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Jan 01, 2005

Comments

1.

I can't remember exactly, but I believe there are similar incentives in some Canadian provinces. For example, I have heard that Quebec is a popular place to set up a game studio, in contrast with Ontario, because of such incentives.

2.

There seem to be a bunch of places around the world bidding to be the global focus of computer game development. At the Edinburgh games festival, that a number of TNers attended, the local government support body – Scottish Enterprise (www.scottish-enterprise.com) was heavily promoting Scotland as base for development, in fact they have a goal of becoming the ‘computer games centre of the world’.

It sounds a ridiculous aim until you realise that the Grand Theft Auto series is developed by Rock Star North in Edinburgh. Which is an interesting case as such a quintessentially American aesthetic is created by a bunch of people in Northern Britain.

From my limited experience of the games industry I would imagine that like many other knowledge based businesses what is important is an available talent pool hence either things like a bunch of universities relatively near and / or somewhere that social and economic factors that attract geek workers.

I’m not sure about broader cultural factors – the US, Britain and Japan put out a lot of computer games but these countries originate a lot of pop culture that is consumed by a big slice of the world, I can see computer games as being unique in this respect.

3.

From Bloomberg, a transnational example:

Ubisoft Says It Plans to Add 1,000 Workers in Montreal by 2010...


...By 2010, Quebec's provincial government expects to give Ubisoft as much as C$52 million in grants and subsidies and an unspecified amount of tax credits, Economic Development Minister Michel Audet said at the press conference. Canada's federal government will provide C$5 million in development money.

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