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You may have heard that EA has a studio in Vancouver – the largest in the world, no less – but the presence of a vibrant, sprawling, thriving development community has remained oddly uncelebrated. Even the kind of self-educating, enthusiastic gamers who take an interest in what goes on behind the scenes, who read development diaries and download interviews with producers – which is to say, even the readers of this magazine – might be surprised at how many top-tier titles have emerged from British Columbia’s largest city.
Maybe it’s because it lacks that obvious hook – a single voice, a single accent – both in a literal and cultural sense. Listen to developers from Scandinavia, Germany, Britain or Quebec and it’s immediately clear where they’re from, not just because of the way they use language, but because they arrive at a finished product with a cultural identity subtly but tangibly branded on it, however artificial that may be. By contrast, Vancouver is so polyglot, so avidly, happily diverse, that such easy (and possibly misleading) labels are difficult to attribute.
Of course, this diversity is in itself Vancouver’s defining quality, even if it is a tricky one to sell. But if Vancouver has been somewhat quiet in terms of self-promotion so far, this is all about to change. So rapidly has the industry grown here that it is on the brink of achieving critical mass – a huge skills shortage has left the development teams hungry for talent, necessitating a significant profile boost for the area as a whole. With this in mind, we set out to British Columbia to see what lies ahead for its contribution to the industry, and how it will make itself heard.