How will the BlackBerry crash affect Canada's gaming industry?
Pocket Gamer has some interesting material from our colleague Matthew Diener about what can wait for Canada after BlackBerry leaves the mobile market. We couldn’t resist and translated the article.
At first glance, it may seem that Canada’s role in the development of the mobile industry in the world is very small. The recent hype around the incredible losses of BlackBerry and the subsequent sale of the company have significantly damaged the reputation of the country of the maple leaf.
BlackBerry has made heroic efforts to convince its customers that it has no debts, as well as its ability to stay afloat for a long time. However, these turned out to be just words, which became sad news for the 4,500 employees of the mobile giant who lost their jobs this fall, as well as for developers who again took up the development of games for the platform.
It is impossible not to sympathize with the specialists left without work. However, do not worry too much about Canada. This surplus of talented and skilled workers will soon find applications in the logging industry, the oil industry and the production of delicious maple candies. And it is even likely that they will be able to turn Canada into another Finland.
Just yesterday, the company was the market leaderSuch an assumption may seem rather strange.
Everything that unites Canada and Finland comes down to a state-funded healthcare system, the same geographical latitude and the predominance of English-speaking engineers.
However, let’s turn to history. The way Finland became the center of mobile gaming development is closely related to Nokia, which, like RIM, which later became BlackBerry, was able to subdue the entire domestic market. For many years, these giants have personified the industrial sectors of their countries and, of course, attracted a large number of qualified specialists to their ranks.
Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that it was the fall of Nokia from its pedestal in 2003 (rather, we are talking about 2008, approx. App2Top) was the reason for the abrupt start of the Finnish gaming industry, when a large number of very talented engineers were released in a country with a fast-growing industrial sector.
Of course, not all former BlackBerry employees have the necessary skills and desire to succeed in the gaming industry. However, now it is difficult to overestimate the number of candidates applying for vacant positions of game studios in Canada.
Assembling devices of the latest version of the QWERTY smartphone from BlackBerryPerhaps Canada even has an advantage over Finland in this.
Ex-BlackBerry employees can try their hand at Ubisoft, EA, Eidos, Warner Brothers and Rockstar, which have already opened their offices in Canada.
At the same time, it is likely that not only the big players will snatch up the freed specialists. At the moment, indie studios are gaining weight in Canada thanks to incubators such as Execution Labs, as well as educational institutions such as the Vancouver Digital Media Center.
Undoubtedly, these companies and studios will need an excellent project and a huge amount of luck to become the David for the Finnish Goliath, but we can confidently say that they will not lack qualified personnel.
Do not worry about the Canadian mobile games market. History shows that everything will be fine in the end.
Source: www.pocketgamer.biz
