Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2012

[Richard Iwaniuk]

Again, because of the depth of our games and the volume of words and lines that are spoken, we reach out a fair way to get voice actors. We just finished the Mass Effect trilogy, three games launched over seven years. The lead actor was Mark Meer, who was born and raised in Edmonton.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Could you explain to the committee, Mr. Iwaniuk, how your online community operates and how many Canadians would be online in your own community?

[Richard Iwaniuk]

You're talking about the BioWare social community online.

We started building the community back in 1999. Our online community follows pretty closely what our worldwide sales are. It probably over-indexes more for North America than what our sales actually represent. From a Canadian perspective, I would say anywhere from 5% to 10% of the community traffic is Canadian-based.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

What number of people would that be?

[Richard Iwaniuk]

Our community is somewhere between 3.5 million and 5 million people.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That's amazing.

I remember one time when I went downstairs to our rec room about eight or ten years ago. My son is 25 so it was probably 10 years ago. He was wearing a headset and playing with seven other guys at the same time. I told him that dinner was ready and he said, “Dad, I'm committed, you know.” He was talking to these guys. He didn't know where they lived or anything. I was starting to realize the power of this community thing. It's very, very, influential.

Do your companies do any corporate donations or any programs for charities?

[Richard Iwaniuk]

Absolutely.

[Luc Duchaine]

We have a couple of programs. Our biggest one is Club des petits déjeuners . It's for kids. We gave over $100,000 recently. We did our big event in the studio. We have another committee which we give to. We are located in the Mile End area in Montreal. We give a lot to the local community. We have a committee that studies all sorts of demands. We give from $500 to $1,000 to different companies. We give thousands of dollars a year.

[Richard Iwaniuk]

It's likewise for us. The company was founded by two doctors, and therefore, a lot of the philanthropic side of it is focused on children. We have the Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton. We're very fortunate to have that facility. We've been supporters of that for over 10 years in the amount of several hundreds of thousands of dollars through programs or direct support.

[Martin Carrier]

One of the things you'll find with video game companies is that we often set up shop in areas of town where other people don't want to go to.

Ubisoft is in the Mile End area of Montreal. When I was working there in 1997 the tumbleweeds were rolling on the street and there was nothing there. Now it's one of the hottest places in Montreal.

Warner Brothers set up shop in the east end in Place Dupuis near Place Émilie-Gamelin, which is one of the harder areas of Montreal, but it's certainly picking up. It's located right across from the Quebec national library. We were actually the first to donate video games to the library and introduce games to the library. Given that we're in an up and coming neighbourhood, we're working with local organizations that help kids come off the street. We've hired several kids to work with us. Some of them have now graduated to our testing department.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Based on where you locate your facilities in the city, you're helping to regenerate cities, too. This is a goal of this business, a great contribution.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you, Mr. Young.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Since this is something I'm quite interested in, I would like to ask a few questions. As vice-chair of this committee, I was given the consent of our friends opposite.

First, you said that motion capture and animation involve a lot of work and a large number of artists. Perhaps you all saw the show Tout le monde en parle two weeks ago. Micheline Lanctôt said that playing this type of role was her lifelong dream. She's a very experienced comedian from Quebec. It's certainly a nice challenge for her, artistically.

Is the success of a video game like this based on the people involved, the artistic direction and the design, or on the featured performers and special effects?

[Luc Duchaine]

It's a combination of the two. It takes an interesting world, a captivating universe and the technology to support it. Some very simple games do very well, but I am considering the overall picture. If the world is interesting and the technology supports it, all this together will provide a winning recipe. I think if you have these conditions, your game will be successful.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

You are talking about a film and following the reverse process. You created a video game from the film The Lord of the Rings. You are now doing the opposite. You have created a universe in a game that is so interesting that a film is being made out of it.

[Luc Duchaine]

That is increasingly the case, and I think the same is true for my colleague from BioWare ULC. I am thinking about certain games of ours, but I'm not including games like Just Dance, where you dance in front of the television. It's fun, but a little limited. For example, there's Assassin's Creed or Mass Effect. The universes are so rich that there really is room to put them on the big screen.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

I wanted to ask you another question.

When I worked for Cirque du Soleil, local people often worked on the productions. There were also athletes who came from elsewhere for special performances. However, there was a critical mass of local employees. But with respect to the design and staging, there is an artistic signature. This requires precedents. This needs to have been done beforehand.

Basically, do the people who arrive from overseas work particularly in design or in computer programming?

[Martin Carrier]

It's really for all jobs. I can give you a very clear example. We needed an expert in virtual communities. We found that person in Korea. So we had her come from Korea to Montreal and provide us with that expertise.

It is important to understand that, when we hire one expert from abroad, we can often surround that person with 10 local individuals who can learn from that person and take in that knowledge. So what's important is no so much that we're hiring someone from abroad, but that 10 other people can work around that person.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

That's very interesting.

With respect to visibility, you mentioned a Quebec singer who was patting herself on the back for selling 40,000 albums.

[Luc Duchaine]

That's what I heard.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Honestly, that is what I would be doing if it were me. If she sells 40,000 records these days, that is a success. Perhaps you know that the number of records you have to sell to get a gold record in Canada has dropped from 50,000 to 40,000 because hardly anyone buys records anymore. Sell 40,000 and you have a gold record.

Would you like to have some way of measuring an achievement like that? Would you like to be able to show that you have passed a million? Is that something you would consider?

[Luc Duchaine]

Of course, that could be something that would interest our teams in terms of recognizing the games or the accomplishments. Celebrating the fact that so many millions or so many hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold in Canada would certainly interest people.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Of course, you and those who invest in your companies are well aware of it. You see the sales figures and your investors are satisfied.

But saying that a record has gone platinum lets people talk that record up. In little local industries, like in Quebec, that has certainly been the case, like everywhere in North America. It is like a second launch. So it is interesting. So something like that could interest you?

I have one last question for you. It deals with digital culture in general, in the sense that you have a product that goes beyond its environment. You have technological expectations and needs. Clearly, you lack specialized workers in some areas.

Do you think that we could do more in terms of cultural, artistic and creative development to create an awareness of the digital world in Canada? Do you think we could be doing better in that regard?

[Martin Carrier]

That is a very good question.

[Richard Iwaniuk]

When it comes to creating a greater digital awareness in Canada, our industry does a good job of talking to our industry, but it doesn't do a good job of talking broadly. That's really what it comes down to. That feeds back to your previous questions.

Do we celebrate? Absolutely. If we have a platinum hit, or whatever you want to call it, let's say a million unit sales on the Xbox platform, do we celebrate it? We do. With Microsoft and all of our partners, we do. We do press releases about it, but it really is targeted at the game-stream media. It doesn't get broad.

[A voice]

That's right.