Thank you very much.
I'm reminded of watching my partner's in-laws do Wii bowling as a similar sort of event.
I'm very grateful for a chance to come and speak to you. Thank you very much. It's an amazing industry, and it's wonderful to be part of it, and it's wonderful to study. Universities are trying to keep up with the technology and the skills that are needed to produce a skilled labour force to participate in this economy.
I'd like to talk to you briefly about a report that I wrote with some leading researchers and the universities and members of the Independent Game Developers Association, particularly Jason Della Rocca, on how universities can be promoting innovation in the video game industry.
I want to start with the basic premise that the most important technology transfer that universities produce in gaming technology is the students who graduate from our programs, not necessarily the research that goes on there. That is a separate issue that I'd be happy to talk about at length, if you like.
I want to start with that basic premise, that technology transfer in the gaming industry begins with the students who graduate. That can be addressed in four particular areas.
The first is curriculum. I understand you had the fellow from Sheridan come and talk as well. It's a great university and a fabulous program. What I think Sheridan does well and what we're trying to do at a bunch of universities, including the University of Alberta, is to create students who are skilled and who can move into this workforce, and that begins with a deep domain expertise in areas that are relevant to the computer gaming industry but not necessarily wrapped consistently in a gaming envelope, meaning that they need to know how to program well, if they're programmers, across a variety of areas, not just in one particular technology.
The reason for that is you don't want to tie your students to one technology, because if a student starts in first year, that technology will change by the time they graduate in fourth year. If they're stuck to that technology, that's a problem, so they need deep domain expertise matched with strong interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines that brings those deep domains together. As well, they need team-based constructivist projects that will allow students to speak to each other in these disciplines.
The importance of computer programming in video game industries is often commented on. The statistic I'm going to throw at you is more true the larger the company becomes: the percentage of people who are computer programmers in a large computing gaming company is about 20 to 25. The rest are in the—forgive me—softer and squishier sides: the creative artists, the writers, the managers, the game developers, the level designers. All those sorts of people may have a computing science background, but what's important to remember is that computer games are complex interdisciplinary products that require expertise across a variety of disciplines and not just in the computer sciences. What universities need to do better is to get students speaking to each other across these disciplines.
There's an old anecdote that says we all had a great kindergarten report card that said “Works well with others”, and then for the rest of our life up to university, we were told to never do that again, because we're all focused on individual education.
We need to change that, and that's where universities need to do a better job: we need deep domain expertise coupled with strong interdisciplinary collaboration that can be wrapped in a gaming envelope that gets students producing complete games in a portfolio they can then present to an employer when they graduate.
In addition, we should also expose students to all of these sorts of social, cultural, historical, and business issues that would be important to them or valuable to them when they enter the computer gaming industry.
Second, universities need to reimagine intellectual property with respect to their relationship with game companies. You must know universities are under immense pressure to raise funds in any way they can, sometimes.... In Alberta, we're fortunate. We don't have funding cuts to the university right now. In other places, that's not necessarily true.
Research services offices in universities are under immense pressure to try to get commercialization and licensing agreements in order to generate revenue, but IP in the computer gaming industry and in computer gaming research doesn't function the same way it does in pharmaceutical companies. Universities need to let go of this notion that computer gaming research is going to generate money for them, and they need to engage in a quick process of developing IP. I would argue, and our team argues, that really what they should do is just release it into the wild so that Canadian companies can take advantage of it.
There are exceptions, but the problem is that too many times everyone thinks they're the exception. You have to be careful, and again it's a complicated and complex issue.
If universities are going to do that, what can they get in exchange for it?
That brings me to the third point, which is that in exchange for the above, and at least running in parallel to that, universities should establish long-term—slow at first, but building later—relationships with large studios in order to generate collaborative projects. This can be in terms of co-ops, internships, technology training, or even sabbaticals whereby professors go and do research within a gaming company, and surprisingly, vice versa, whereby after a long push of developing a particular product, game company researchers go into universities and work in those labs. That can be complex, but essentially we're arguing for a long-term relationship.
At U of A we've been very fortunate to have a long-term relationship with BioWare, which is one of the very largest studios. It was originally a Canadian IP, and then it was bought by Electronic Arts, a fabulous success story for Canada. We have had that great relationship because of the trust that's been built up between our two institutions over the long haul.
Finally, I think there's one last thing that we need to do, and this builds on the excellent point made by Jaime. Universities, and perhaps government, need to do a much better job promoting the development of Canadian IP in the gaming sector by promoting the independent gaming community, which in turn will promote innovation and equity. What do I mean by that? Well, universities have a lot to offer the independent gaming community. For example, they have immense amounts of space and hardware that are significantly underutilized at nights and on weekends. That is space and technology that can be used by the independent gaming community to try to create relationships, or at least to try to foster innovation and Canadian IP.
With all due respect to the large studios—which I love and are vital components of a strong ecosystem of developing high-wage labour and skilled labour, and all that sort of stuff—the creative IP that is being developed by the large studios depends on sequels and series. FIFA and Assassin's Creed are great, but they are not developing new, Canadian-owned IP. If we can promote the independent gaming communities, as was said earlier, we can perhaps start generating some small and medium-sized enterprises that can do that. Universities can be a meaningful partner in all of that by hosting hackfests, gamer camps, or a Canadian version of IndieCade. I think universities can and should be part of that sort of thing.
I want to make just one last point here about why this is also important. For those of us who study the gaming industry or who are in it, the dirty little secret about video games is starting to become well known: with respect to a comment made by Brenda, in my opinion and the opinion of others, the computer game industry, the people who play it, and the development of those games can be openly hostile to women.
I'm sure some disagree. That said, if you look at the statistics, 45% of the people who play games are women and 10% to 15% of the people employed in computer game development companies are women. That is a significant discrepancy.
We need to find a way to promote Canadian IP. In doing that, we will promote equity by funding gaming activities for women by ensuring that this sort of new intellectual property that's produced is not tied in to the sequels and series that the large studios do, which continue the tradition of what those games look like. In doing that, I think we will help create a vibrant Canadian economy in what is essentially a fantastic industry.