Montreal’s game development industry has come a long way. The growth really began in 1997, when Ubisoft set up an office in the city’s Mile-End neighbourhood, where it still resides today. Quebec established its refundable tax credit for the production of multimedia titles, including video games, the year prior. Studios flock to Montreal as the city now boasts the highest concentration of international video game companies in the world, says Roscanu.
“People get in there young with a lot of passion and excitement, and it happens relatively often that by the time they have children or move on with their lives they switch to other industries,” says Jonathan Lessard, associate professor of design and computation arts at Concordia University.
“It was a time that I could, and I enjoyed it,” the now vice-president of creative studios at Behaviour Interactive says.