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What does Ubisoft mean to Toronto's industry?
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Ubisoft Corporate Logo
When it was first announced back in July that Ubisoft Entertainment would be opening a new facility in Toronto, the big news was the announcement that this was going to create 800 jobs within the region. While that is obviously good news in a difficult economic climate, it raises an interesting question; what is the presence of this studio going to mean for the region in terms of advancing its position within the rapidly growing game industry?
It's a tricky question, because although Ubisoft is undoubtedly one of the larger game publishers and developers in the industry, they are not the only one, and in fact, they are far from the first to decide to set up operations in Toronto. Toronto already plays host to the regional arms of two fairly major players in the gaming industry; Rockstar, creators of the infamous Grand Theft Auto series, have a Toronto studio, and Koei (now Tecmo-Koei), a prominent Japanese publisher of such titles as Dynasty Warriors (and now with the Tecmo merger, the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series) also has a Toronto studio. Despite the presence of these two major companies, Toronto has thus far failed to make the same impact on the gaming industry as other Canadian cities, notably Vancouver, Edmonton, and, of course, Montreal.
A Brief History Of Cities & Games
In terms of success within the gaming industry, Canada is now ranked third in the world, only behind Japan and the USA. It managed to pass by the United Kingdom who formerly held the position, and some in the UK gaming industry have even cited Canada as a being a chief source of talent drain in recent years. For a hobby that originally started out as a nerdy distraction for children, Canada's cities have been making large, crater sized marks in the gaming landscape that ring with the sound of cash registers constantly pulling in profits. Vancouver, for example, is the home of Relic Entertainment, a company that has produced critically acclaimed real-time strategy games respected throughout the PC gaming industry. They also house Ubisoft and Electronic Arts Canada, producing massive commercially successful titles like the Need for Speed series, the SSX series, and latest upstart to the skateboard video game throne, Skate and Skate 2. Edmonton has managed to singlehandedly claim a massive stake in the role-playing game genre thanks entirely to the efforts of Bioware, a company previously renowned for its Baldur's Gate series on the PC, that went on to conquer the console arena with the Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and now the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins game. Montreal is pretty much the crown jewel of Canadian development, with its own EA studio, a Bioware studio, an Eidos studio, an Ubisoft studio, and, most recently, a Funcom studio opening its own doors in the city. All of these cities have highly respected publishers and developers that have made a name for themselves producing games that have been commercial successes, and in quite a few cases, award winning titles as well.
Toronto has not.
Of the two major publishers and developers here, Koei Canada has released Fatal Inertia, a futuristic racing game that failed to make much of a commercial impact and was not reviewed well by critics. Meanwhile Rockstar Toronto developed the much better received game The Warriors--based on the cult 80's gang war movie--although it also failed to make large waves in terms of sales. Nearby St. Catherine's however, has managed to enjoy significant critical and commercial success thanks to Silicon Knights, creators of Eternal Darkness and more recently Too Human for the Xbox 360.
When you take a quick look at how Toronto fares compared with other Canadian cities, its clear that while the city may be a powerhouse in more traditional industries such as finance, film production and manufacturing, in the escalating arms race of video games--an industry, that year by year, continues to approach cinema in terms of commercial impact--it's clear that one of the most rapidly growing businesses is one that Toronto is significantly lagging behind compared to other Canadian cities. Why is this? And could the presence of Ubisoft somehow be a sign of this trend finally changing?
The Indies & The Change in Attitude
Surprisingly, while Toronto has so far been denied large commercial success in gaming, its independent community has been making quite an impact. Indie developers such as Queasy Games, Metanet Software and Capybara Games have been enjoying a lot of critical and even commercial success. So even if Toronto itself has thus far been apathetic toward being competitive in game development, its individual citizens--working on smaller budgets, the odd government grant and stubborn disposition--have gotten positive attention. How did Toronto get into a position where its individual citizenry initially cared more about claiming a stake in one of the most promising industries where the city itself did not?
Perhaps part of the problem lies in the general stigma that many have toward games--and subsequently the industry--itself. Gaming today is still viewed by a large segment of the population as the new comic book, rock n' roll, or Dungeons & Dragons. That is to say, every generation has a pop culture scapegoat, a corrosive anti-social element believed to be targeted at youth to steer them the wrong way. In the current generation, video games are that scapegoat. Toronto itself, not unlike its American parallel, New York city, often perceives itself as a bastion of "traditional" successes and industries. Finance, media, manufacturing, fine arts like opera, theatre and of course the Toronto International Film Festival, all of these elements are well established cultural or industrial institutions with the requisite prestige attached to them from decades of respected operation. Gaming is a much younger medium, a dark horse that is frequently the subject of argument as to whether it can even be considered a medium like literature or music, let alone whether it has any actual artistic merit. In the same way New York's own elitist attitude toward game development opened the doors for western America to completely dominate the industry, perhaps Toronto's own initial disregard for this upstart industry is what allowed other cities to give software publishers and developers a more suitable home. At least until now.
Clearly, with the announcement that Ubisoft is setting up operations, Toronto has opened up a window of opportunity. The important question then becomes, "What can the city do to capitalize on this?"
The First Steps
The answers to this question rest largely on what Ubisoft decides to do with its newly founded studio, and how Toronto moves forward from here.
In the case of Ubisoft, there are still many questions as to what they plan to do in Toronto. Ubisoft Montreal is still, without a doubt, the nerve center of their North American operations. The Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell series are all flagship franchises that are still helmed from the Montreal studio. The Toronto Studio, according to the official press release, has a mandate to create "AAA" games and new intellectual properties. Does this mean some of the work of the Montreal studio will be off-loaded to Toronto to help ease the strain? Will the Toronto studio be working on major projects on the dominant consoles of the market? Or will the "AAA" games be largely confined to portable gaming systems such as the Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable and cellular phone markets? For Ubisoft Toronto to make its mark on the industry, the "brass ring" on the merry go round is normally thought to be a best-selling, critically acclaimed title on one of the current generation consoles, the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 or Wii. It's on these consoles that sales of games can rival--and occasionally surpass--the box office earnings of block buster movies. Right now Ubisoft Toronto is still in the early stages of establishing itself, so there's been no word on what kind of projects they are considering. If they decide to go the route of producing big budget console games, and if those games succeed with critics and retailers alike, then Toronto will finally have a good balance of successful Indie and commercial game development.
The other factor in the equation then becomes whether Toronto is content with just having Ubisoft here. Electronic Arts has studios in both Vancouver and Montreal, but it has no major presence here and EA is a highly desirable "tenant" to have in a city. A big commercial hit produced in Toronto might convince other publishers and developers that there is a viable infrastructure and workforce in Toronto that is just as up to the demands of game development as other Canadian cities. An Ubisoft success might even show the existing publishers like Koei Canada and Rockstar Toronto that their current studios don't have to be relegated to secondary projects and that they are in fact capable of handling the larger, more important "AAA" titles.
Toronto now finds itself at an interesting crossroads. In the past perhaps it viewed games as a childish, almost embarrassing distraction that simply wasn't appropriate for a such an old, sophisticated city. But the future is bright for gaming. Perhaps Toronto has finally realized that. And depending on the next steps it takes, courting other studios, playing to host to a hit game from Ubisoft Toronto, perhaps it can finally make its own impressive claim in the industry and finally stand alongside cities like Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal, who got there first.
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