It's an incredible advantage. Artists work alongside very pragmatic people who deal with zeroes and numbers. The artists are in their own world and draft images. It's fantastic to be able to combine that with a voice for a character and bring it to life.
In Canada, in Vancouver, in Toronto and in Quebec, we are very lucky. We can have a lot of exchanges. It is important to know that the young people who are currently doing this kind of work are very talented. To answer Mr. Armstrong's question, it can take 5, 10 or 15 years before these young people have the maturity to manage teams of younger people and pass on the torch, for example.
Being able to work in a stimulating environment is great. I have been at recording sessions where the actors completely become their character as they say their lines. It's very similar to what is done in film. There are more and more international actors coming to Montreal to do voice-overs, to develop the voices, and so on. In Splinter Cell, I actually saw Quebec talent at work. For example, the young princess is voiced by a Quebec woman. Of course, it's important. These actors portray the characters with a lot of emotion and that is integrated into the video game characters by people who know what they are doing.
One day a young man came to see me with a character he had created. It was a knight and it was fantastic. This young man was finishing school. The knight he had created was excellent and included a lot of details. I believe we were at Eidos, which was holding an open house. The young man showed us his creation and said he wanted a job. One of the experienced employees told him that the picture was very nice but that, to integrate it into a game, so many polygrams would be required that there would be no more room to make the game work.
You have to be able to play tricks with technology and exchange ideas with people who were there before you, people from other provinces and even other countries, to be able to find ways to make the animation very realistic and close to what you get in film. You want the people playing the game to be completely immersed in it. You want them to feel as though they are, in a sense, participating in a movie as the hero.