Good afternoon. My name is Marit Stiles. I'm the director of public policy and communications for ACTRA, which is the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. Also with me today is Simon Peacock, a noted performance director and video game actor from Montreal.
Thank you for inviting us. 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.
Today we're here to talk with you about the role our members play in the video game industry, its growing significance, and how we think government could support and nurture this sector here in Canada.
ACTRA is proud to have jurisdiction over this work. Our members provide the voices for characters in a large variety of games, from simple apps you carry around with you on your phone to award-winning international best-selling console games like Assassins Creed and the Prince of Persia, produced in Montreal by Ubisoft, or Deus Ex by Eidos.
Not only are our members delivering voice performances and background work for these multi-million dollar ventures, they are increasingly producing full-body performances through the use of performance or motion capture technology and cyberscanning.
You might have some idea of what performance capture technology looks like, actors dressed in full-body stockings with small sensors built into their clothing to help sophisticated computers track their movements around a sound stage, and you wouldn't be far off. This is the same technology and skills that are used in movies like Oscar winner Gravity.
More and more our members are finding they can make a living from this category of work. As I said, it actually expands into other kinds of performances, such as in television and on movie screens as well.
We have strong relationships with many of these game companies, most notably Ubisoft, the multi-national industry giant with a strong commitment and investment toward developing game production expertise here in Canada.
Our partnership with Ubisoft is a long one, dating back to 1997. We've worked hard to guarantee the safe and fair working conditions of our members while ensuring stability in the sector and trying to develop this important and flourishing industry.
In fact, our latest agreement with Ubisoft features an innovative pilot project to help Ubisoft utilize professional performers in the development of hand-held mobile games, which is a quickly expanding area.
This is a good example of industry cooperation that will help Canada shine on the international scene and create good jobs. Close to 400 members of ACTRA currently earned more than $2 million in total in 2013 by working on video games. That's up 10% from 2012, just a year prior.
I would now like to turn this over to Simon Peacock to speak about the reality of working in games and the work opportunities presented.