Industry Committee on Feb. 26th, 2014

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just so you know, I will share my time.

I want to thank the witnesses for joining us. Your honesty is refreshing. I will begin with two questions.

There is an institution in my riding you may be familiar with. It recruits young people and trains them. I am talking about the Centre de formation professionnelle des Riverains. This centre provides professional level training. Earlier, you talked about all the mechanisms you are using to recruit people, but I did not hear anything about options outside the mainstream. These people are doing an excellent job. Their skill level is even above that of college and university professionals. They are working very hard.

I belong to the generation of

Timex Sinclair 1000.

That was a very long time ago. I also have a friend who has continued to develop his programming skills. He can teach artificial intelligence at the PhD level.

What does the current process consist of? You are talking about recruitment. Do you have any programs for attracting people from institutions other than colleges and universities? All kinds of factors have made many people move around a lot without ever attending a university or a college. They may have become professionals, and would need to be recruited in a different way.

[Nathalie Verge]

Ubisoft does provide those people with opportunities, but probably less so today. Our company is large. It takes up space and is well-known, as are its brands.

Generally speaking, people who like video games and have developed programming skills on their own over time instinctively come to apply. So that is the kind of reach we have to do. However, we reach less accessible people through our games, reputation, social networks and gaming communities.

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

What percentage do those people account for?

[Nathalie Verge]

I couldn't tell you.

Some of them are working for Ubisoft. We also have many artists who are not trained in visual arts. We have had employees with no formal training in programming. Today, I don't think we are hiring many programmers without a university degree. However, we do reach those people through our brands and gaming communities.

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

You talked about that earlier.

Do you have anything to add on the topic?

[Jason Della Rocca]

It's an interesting question.

I think the game industry is particularly good at attracting people who love games, and they come to us. We're not especially good going into other industries like aerospace or.... Okay, we do in film, but going into other sectors that have relevant skills and jobs, and saying, “Hey, you're a really good ballistics engineer, come to games because, guess what, we're making a virtual...”. We're not that great at doing that.

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

I'm trying to understand, on the one side you're saying there's a lacking, in a way, but on the other you're saying people are coming to you. Is there more that can be done?

Could more be done? Could you look more into this sector beyond universities and colleges?

[Jason Della Rocca]

It comes down to quality and qualifications. There is almost literally a lineup of gamers outside the door of Ubisoft who are knocking, wanting to go in. Are those the people who you can have work on a $100-million franchise? Again, it goes back to my analogy of the film industry. How many people go to Hollywood wanting to make movies and have the skills or aptitudes to do it with any degree of skill?

It's one of the challenges of the game industry that it's so driven by passion, yet it is an extremely difficult skill set to learn, this mix of art and science. Passion alone is not sufficient to get the job done.

[Nathalie Verge]

There is another pool of people we are starting to draw from. I am talking about eSports, which are games communities of people are playing around the word. People become champions, challenge each other and compete amongst themselves. The players are not always programmers or industry people, but they are extremely good.

We sometimes receive suggestions from people. They develop characters and tell us about them. We advise those people and can now identify them and talk to them. They are sometimes 17 years old and come up with some amazing characters. They have obvious skills and talent. We ask them whether they have ever thought about working in the video game industry and whether they would like to visit our studio. If so, we tell them about the programs available to them.

We are starting to build gaming communities, visiting them and hiring people we probably would have missed or who would not have enrolled in customized programs. They can become employees.

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you.

That brings me to the next question. This is a rapidly evolving market. Earlier, we talked about Timex Sinclair 1000, but that is clearly in the past. The same goes for games like Frogger.

Canada is among world leaders in video games, and we are practically ahead of the movies in terms of visual effects and interaction. The industry has become very large. What needs to be done to ensure that Canada stays on top over the next 20 years?

Of course, we are talking about tax credits and recruitment, but what are the risks involved in that? Since things have gotten a lot easier, what emerging countries could take our place? What areas should we keep an eye on? What should we do?

[Jason Della Rocca]

That's a very difficult question to answer with any degree of certainty. There's a great book, however, called the The Innovator's Dilemma, that was written by a Harvard professor about 10 or 12 years ago. It has nothing to do with games. It's about innovation and technology.

The summary of The Innovator's Dilemma is that the very things you do to succeed today are the things that prevent you from succeeding tomorrow. It's your own success that blinds you to those shifts and disruptions that are occurring. The best way to counteract the innovator's dilemma is to have and support start-ups that are not encumbered by the rules of success of yesterday; that can explore and experiment and fail; that can become the new big thing. To the extent that all of the resources and all of the attention goes into supporting the current paradigm, we will be completely lost when the paradigm shifts.

Sorry for the cheesiness of “paradigm shift”, but I mean, it's true.

We have to balance supporting and extending and benefiting from the success that exists today by not being blind to the disruptions and all the things that are coming. The best way to do that is to not predict it but to let the market predict it by providing early-stage capital, by providing entrepreneurial opportunities, by supporting start-ups.

For all the success that Ubisoft has had, they're not necessarily going to be the ones who will discover the quasi new thing. It will be somebody else who just comes out of nowhere, who's not encumbered by the same budgets and constraints. They will find the next big thing.

That's true of everything, not just games. As a nation we have to be able to support that kind of exploration process. That's done more so at the start-up level, with early-stage funding and entrepreneurship. Tax breaks are not relevant to do that kind of exploration—

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

At that level.

[Jason Della Rocca]

—at that level.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you—

[Jean-François Larose, NDP, Repentigny, QC]

So we need to be more aggressive.

[Jason Della Rocca]

I would say balanced, more balanced.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much.

I didn't think “paradigm” was cheesy. As soon as you said “innovator's dilemma”, I whispered that “paradigm paralysis” was what we always said back in the eighties when we were talking about frameworks you can develop that prevent you from success tomorrow.

Mr. Holder, you have eight minutes.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To our guests, thank you for your testimony thus far today. I must apologize that I missed the first hour. I'm sure it was scintillating. If I cover a bit of ground that's already been covered, please forgive me. It's my way to try to understand a little bit more.

I've decided, Chair, that this committee is all fun and games as a result of this.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

It is.

We have two very different types of organizations, and I'm trying to understand a little bit more. I'd like to go back and forth, if you'll allow me, so that I can understand better.

Mr. Della Rocca, according to what I've read about your organization, Execution Labs—“execution” is an interesting word—you're a hybrid game incubator and a go-to-market accelerator. You probably already covered this in your opening comments, but perhaps in just a line or two you could tell me exactly what that means.

[Jason Della Rocca]

We consider incubation as going from initial concept to a shippable product. If I have an idea for ninjas on the moon or whatever, it should take roughly six months to—

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

But this is people coming to you.

[Jason Della Rocca]

Correct. We have experienced developers, who often are working at some of the larger studios—

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

So where do they come from?

[Jason Della Rocca]

They come from all over Canada.