SAN FRANCISCO -- According to Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “a good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” And that’s exactly how the game is being played in the thriving Ontario Technology Corridor, as evidenced by “hockey stick” expansions by companies including Google Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Gameloft and Arkadium.

The Ontario expansion of multinational digital media companies comes as Martin Soltys, CEO of Transmedia Entertainment Partners Ltd., an offshore investment fund intent on investing in Canadian gaming, digital media, film, music and TV projects, stated in TechVibes last month that “Canada could rise from third worldwide to become number two and eventually number one in the worldwide scope.”

Google’s presence in Kitchener, Ont. has increased six-fold from 35 employees in 2008 to more than 200 today, many from the neighboring University of Waterloo. Those employees work on key Google projects including Geocommerce product search, the Chrome Browser and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. In the same Ontario city, Electronic Arts is expanding to a new location to accommodate its growing team.

Bill Elliot, Integrative Trade Consultant for Canada’s Technology Triangle in Waterloo Region and a member of the Ontario Technology Corridor, said, “Ontario continues to score with top talent and financial incentives. Ontario also has a tremendous team of home-grown all-stars fed by 22 colleges and universities that produce18,000 graduates per year from 174 specialized digital media programs including 3D animation, film studies, advanced computer programming, math, and hardware engineering.”

Federal and Ontario provincial research and development tax credits combine to give Canada the most favorable tax treatment among G-8 countries. Ontario innovation companies are able to cut R&D expenditures by up to 63 percent.

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 17 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Playboy Magazine, NVISION Magazine, GamePro Magazine, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Maxim.com, AOL GameDaily.com, GeForce.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.