In no time at all the video game industry has grown from two pong paddles into a multi-billion dollar industry with triple-A titles running budgets that could rival many Hollywood blockbusters. Tens of thousands of programmers, artists, designers, writers, and testers work out of hundreds of studios around the world. While there is a definitive distinction between the East and West video game markets, you could say video games have blossomed into the first truly ‘global’ artistic medium. Large studios like Rockstar can develop a game in Vancouver, fire it off to the Lincoln, England studio for Quality Assurance, then to Tokyo for Japanese localization. That’s a lot of different fingers from a lot of different time zones in the pie that we call a video game. Some newer projects even divvy up game design tasks between studios, like the new Ghostbusters game being developed in Texas, Vancouver and Budapest.
As a result of this “artistic globalization” we never really get to talk about “European Games” or “Australian Games” or “Canadian Games”. Theatre, film and music are all very revealing about national identities. Yet with the video games everything seems to get lumped into either East or West. In my limited experience, most people don’t even know many of their favourite games have been developed here in the Great White North. So, I’m going to offer up a cross-section of just who the hell has been making games in Canada.
BioWare – Edmonton, Alberta
Specializing primarily in RPGs, BioWare has made quite a name for itself. Dungeons and Dragons-based Baldur’s Gate received overwhelmingly positive reviews in 1998 and snatched up RPG of the Year awards from most major publications including Computer Gaming World, IGN, Gamespot, and PC Gamer. Not bad for a company formed by some guys with Doctorates in medicine. And it’s just gone uphill from there with Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire and more recently, Mass Effect.
In Mass Effect, mankind is the new kid on the galactic block having just discovered the technology to leave the solar system without running out of air. Man vies for position and power among an entire galaxy of exotic, and, in some cases, ancient species. And of course, nobody wants to see those bratty humans on the Citadel Council and have any say in Galactic Government. Of course shit is going to hit the fan when an ancient race of cyborgs awaken and start throwing fists/lasers at remote colonies – threatening the Galaxy and all that jazz.
Mass Effect scores 91% on Metacritic – which could be considered the exact opposite of suck.
Relic Entertainment – Vancouver, B.C.
You can’t take about space operas without talking about Relic. Relic is behind Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, but their biggest splash came right at the beginning in 1999. To a group of Sierra execs, a Homeworld tech-demo looked like just another strategy game. Then founder Alex Garden spun the camera around 360 degrees and began moving units up and down in space. The room of execs proceeded to shit themselves and a Game of the Year was made. It doesn’t sound like much now, but it was a huge leap forward for strategy games. Players accustomed to the top-down view of StarCraft or Total Annihilation now had a new demon – the z-axis. Not only that, you could zoom right in and focus on any unit or groups of units, allowing the player to create cinematic views of the massive space battles they were waging.
Technology aside, Homeworld is also one of the more interesting stories in gaming history. The Kushan, living on the desert planet Kharak, find themselves in a strange predicament. They really don’t seem to belong on this desert planet. Then, in a most dramatic fashion, they discover a wreck at the centre of the Great Desert. In it was etched a galactic map showing them the way to Hiigara – ‘home’. So, like you or I or anyone else would do, they pool all their resources into a gigantic ship to take their population across the galaxy to find home. Of course, the galaxy is a dangerous place and a certain alien race kinda/sorta wanted the Kushan to stay on Kharak.
UbiSoft Montreal – Montreal, Quebec
And finally, you can’t talk about Canadian video games without talking about the behemoth. They may be a subsidiary of French publisher UbiSoft, but this Montreal studio is definitely the heart and soul of it all. With 1800 employees and 1400 more to come by 2013, UbiSoft Montreal is on track to become the largest game development studio in the world. Not only that, Quebec is giving them $19 million to do it. So what is this Canadian game titan doing that is so damn right?
Prince of Persia (the 2008 brand restart), Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry 2, and a whole slew of Tom Clancy games (there must be at least 80 Rainbow Six games now) for starters. Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed are highly regarded for art direction and overall finesse. Far Cry 2 was an innovative foray into an open-ended FPS with a unique node-based narrative design that allowed players to be presented with different paths and events every time they played.
From a design perspective, these games could be considered flawed (a discussion for another time) but I am drawing attention primarily to art direction. Hailing from the multicultural city of Montreal, this studio is quite capable of recreating the world be it Las Vegas, a small African country, or Persia.
The Canadian Gaming Identity
Is there anything to be learned? Based on the mentioned titles, I see two major themes:
• Stories the explore multiculturalism (Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect)
• A group of people trying to find their place in the Universe (Mass Effect, Homeworld)
While these are clearly broad themes that encompass much of the human experience, it is difficult to not draw parallels between these titles and the Canadian experience. I can’t help but think of the Canada’s collective struggle to find a place on this planet (beyond being the victims of Eskimo jokes) and our unique multicultural approach to how we do it.
Something to think about the next time you pick up the controller.
Badassery in Gaming: Stuff to Check Out
• Quake Live (beta): Quakeworld seems to have become a relic that leaves us old fogies reminiscing about the “good ol’ days” when gaming was pure and ‘n00b’ was fresh new slang. Quake 3 Arena has been giving a web-browser friendly makeover and it only took 2 days to get into the Beta after submitting a request.
• TribesNext: Sierra shut down the Tribes 2 authentication servers many moons ago. Luckily, some guys have fired up a new one and is offering the game to download for free. OH! And Tribes 2 is still a blast to play.
• EVE Corporation ‘Band of Brothers’ disbanded by spy: I have tried to get into EVE on several occasions. In many ways it is a flying spreadsheet that I just don’t have the time for. Nonetheless, I am perpetually intrigued by it from a distance. “BoB” was the largest alliance operating in Low-Security space and a spy from rival alliance “Goonswarm” managed to get near the top of the ladder, disbanded “BoB”, and stole a bunch of assets. It’s raising a lot of interesting questions about crime in a virtual world – pirating, smuggling and espionage are all integral the EVE Online.
