“In early school, video games are more important than music for young people who want to assert their identity. So, yes, video games are a cultural industry, perhaps more than cinema. » According to this logic, video games deserve at least the same financial considerations from Canadian Heritage.
This is according to a brief submitted last week to the federal government by representatives of the video game sector who are asking to review the way in which the Canada Media Fund (CMF) operates in order to give video game works the place which is due to them in the financing of Canadian cultural content.
“We are in favor of updating the FMC and modernizing it to better include video games,” summarizes Pascal Nataf, founder of Affordance Studio and president of Indie Asylum, an organization that acts as a spokesperson for the studios. video game independents from across the country. Mr. Nataf participated with researchers from the University of Quebec and the University of Montreal, as well as other industry professionals in writing the dissertation submitted to the FMC.
“Video games are a cultural work that is widely exported, which is more commercially successful than cinema, which promotes the work of all kinds of artists, illustrators, musicians… Now that we are taxing the platforms of digital content, the Fund will return all the money to culture, but nothing to video games. We only ask that video games be considered [dans la répartition du FMC]. »
The next Denis Villeneuve?
The CMF is a not-for-profit corporation that supports the Canadian television and digital media industry with money it receives from the Government of Canada and Canadian television distributors.
For a dozen years, a portion of the money distributed by the FMC has gone to a so-called “experimental” component, which is reserved for “digital content” and “interactive software”. Video games fall into this category. Over time, they have become the vast majority of funding requests made to the FMC, to obtain funds from this experimental component.
A dozen years later, all this no longer has anything experimental, video game representatives argue in their memoir. We must “perpetuate the studios in their role as creators and exporters of Canadian culture,” they argue.
“We must reinvest in financial support for the development of video games by doubling, at a minimum, the current envelope dedicated to projects,” proposes the brief, which makes two additional suggestions: that at least one representative of the independent video game sector be permanently added to the CMF board of directors, and that the Fund moves a little closer to the incubators and accelerators that already help new studios launch into business.
“The FMC is a fairly unique financing tool in the world,” says Pascal Nataf. It allowed film directors like Denis Villeneuve and Xavier Dolan to establish themselves internationally. He also helped studios like Behavior Interactive come into being. Behavior is today the largest Canadian video game studio.
“We don’t have a lot of private capital in Canada to help video games. The role of the FMC is quite crucial, especially if we want to continue to create head offices in Canada, and strengthen our place in the global industry as it goes through a period of consolidation. »
A growing share of GDP
In Canada, it is the provincial governments, especially those of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, which help the video game industry the most. The federal government offers more modest and indirect assistance, notably via a tax credit linked to R&D and another credit linked to exports.
However, this industry occupies an ever-increasing share of the Canadian economy. It accounted for $5.5 billion in Canadian GDP in 2021, an increase of 23% compared to 2019, according to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada. It employs 32,000 people, including 18,000 in Quebec.
Despite this, the creation of new games and new companies remains precarious, given the long delays between the development of a work and its sale. Hence the importance for this sector of a financing tool like the FMC.
“If the FMC could get a little closer to video games, everyone would benefit,” concludes Pascal Nataf.