Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 11th, 2012

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

We understand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Is there consent among committee members?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Okay, let's do that.

Thank you, Mr. Nantel.

Go ahead, Mr. Woo.

[Jaime Woo]

I'm so used to doing everything on my own.... Like, I'm ready to get coffee if anyone needs it.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jaime Woo]

As I was saying, if you came to Gamercamp, you would hear inspirational TED-like talks from thought leaders in the gamespace who are from around the world. We have hands-on workshops, because some people, depending on their level of expertise in games, have only played games and have wondered, “How do I make these things? I'd love to.” We give them workshops for that. We have people who are in mid-career and are wanting to upgrade their skills or just be with new people and share ideas, so we have workshops in addition to talks.

Finally, we have a game showcase. This year we showed 25 games from around the world, but we essentially focused on Canada and Toronto, because we really wanted people to get a chance to play these games. Hundreds and hundreds of games come out every year, and sometimes we don't know where those games come from, so we really wanted to give people a chance to see things that were created in their own backyard.

Gamercamp started as a grassroots thing. It did not start because we were trying to make money. Certainly we haven't lost money over the last four years, but we did it because it was a passion project. We knew that it was the right idea. It was the right place to be, Toronto, at the right time, in 2009, and it was the right sector for video games, because that was a time when video games were becoming more distributed, when anyone who could put up a game on the Apple iTunes store or the App Store could get it distributed to millions of people, to potential audiences around the world.

We were just very lucky to start during that time. Also, Toronto had never had a big triple-A studio to come to the support of the game developers who were there, so it was very exciting for the Toronto developers, who were in small teams, to be able to release small games that could have a much wider audience than they were used to, and you didn't need physical media anymore—you didn't need to put a disc into an Xbox or whatnot—to get your game played.

What we've tried to do with Gamercamp, then, considering, just as Brenda said, that the audience is getting broader, is try to be something like TIFF for games. As you know, if you want to see TIFF, you don't have to be part of the industry. You don't have to be a film buff. You don't need to have watched x number of hours of film a week. As long as you find anything interesting, you can go to TIFF. It's the same with Luminato and Nuit Blanche: you don't have to be someone who's an artist or have a very deep interest in art. As long as you're interested, you can go.

But for a lot of game events right now, you either have to be part of the industry or you have to be labelled a gamer. You have to self-identify as someone who plays a lot of games, and then you feel comfortable going. We want to change that, because games are broadening. As long as you have an interest in games, we want you to come to Gamercamp just the way that people do with TIFF or Nuit Blanche.

We are unlike anything that's out there right now because we do try to reach such a broad audience. That's mainly because nothing existed in Toronto, so we got to start from a blank slate, which is kind of a neat thing about Toronto. Because we had nothing in Toronto, we actually built everything from the ground up, and it meant that new ideas were happening there.

I want to talk a little bit about the ecosystem of what we have in Toronto, because I think it can be amplified on a national level. We have something called the Toronto Video Game Jam. The seventh one just happened. This year, 400 aspiring game developers, professional game developers, and hobbyists—people who just love games—crammed themselves into George Brown campus and, for 72 hours, they worked to make games. I usually go for a little bit, because by day three, people haven't showered, they're kind of tired, and they're all on caffeine, and I try not to be there at that point, but to see the games that come out is pretty amazing, because in 72 hours you can really get a sense of what people can do. Even though those games aren't sellable themselves, what happens is that those ideas can be the germ for sellable products in the future.

I'll give you an example from a studio in Toronto called CAPY. Actually, their game is in the magazine: it's called Super TIME Force. What they want to do is play with the idea of time: can you reverse time in a game? In video games, we're very used to the idea of having many lives. When you play Mario, you have 15 lives to get through it. They wanted to play with the idea of what would happen if you had to live all those lives at once, so while you're playing the game, every time you die, you rewind to the beginning of the level, and you play beside a version of yourself playing that level. Each time you die, the game actually becomes a bit easier, because you have many ghost versions of yourself fighting with you. It's kind of like an army of yourselves fighting this level....

I thought it was a really cool idea. The germ of it started at the Toronto Video Game Jam, and recently the game got picked up by Microsoft for the XBLA award at GDC, which is the largest event and one of the pivotal game events in the game world.

That's something that started out of Toronto just because 400 people decided to get into a room and work for 72 hours. It's really demonstrative of Toronto pulling itself up by its bootstraps and creating something that will have international impact. When you look at the global video game press, you see that with Super TIME Force they're, like, waiting with bated breath. They're drooling at every little thing that comes out of it. Who would have thought that this would have come out of this small thing, that this chain of impact could happen?

To echo the point that Brenda was making, it's small and medium enterprises that are driving Canadian-owned IP. Every dollar from Super TIME Force goes back into Canada. The previous game, Sword & Sworcery, which has been downloaded a million times, is Canadian IP, and that goes right back into Canada.

Even though a rich ecosystem, on a national level, requires both triple-A studios and smaller studios, we see that the money, if you invest in these small studios, goes right back to hiring more Canadians and having everything just.... I'm sorry, I don't even know the right words for it. You know, it's just Canada all the way through.

We're also getting this Canadian-built innovation, which is creating value for Canada. I think that's a really good thing.

The market right now is ready for Canadian games. Games are really being successful. I'll name some of them off for you. Although they might not mean anything to you, if you ever get a chance, if you have 15 minutes, download them. Give them a shot.

There's Sword & Sworcery, which is a very cool pixel-art game. It's very arty. That's been downloaded a million-plus times.

You can hear about the story of N+ in the magazine. They created it, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies on the Xbox platform. It was started by two people. Really, people say that this was the game that proved that downloadable small games could be profitable. That came out of Toronto. Most people don't even know that.

A game called Sound Shapes recently came out. It's one of the top sellers for the PlayStation Vita. Sony is very happy with that.

There is a game called Dyad, which started from Toronto. One person made it over four years' time. It's done extremely well.

I really wish I could just give you all the games to play. Sometimes you need to play them to really know what's so awesome about them. It's been nice doing this festival in Toronto for four years and to have this list of games to talk about. It does make me proud that this industry that I want to be in has all of this Canadian product coming from it.

In terms of support, it's good that games are out there, but we don't know that this trend will last forever. There can be a time when something is new and the city can hit, but if there isn't that sustained support, it won't grow and we might get out-competed by other cities. We are doing a great job in Toronto right now, but I would like to make sure that we don't get out-competed.

What does that mean? That means we need funding. We need funding for these studios so that they can hire more people and continue to grow at a pace that might be comparable to the States. They need leverage so that they can continue to build products. I know each studio has three or four games they're working on; the faster we can get those games out, the more competitive ground they can take up.

I think funding will also provide an infrastructure. As these companies grow, we need to find spaces for them to attach to so that they have somewhere to fit in.

The thing I see right now is that there are lots of small companies, but there's no cohesive vision among all of them. That's a little bit problematic, because that means if anything bad happens in the industry, they could fall apart from one another, and that would be very bad for the Canadian video game industry.

In terms of making this a national frame, we need to have a conversation about how to do this nationally. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg, Halifax—how do they all come together to talk about where games need to go?

On a personal level, in terms of Gamercamp, it would be great to have funding so that we could compete against similar festivals in the U.S., such as IndieCade and PAX, and British festivals like GameCity, known as thought leaders. These are thought spaces where people are excited to see what happens next. We're building very hard at Gamercamp to be that, but you know, I've done that just by knocking on doors, asking for sponsors, and trying to get as many attendees to come as possible. Having that extra funding would make it better so that we could grow faster.

This year we cut into our profits so that we could fly in speakers from Austin, San Francisco, Vancouver, Montreal, and Prague because we knew those were the steps we had to take. Having some funding would allow us to grow faster and do even more of that so that if people knew the great stuff that was happening in Canada and got to meet all the Canadian developers, we were really hoping that having come to Toronto, they would go back to their own cities and talk about how exciting it is in Canada to be able to make games and have the ideas that are happening there.

Lastly, I just hope we get a chance to talk more about the cultural role of video games. We have the National Film Board and we talk a lot about the national conversation on where we want music or literature to go. I'm so glad this is happening, because it's forward thinking in terms of where we're going to have this national discussion for video games.

In 10 to 15 years, people will treat video games as a given, the way they treat music or film. No one says, “Oh, are you a televisioner? Oh, you really like those television shows. Oh, you're a booker?” No one says, “I'm a reader. I read 15 hours a day.” People aren't going to do that anymore with games. The hope is that gaming becomes an intrinsic part of our lives so that we don't have to do that, but you need a national framework so that people can talk about it that way without feeling that it goes into that stereotype of the teenage boy being the only one who's playing games.

I'm going to end with my favourite anecdote. My mom had never played video games before. She always told me that I was wasting my time. For Christmas, I bought her the Kinect system, and we had Dance Central, which is a game that has a motion sensor. There's an avatar in front of you, a computer character, and you dance along with it.

You could see her slowly move from the kitchen to our foyer to the couch, watching us, and soon she and my aunt had pushed us out of the way so that she could dance to Lady Gaga's “Poker Face”. Then after we said we wanted to play again, she went to the mirror to just practise the moves by herself, and I thought, “Holy crap, this is amazing.” We're branching out beyond what anyone would have thought. She'll never call herself a gamer, but that's where this is going, so I'm very happy.

I hope talking about my experiences was helpful. I'm so glad to be here.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Woo.

Finally, we'll hear from Mr. Gouglas.

[Professor Sean Gouglas, Director, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you.

Thanks to all of you for your opening remarks. Now we'll move to a time for questions and answers.

First up is Mr. Brown.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our witnesses today.

I sense a lot of enthusiasm for the industry, especially from Mr. Woo. My experience with entertainment software goes back to the Ms. Pacman days. I'm dating myself, but I have seen such an evolution of this industry. I have a 12-year-old son, and he's always excited about the new game coming out. I see how this can make such an impact on our economy and create a lot of jobs going forward, which of course is the reason we're having this study.

I want to talk a little bit about Gamercamp. This sounds like something that could help the industry very much.

Mr. Woo, could you give us a little more background on how you think this can benefit the Canadian entertainment software industry?

[Jaime Woo]

I think there are different ways that Gamercamp can be a vessel for that. One of the main things is getting the games in front of the public. So many games are released that it can be quite difficult for people to get a chance to play all of them.

One thing we've seen that we've been trying to push is the more games that we can have people try, which is always the part they're most excited about, the more chance they'll buy it. Right now the main vehicles for people to learn about a game are word of mouth through their friends, and usually that comes back from traditional games media sites like IGN or Destructoid. Those tend to be primarily slanted toward American games because they're American sites. I think it can end up being problematic if we don't get enough Canadian games seen that way.

We also try to work hard to help the industry by being a space where people can come together and share their ideas. Certainly some informal mentoring and some cross-pollination of ideas happen. We always have some university academic speakers come in, and we have industry people come, and people who are doing grassroots things. I think having those people all in one space is really important, because they can share their ideas with one another. That's really important in helping the industry grow. Everyone knows each other, so they can help each other out.

One of the games I mentioned, Sound Shapes, had almost every major studio in Toronto helping out together on that game to get it to completion. I don't know in how many industries you'd have other companies essentially come on board and collaborate so that this game could be out, period. They're not competitive. I think that's a pretty good example of how everyone is working together for the greater benefit of the broader industry.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

You have a unique event. How does it compare with or how is it different from some of the other similar events that go on around North America?

[Jaime Woo]

I think one of the things we're trying to encourage is the idea of games literacy. When I was a kid and I played a game, it was a black box to me. I didn't know how games were created. I knew if I pressed right—Mario is right—and hit A, Mario jumped, but it was in this box and I had no idea how it was made. I never thought that I could make that game myself. That just seemed too difficult.

Therefore, one of the things we're trying to do is teach people how games work, how you can make a game yourself, how to demand better games, how to have a vernacular for discussing games. Part of the reason TIFF works is that people who love film have a vernacular that allows them to talk to each other about cinematography or pacing. Games are still a bit young, and we're working on that, but we hope to be that space where people can generate enough ideas and thinking that it solidifies into something that moves it out of the basement.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

I'll move on to Ms. Gershkovitch.

What other support measures do you think the government can do to help the industry? Would it be things like start-up grants, loan guarantees, tax incentives, those types of things? Maybe you could give us a little more background on what you think we should be doing to help grow the industry.

[Brenda Gershkovitch]

Thank you for that question. The three examples you gave were all excellent examples.

I think anything that fosters the entrepreneurial environment that's growing in Canada is fantastic. Startup Canada, which recently took place, was a wonderful success. A very interesting study was announced last week in Tech5 that looked at the top 20 entrepreneurial cities in the world, and three were in Canada. That's quite impressive. They looked across a number of different areas that they measured, and Vancouver was fourth in talent in the world in terms of entrepreneurial opportunities, when specifically looking at tech.

Where we really fall down, though, is in investment opportunity, so any measures that help instill a culture of investment in Canada would be very helpful to us.

The tax incentive war is a challenge. Many of us in the industry wish there was an opportunity for a federal program that provided a level playing field across provinces. That's been quite a harmful thing in the industry in Vancouver, while other sectors have benefited from it.

To give you an example of my experience in the two different worlds of gaming, we used to have a joke in my first company about how many times you would be recruited by another studio if you were out for coffee. These were our programmers. At the time it was so tight to get top-level programmer talent that we had this running joke, but sometimes it was five times, and the record was seven. People were really after top-level programmers.

Today I know a number of unemployed programmers in Vancouver—it's a very different scenario—because they don't necessarily want to move to other places. Many people have moved to Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco as well, so we do have a challenge in that regard, and it does need some attention.

Again, I think opportunities for loans for start-ups are very helpful. Supporting a number of the fantastic incubator programs that are going on in our province and others is also a great way to go.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Earlier we had the Minister of Immigration here, and you heard a little about what the government is doing to streamline the program to have temporary foreign workers.

In terms of recruiting foreign workers for your company, have you had issues in that area?

[Brenda Gershkovitch]

My first company, Deep Fried Entertainment, which we grew to a mid-sized studio, did—absolutely. The type of program that he was describing did in fact benefit us, and the tighter timelines we're hearing about would be an additional benefit. We did use that program to bring in Chinese nationals, very experienced programmers with Ph.D.s, to help us in the specific area of a physics engine we were designing, and it was very beneficial to the studio.

In the current climate in Vancouver it's a bit different, because we have more talent than we do opportunities for them to work. It's shifted a little in that particular city.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

I'm out of time.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Go ahead, Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for appearing today.

As Mr. Brown said, there's a high level of passion that we can clearly glean from all of you. This industry really does showcase Canadian creative productions. I think we need to celebrate, promote, and foster the growth that's booming within this very exciting sector of gaming within the entertainment industry in general.

Being the only female on this committee, and a young female within an environment that is not so female-oriented, I'm going to focus much of my time on you, Ms. Gershkovitch.

Thank you, first of all, for your courage to do the work you do in a not-so-female-dominated industry and for focusing on developing games for young women and girls.

Why did you feel the need to create a company focusing specifically on the designs for a female audience?

[Brenda Gershkovitch]

That's a great question. Thank you.

In my previous studio, I had the opportunity to work on mainstream products. We built racing games, and I built three major league baseball games. I did that, and it was a wonderful experience to learn the industry. It was profitable and interesting, but it wasn't my passion.

Most people I know in the video game industry do it because they really love it and they're building games they want to play. I remember sitting at a wonderful conference and listening to one of the leaders in the industry say that games are about fantasy. That's the wonderful thing about this industry: you get to play your fantasy. You can have the touchdown at the Super Bowl. You can defeat Hitler in World War II. You can do UFC and all this stuff. I was sitting there, and as often is the case, the only woman in the room, thinking, “That doesn't sound so interesting to me. Where's my fantasy?” The fact that we hadn't addressed that—bing—was my eureka moment: there's an opportunity here.

I'm driven in two ways. One, I think it's a very smart play in terms of the opportunity to build high-quality properties for this market, which is dramatically underserved and hungry for property. We're seeing the market grow despite the fact that there isn't very high-quality product being offered to them. As an entrepreneur it's very appealing to me in that regard.

Second, I'm a mother of a very talented young woman and two great sons. The boys have played games their whole lives, and my daughter has been bored to death. She's the math person in the room. She has this great head for math. She's in an accelerated program in math and sciences, yet, really, we just don't do what we could do to draw girls into programming.

We have a saying in our studio: “Program or be programmed; if you don't like what's out there, build something different.” We're really interested in that. We want to not only create high-quality property for girls to play, but to also draw girls into the industry. There's no good reason for us not to be here. There are a lot of terrific jobs.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Absolutely. I think that goes for all industries and non-traditional workplaces. Thank you for that.

I know your games also have very positive messaging for young women to build social skills and whatnot. Do you view the video games that your company is developing to fulfill that fantasy also as educational tools?

[Brenda Gershkovitch]

We are focused less on education, although education does come in to some of our games.

To give you a couple of examples of properties we're currently working on, our first series is called School 26, and it's built for what we saw was the largest gap in the market in terms of quality products for girls between the ages of 10 and 16 years old. School 26 is the story of a young character named Kate, who has unfortunately been to 25 high schools in total already in her young career, and in her last year of high school has made a deal with her parents for them to please stay put long enough for her to graduate. The deal is if she can get to know the kids in her school and make herself part of the community, then she can stay there and graduate. It's a tough school, though, and these kids have issues, so she's challenged to help them a bit.

Is it an educational game? Not necessarily. What we did was spend a lot of time looking at what young girls spend their time doing, and we're in each other's business, because we're social engineers. This is the stuff that drives us: “Did you hear about so and so? Did you know this is going on? I can't believe she doesn't have this. How can we help with that?”

These are great skills. When I went to do my MBA and they talked about emotional intelligence, I almost laughed. Really, this is a thing you teach? Girls have been doing this in high school forever, right? We do emotional intelligence nonstop. How do you build that into a video game so that girls are learning those skills and figuring out how to use them positively? The primary mechanic in that game is empathy. It's a little bit different.

In the second version of that game, which is called School 26: Summer of Secrets, the tool in that game.... In most games, if you're gathering something—for example, gathering coins—you might level up and buy a better sword. In our game you're gathering secrets, and you can use them for good or for evil, so it really teaches you the power of information and how to be a good friend.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Empathy is one of the key pillars of high emotional intelligence. It's really good that you are building empathy within our young players. Let's call them players; not all of them are gamers. I'm just going to say participants.

How welcome are female gamers in the gamer community in general at events like Gamercamp or at a competition? Is discrimination still a factor for young women and girls in the industry?

If there's time, Mr. Woo, you can answer your answer afterward.