Why the Canadian government is OK with picking winners and losers among game startups

Canada has hit its stride in video games, with more than 20,400 direct and an additional 16,000 indirect jobs in the game industry. It has 472 companies, including hundreds of independent game studios. And as the U.S. cracks down on its immigration policies, our neighbor to the north is taking the opposite strategy, opening up its borders and using immigrants to fill vacant game job openings.

I moderated a panel about making games in Canada at the Devcom event in Cologne, Germany, just before the Gamescom fan event. Canada took dozens of its game studios to the event and helped them display their games to the Gamescom crowd, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But deciding to invest government money in game startups isn’t an easy decision. It means that the government gets involved in picking winners and losers, and it has to deal with the consequences of that.