I might be able to jump in on that.
Here in Vancouver, with the Centre for Digital Media and the masters program, we were originally thinking that the traditional triple-A studios in the gaming industry were going to be the industry that we were serving by producing talent and helping them with R and D work, which is another thing we do here.
We also found that there's a strong start-up culture that's really come out of Vancouver. We're seeing a lot of student-initiated companies, as well as initiatives in partnership with some of the recently laid-off employees in town, who have formed companies. Any incentives that can recognize that these small one- to five-member teams are being formed that may become the next Flickr or Club Penguin or HOOPS suite.... We've had a number of big successes come out of small teams. Everything grows that way; our industry did, too. Don Mattrick's EA Canada started off as an indie. There's a strong start-up culture.
I think any programs we can have in place that help at the studio level, the larger studios.... We're just seeing that effect here in Vancouver with some of the larger studios that have pulled out of Vancouver. We had a strong relationship with Ubisoft in Vancouver, but they pulled their studio out of Vancouver and relocated it to Ontario. Rockstar had done business in Vancouver for a number of years, and they've relocated to Ontario. Slant Six was a larger studio that has dropped in size recently as well.
The small and mid-sized companies haven't made up that entire gap yet, but there's a lot of opportunity there and I think across Canada. A lot of studios have done work-for-hire, working on non-original IP, meaning licensed content, but I think if we can incentivize small businesses to create original IP, Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled assets, we'll be doing the economy a favour.
Thank you.