I can tell you that this was a key point in our development. Most people probably know Club Penguin, which was conceived by some Vancouver residents and purchased by Disney. Webkinz was a Toronto creation. We created GalaXseeds for Corus Entertainment in Toronto.
There was a point in the history of video games where Canada was the leader of the strongest children's game trend, called multiplayer online games, or MMOs, an acronym for the English term massively multiplayer online games. The children would play them, find friends, build a small house, and so on. Databases containing all of the goods they accumulated were then created.
Our company, Frima Studio, became a world leader in this area thanks to the R&D credits. We designed an MMO motor that allowed us to create games. We designed a game for Build-A-Bear Workshop, which you can visit at www.bearville.com, that allows you to take a stuffed animal and make it your own by dressing it. The number of users has reached 25 million. They are mostly little girls. Only 10% of the users are boys. They probably go on the site in the hope of meeting girls. Be that as it may, this was a huge success for us.
We worked on the Littlest Pet Shop project with Electronic Arts. We worked with several other businesses, even with Microsoft and Activision programmers, imagine that. We created Skylanders online, and this is currently the most popular toy in the world. The Ubisoft company also hired us to create a massive multiplayer online game for children.
This technology is designed in Canada thanks to tax credits for R&D. We need this support. We have the necessary talent. At a certain point, we were the best in the world in this area. In my opinion, these credits are still useful. This is a knowledge industry that needs to be stimulated. It is very risky to do research and development, but if the government shares that risk with us, this can lead to enormous gains for all Canadians.