Canadian Heritage committee  There are about 16,000 jobs. That's the latest number.

Canadian Heritage committee  There are 360 companies.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, we deal with a significant velocity of change in our industry and that's changing even faster. Ten years ago when we were hiring, we'd put out an ad. We'd say we needed a programmer or an artist. Now when we put out an ad, we say we need an artist who understands this tool,

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I think it's 350, somewhere in that range.

Canadian Heritage committee  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

Canadian Heritage committee  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

Canadian Heritage committee  From BioWare's perspective, especially in the early years we were very fortunate to be able to rely on a lot of the government programs: first jobs in science and technology, IRAP, western economic diversification, and certainly the SR and ED tax credit programs. They were really

Canadian Heritage committee  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

Canadian Heritage committee  That's just the way it has operated. Are we getting broader mainstream penetration? Yes, we're starting to see more articles in The New York Times. We're starting to see more mainstream press reviews on our games. Again, it's creating that critical mass. We're starting to see mo

Canadian Heritage committee  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 y

Canadian Heritage committee  When you think about all the actors who get involved, the localization, translation, worldwide QA, certification processes for getting the game so they can serve on platforms, it's well over 600 hands of different people who touch those games.

Canadian Heritage committee  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 Edmon

Canadian Heritage committee  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 Cana

Canadian Heritage committee  Our community is somewhere between 3.5 million and 5 million people.

Canadian Heritage committee  Our games are very writer intensive, so we usually have a lead writer and probably anywhere from 5 to 15 additional writers who write content for the game. Our games are 50,000 to 70,000 lines and upwards of a million words.