French company Ubisoft already has deep roots in Canada, with five of its game studios being based out of the country. Now it’s looking to expand farther west than it has in the past with another studio in Winnipeg.
The new studio currently has just a single employee, Managing Director Darryl Long. Long started at Ubisoft 15 years ago as an artificial intelligence programmer and has most recently worked as the producer of Far Cry 5.
The Manitoba-based studio’s goal, according to Long, is to help with the development of Ubisoft’s AAA games, particularly when it comes to building open words. “Our goal in Winnipeg is to do the research and development on the processes, the pipeline and the tools, to put the investment in to making them as efficient as possible, and ultimately increase the quality of the open worlds we’re producing for our games,” Long told GamesIndustry.biz.
The studio is expected to expand to 100 people over the next five years and invest $35 million into the Canadian province, which offers a tax credit for interactive digital media companies. Other than the tax credit, talent coming from a pair of colleges in the area and a video game development program at a nearby high school give the company high hopes about the future of local game development talent.
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