BlackCherry was formed in 2004. We're located here in Ottawa. It started pretty humbly, with three employees doing service work in interactive media. Our initial work was largely web-based educational service interactive work. The clientele were mainly Canadian film and television production companies and government.
In the past five years, we've made a decision. As we had some experience in game production, we decided to focus strictly on game production. We've had a few quite notable projects over the past three years. One was Path of the Elders, in 2009-2010, which was produced in partnership with Carleton University and the Mushkegowuk Cree. We created that educational game and the website Explore Treaty 9.
We produced Virtual Safety Village in partnership with the Safe Communities Partnership in Sault Ste. Marie. It is an online virtual world experience that allows kids to learn about home and outdoor safety.
Over the last two years we've worked on another project in partnership with Carleton University, called First Encounters. It is a game and educational project focused on aboriginal themes that gives kids the experience of what it was like to be one of the first people to arrive in Canada from Europe.
Really, the core of our work has been educational and game-based.
In 2010, I was approached by an investor, Dan Yang, who was trying to create essentially an iPad for kids. What she needed for that device was content. She hired our company to create the initial content for that device and then asked me to form another company as a branch of our company and to build that company out. That company has grown over the past year and a half to 40 employees. It's a pretty good story. That product is now for sale at retailers throughout North America. It's called VINCI.
Over the past two years, our company has really focused more on game production. We're now at 15 employees. We're growing pretty quickly right now. We have representation in California. We're in discussions with Ubisoft, Slimstown, and EA on casual game work. We're just completing work now with Beeline, Capcom, and Jim Henson.
In the last few years we've made the transition pretty much to gaming while we still carry on some of our interactive work. Gaming has certainly been the growth business for us and is where we see the most opportunity. We expect that we'll double our numbers over the next year.