Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee for inviting Simon and me today.
I'm Steve Waddell. I'm the executive director of ACTRA. With me today is Simon Peacock, who is a prominent voice director and performer who lives in Montreal and works extensively on video games.
It's an honour to be here as the voice of 22,000 professional performers, members of ACTRA, whose work entertains, educates, and informs audiences in Canada and around the world. We're here to talk to you today about the role our members play in the video game industry, its growing significance, and how we think the federal government could support and nurture this sector here in Canada.
ACTRA members provide the voices for characters in a large variety of games, from simple apps that you carry around with you on your phone to award-winning, international bestselling console games like Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia, produced in Montreal by Ubisoft, and Deus Ex by Eidos.
Not only are our members providing voicing for these multi-million dollar games, but they're also appearing on camera in games through the use of performance- or motion-capture technology and cyber scanning.
You might have some idea of what performance-capture technology looks like: actors moving around a sound stage, dressed in full body stockings with small sensors built into their clothing to help sophisticated computers track their movements. More and more of our members are finding they can make a living out of this type of work, not only in video games, but also in television and in movies like Avatar, directed by a Canadian, James Cameron, who made extensive use of this technology in his film, which broke box-office records.
ACTRA has strong relationships with many of these game companies, most notably Ubisoft. We're committed to working with the game industry to establish industry standard collective agreements, which bring stability and certainty to the engagement of voice and on-camera performers in game production.
I will now ask Simon to speak about the reality of working in games.