmark, 2021; Linkedin 13 Talent Insights, 2020; Scoring Tech Talent in North America 2020, CBRE. In 2020, Montréal welcomed three international events focused on video game January 2020 Event where studios have the chance to show off their work-in- progress games to the Montréal development community September 2020 Montréal’s edition of the world's largest digital festival Fall 2020 MEGA + MIGS is a B2B2C event that brings together over 3,000 developers, publishers and other major players in the video game industry 14 Demo Night © IGDA Montréal 02 A Deep and Growing Pool of Highly Qualified Talent Square Victoria © Montréal International Montréal, where creativity and technical expertise meet Greater Montréal’s video game industry counts close to 15,000 workers That number is increasing fast thanks to the large number of graduates the region’s colleges and universities provide every year, combining expertise in the digital arts and tech Also, Montréal’s Mile End neighborhood is known for hosting the greatest concentration of artists in Canada and is a major culture and arts hub in North America Mile End is also home to a growing number of video game studios and visual effects firms, including Ubisoft, Framestore, Behavior, Gameloft and Atelier Animation 16 Source: Talent Insights (LinkedIn), February 5, 2020. © Ubisoft Montréal Source: Source: LinkedIn, 5, Talent Insights,2020. February “founder”, titles:profiles for the “cofollowing **Excluding identified using Talent skillsLinkedIn’s *Key not or Insights tool are exclusive. cumulative Montréal 15,000 to close are There in Montréal with the identified skills: with identified the Montréal in taken into account to intotaken define account Number of LinkedIn profiles** profiles** LinkedIn Numberof Sample of the 54 key skills key of Sample the 54 video game workers* gamevideo 14,915 - founder”, “CEO” and and “president”. founder”, “CEO” Fastest workers with video game skills game video with workers Unreal Engine 4 31.3% the past12 over game workers Node.js 30.5% - growing skills among videogrowing skills Git 26.6% AngularJS 23.4% months Python 21.5% OOP 20.2% JSON 19.1% Unity 17.3% JIRA 16.1% Number of video game workers whoNumber ofgame workers video Software Development 4 283 C++ 4 058 have the skills below the skills have JavaScript 4 037 Java 3 978 Game Development 3 918 in C# 3 905 Programming 3 564 SQL 3 262 OOP 3 039 17 Many specialized programs in video game development Graduate, undergraduate programs and postgraduate (BA to Master) Career/technical programs