From Esports to Game Development: Gaming Opportunities in Montreal

Known for perfectly balancing between ice-cold winters and hot and humid summers, Montreal is also a surprising gaming hub for many enthusiasts in the know. According to an NPR piece on the city, Montreal’s tax credits have helped attract multimedia companies to the city by offering them subsidies for employing people in the province of Quebec. As a result, Montreal quickly became a leading hub for video game development, dubbing it “the Hollywood of video games.”

In 2022, Chinese game developer miHoYo announced they were interested in establishing an office in Montreal following the acclaimed success of the role-playing game Genshin Impact. A year after its release in 2020, the game achieved a total revenue of more than $2 billion, making it one of the most profitable video game releases ever and miHoYo’s most successful project. miHoYo is only one of many video game developers with their sights on Montreal. As of 2021, more than 200 studios have set up shop in the city.

Most notably, French video game publisher Ubisoft established its Montreal studio in 1997, owing the province’s predominantly French-speaking population and its proximity to the large US gaming market. Today, Ubisoft Montreal is the company’s largest studio and one of the largest video game production studios globally with more than 4,000 employees. As such, there are many opportunities abound in the city for gamers and enthusiasts looking to get into the video game industry. Below, we’ll take a closer look at how Montreal’s embrace of gaming made it the Hollywood of video games:

Esports

Aside from game development, one of the increasingly popular ways for gamers to further their dreams in the industry is by gaming and competing professionally for teams and organizations. Some of the largest esports events in the gaming world have been held in Montreal, including the Six Invitational — the world championship of Ubisoft’s popular game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege — and DreamHack Montreal, which is one of the biggest global esports festivals.

These esports events are typically held in large-capacity stadiums or arenas, where players and teams converge to compete in a tournament-style competition. Fans and viewers also pay for tickets to attend and support their favorite teams in person. As the industry continues to grow, fans and supporters have also found other ways to participate in the esports scene, such as by betting. Many viewers and bettors have started learning esports betting tips to better their winning odds while showing support for their teams. This includes understanding esports betting odds to see how bookmakers and the public perceive a team’s chances of winning and deciding on the most optimal esports betting strategies to ensure they aren’t betting more than they can afford.

Aspiring professional esports players can also participate in local collegiate esports tournaments to help get their name out there and build their esports careers. In 2022, Montreal hosted one of the world’s biggest collegiate tournaments — the Campus Clutch event series — where Canadian collegiate Valorant players compete to move on to the National Finals and then the World Finals, where they compete against other collegiate Valorant players from around the world.

Game development

Finally, as highlighted in our introduction, Montreal has quickly become a haven for video game developers. In our previous post, we highlighted some of the best video game companies in Montreal, as voted by our readers. The list included Ubisoft’s Montreal studio and other big gaming presences such as WB Games Montreal and Electronic Arts’ Montreal offices. Many of these developers are behind some of the most popular video game titles today, including an upcoming original Black Panther game from EA and Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, which has remained an esports favorite for almost a decade since its release.

We also mentioned that Montreal continues to grow as a video game developer hub. In 2022, joining other established developers in the city, Activision Blizzard opened its new game studio under Beenox studio, the department specializing in making Call of Duty games. A division of Activision Publishing, it aimed to expand its Quebec footprint to further support the growth of the franchise and the company’s additional ambitious projects.

Many indie game developers have also joined the Montreal fun, including Kitfox Games, Spearhead Games, and Mino Games. Of course, aside from joining gaming companies, many college-level gamers are showing interest in game development as a possible career option. Today, job seekers can find various roles that fit a range of skills in the video game industry, from writing and coding to design and animation, as well as 3D modeling, which has become increasingly in demand as graphics in games become more and more realistic.