You don’t need me to tell you that video games are a big deal in 2023. Even the idea of an article saying “video games are mainstream now” isn’t a new one. It’s an entertainment industry that’s just as big as – and maybe bigger than – movies, but you already know that, don’t you?
But, what you might not know is that in Canada, where 61 percent of the country’s population play video games, it’s an industry that’s just as big as that of our neighbors, and if you’re looking to start a career in game development, this is the place to do it.
Here’s why getting into game development in Canada is a good idea, and how Centennial College can help you get there.
Canadian gaming is booming
Made in CA, who provided that stat on Canadian game players, gives us some other hard numbers about the size of the industry in Canada. When it comes to cash, the gaming industry contributed $5.5 billion to the country’s GDP back in 2021. And it’s only expected to expand, specifically by 8.49% this year. To put some more numbers out there, 32,300 full-time employees existed in Canada’s gaming industry in 2021, an increase from 2019, and that’s not counting contractors and freelancers.
But those are just numbers. The point is that it’s a big industry in Canada, and it’s only getting bigger. To give it an even more official source, the Government of Canada Job Bank foresees a labor shortage when it comes to game developers by 2031, meaning there’s going to be more jobs than people to fill them. Another interesting little fact from Statista is that Canada is often the place in which Mobile video games are soft-launched (i.e., given a limited release to check how they’re received, and if there are any issues) ahead of their Western release, because we’re English-speaking, and close both physically and culturally to the U.S. Put a pin in that for later.
Ontario’s the place to be, but there’s room to travel
Made in CA also reveals that Ontario’s a great place to be in the industry: here and Quebec combined are home to 80 percent of Canada’s video game companies. Canadian Game Devs has a list of companies by province, and there’s an extensive list for Ontario alone. That being said, Statista also talks about how Quebec’s Ubisoft is a very big deal, since it develops Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and other major titles. And Electronic Arts (publisher of many sports titles, among other things) has its Canadian base in Vancouver, so if you’re looking for work outside of Ontario, there’s certainly opportunities.
More about the career
As for the kind of job you could have, Made in CA reports that 81 percent of the people working in the video game industry in Canada work full-time. Not looking to join one of the big corporations? You don’t have to work on a multi-million-dollar production in a big company. Statista notes that more than half of the Canada’s gaming industry is made of small-sized companies with only a handful of employees. In fact, according to Canada’s Video Game Industry.ca, companies with four employees or less is where the most industry growth occurred from 2019-2021.
You’ll need some real skills (and not just video game skills)
As LinkedIn puts it, enjoying video games or being good at them can fuel your passion. But it doesn’t have much to do with actually making games, since it’s a job that involves software engineering, coding, and other computer programming skills. You might be translating story materials into code, creating gameplay features, or testing what you’ve built, so you need hard skills like math, as well as soft skills like time management, teamwork, communication, and storytelling. Indeed says it best, so I’ll directly quote them: “A game developer is a software developer who specializes in video game development and uses their programming skills to design characters and settings.” As a game developer, you’re writing the code that changes creative ideas into something people can play. They go on to say that you need to be resilient and creative as a person, as well as know about languages like C++, C, C#, Python. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and SQL.
How we can help
Before you can develop games, you need to develop yourself, and Centennial College’s Game Development Program can make you into an expert designer. This three-year program gives you the technical and software development skills to go with the creative side of things. It’s also tuned to the needs of the video game industry in Canada.
Remember how smaller companies are growing in Canada? The program will make you capable of developing your own titles via teaching you managerial and communication skills. Remember how the mobile market is big in Canada? Our program has a special focus on mobile game development (you learn other types of games in here, too). Best of all, you’ll work either on your own or in a team to create and develop fully playable games of your own, giving you a portfolio to help get your foot in the door, to stop being just a player, and become a game maker.
Written By: Anthony Geremia