Canadian Heritage Committee on Oct. 25th, 2012

[Luc Duchaine]

If I could make a small comparison, and I'm the king of cheap comparisons, so follow me on this one, when we were building small stuff, one or two guys could do it. Now we need a guy specialized in every single detail. That's why it's a cheap comparison because at the same time, the more our games are specialized with foreign people working on them, you need one guy who will take care of the animation of the face, one guy who will do the animals, one guy who will do the walking cycle, one who will do the idle behaviour. We have become extremely specialized.

To come back to your question about bringing people in, we have fewer problems for programmers because the way it's set up with the LMO, it's different, I know it's a federal and provincial mix, but in Quebec it can take up to four weeks for programmers, for example, whereas for other jobs it can take way longer. In the rest of Canada, it's super fast. There's the accelerated LMO, which allows us to get people faster.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

That's a good case for having a studio in Vancouver, perhaps.

Having said that, you described your bell curve. You seem to have a pretty cohesive sense of what you need to do, given your years of experience in this sector, right? Knowing this, wouldn't you plan that you were going to need a person in four weeks and therefore make an application or use a head hunter to find someone maybe six months before that, or whatever the case may be?

[Luc Duchaine]

We try to. At our company we're developing about 15 to 20 games at the same time. Some games will go well. Some games will have some challenges, as in any creative process. Sometimes you plan that one game will ship, let's say, in Q4 of this year, but there have been some changes in the business, for example, a new game has come out which changes the scope a bit, so you need to change the scope of your game.

We try to plan as much as possible but sometimes we cannot. This is a competitive industry. When your lead programmer leaves, you need a guy to replace him right away. If you don't have one, you need to find one, or you take someone from another project, but you still have an empty seat in the office that needs to be filled.

[Richard Iwaniuk]

To add to that, one of the things that's different about our particular industry is that there are an incredible number of dependencies. You alluded to it. It's different from film production where it's a very linear path. The choices in games open worlds where people can go. The dependencies are significantly greater, and if one of those dependencies derails on you, that's when you start running into these resource issues where you need to scramble to find people.

Ideally, I would love to say that in four weeks I know I'm going to need this person. We try, but it's not four weeks. That's the issue. It could be four months or six months, depending on the type of person you're trying to find. You have to find these people first, so the full process takes time.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

It sounds also like there's a lot of mobility in your sector. People seem to go back and forth, or to different countries. Perhaps when they finish working on a game they take a year or two off, or they go to Australia, or whatever it happens to be; I have no idea.

Would you say that's true, that there's a lot of mobility in your sector?

[Richard Iwaniuk]

There is, and it does happen. That comes down to studios building destination places and being technological and innovative leaders within the industry. That's what keeps people with your organization.

Inevitably people will leave. That's the reality. We're talking about a very young and portable age group. It's a lot easier for them to pack up and move to San Francisco to work for competitors.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Thank you very much, Mr. Iwaniuk.

I'm sorry, Ms. Young, that's all the time.

I think this has been a very, very interesting—

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

There are more questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Oh.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Perhaps somebody could go. I know it's their turn. They're free to have another round.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Do you want to go for another round?

[An hon. member]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Okay, there you go.

Monsieur Cash.

[A voice]

Are we starting another round?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Do we need to start a new round?

Do you want to have a complete round?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I'd like to ask some more questions, if there's another round or not.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

My apologies, Mr. Cash. You have the floor.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Just as a quick point of clarification, Chair, how did we get off our rotation?

I mean, the government just asked a question. Doesn't it go to our side now?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

Absolutely. It is your turn.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Oh. So you're going to me after all. Great.

I have a couple of questions flowing out of some of the last few rounds.

First of all, you have a great studio in Toronto, in my riding. Ubisoft employs a lot of young people who live in the community. They're not travelling great distances to get to work, so it's excellent. We need more of this in Toronto for sure. Toronto has an unemployment rate well above the national average, so this stuff is excellent. This is one of the reasons that I think this sector is so important.

I'm curious about the mobility piece, though, because we also have a lot of people right across the country who work contract to contract. It sounds to me like part of the issue here is about keeping people from moving around. I'm wondering if there are ways to induce workers to stay with your companies.

I'm just curious about why they keep moving around.

[Luc Duchaine]

There are lots of reasons.

We work a lot with core teams—a producer, a creative director, an art director—and sometimes you want to keep the creative team together. Sometimes they've just finished a game.

There are lots of reasons. There are as many reasons as there are people. For some, it will be because they want to create a new IP. They've done two games of the same franchise and they want to do something new. Internally, if we don't have that opening, they will go to another studio.

Sometimes it's because of family. If they move out of Montreal, it's because they go back to Europe, for example. When they get to their mid-thirties, and they have a wife—or husband, but mainly it's males in our industry—they'll go back home because they want their kids to be close to the grandparents.

We try to convince them. We try to offer them opportunities. At one point, though, I won't say there's a limit, but let's say they're making $60,000, and we offer $75,000. It's important not to start a bidding war, and offer $80,000, $85,000, and so on. As an industry it's important not to start a bidding war.

There are some guys who will get a giant raise and fast-track somewhere else. I don't know if it's the case in Edmonton, but for us we have a lot of big studios in Montreal.

We try to keep people, but they all have their reasons for leaving. Some come back. Some want to work on one specific brand. If you want to work on Mass Effect, well, you have to move to Edmonton. If you want to work on Batman, you have to work at Warner. If you want to work on Assassin's Creed, you have to come and see us at Ubisoft.

It goes with the franchise, as well.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Yes.

Does anyone else have anything to add to that?

[Martin Carrier]

I think the internal mobility between studios is a sign, especially in Montreal, that we now have a really great ecosystem of talent that can flow from one studio to another. People are really project driven. They want to work on a specific challenge they'll find in a DC game or in a BioWare game and so on. They feel free to move around. It's good to get that mix of talent.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Okay, thanks.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Pierre Nantel]

You have the floor, Mr. Calandra.