Toronto’s video game industry is about to get a boost from a dose of inertia.
Interactive entertainment company Koei Ltd., hosted a noisy and colourful launch of their new Toronto studios, and they’re inviting U of T grads to get in on the action.
Yokohama, Japan-based Koei unveiled its new PlayStation 3 game title, Fatal Inertia, at the launch on Tuesday and announced plans to increase its share of both European and North American interactive gaming markets with its new state-of-the-art Toronto headquarters.
“Toronto is a vibrant city with a rich cultural mosaic that provides us with the necessary talent to develop games for a global marketplace,” said Koei’s founder and chief advisor Yoichi Erikawa (known in the gaming world by his pseudonym, Kou Shibusawa) is regarded as one of the world’s top game designers, especially for PCs.
Koei Canada currently has a team of 30 world-class artists, programmers, designers, and support staff who have already been given the treat of working on Fatal Inertia, a futuristic aerial combat racing game for Sony’s highly anticipated PlayStation 3 console.
“I feel that it will be a top launch title for the PlayStation 3,” said Erikawa at the launch.
Satisfied with the work of these Canadian coders and artists, Erikawa plans to increase this workforce to about 200 employees over the next few years. Of these new recruits, Koei anticipates that approximately 70 per cent will be computer science grads, and 30 per cent will have fine arts or design degrees. They will also need experience using the industry’s standard graphics and effects creation software. Erikawa said that candidates with a fine arts background would be more valuable to him than those with a mere familiarity with the software.
Erikawa stated that students graduating from Canadian universities have very strong technical skills, specifically mentioning the talent pool of the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo as factors in the decision to make Koei’s Toronto location the central hub for the expansion into these markets. The company says it will be focused on recruiting top Canadian talent, and that the Toronto team members will be given the opportunity to work at Koei’s other studios in Asia and Europe.
Koei is well known for developing artfully designed, action-packed, epic battle games based on Japanese and Chinese history and mythology. The company has sold more than nine million units of its Dynasty Warriors series worldwide since the game’s first release for the PlayStation game console in 1997.
For the fiscal year of 2004, Koei posted worldwide revenues of $270 million U.S. and marked one of the highest profitability ratios in the industry. The company says it’s determined to become the world’s number one entertainment content provider and it’s marking this expansion as a vital step towards that goal.
