Quebec and other provincial subsidies played a role, but in general the AAA console game business model that fuelled the Vancouver games industry in the early 2

Quebec and other provincial subsidies played a role, but in general the AAA console game business model that fuelled the Vancouver games industry in the early 2000s has been weakened severely. The middle of the market is gone leaving only a tiny handful of ultra high budget games, and a low end of indies in the PC space. There are a lot of talented games or ex-games people in Vancouver, a lot of them interested in indie games, but because games is not a repeatable business model and it is incredibly hard to predict what will be successful, there's no real VC environment and it's hard to find the cash to start up a studio. The age of big publishers like Sony and Microsoft dumping cash on people for exclusives seems over. I know a few games guys that have gotten out altogether and gone to work at non-games companies, but in general I'm not sure if there's a great deal of interest from non-game companies in hiring ex-games people. Unfortunately games is weird highly specialized skill set.