Concluding with Clusters

With such an atmosphere of education and collaboration at Silicon Knights, it's no surprise that the company is closely involved with local Brock University's new Interactive Arts and Sciences program, which began this fall.

Dyack explained, "It's a program about interactive entertainment. A lot of these programs focus on how to be a programmer, a designer in the games industry. We've gone beyond that, we want to have an arts perspective, a writer's perspective, a filmic perspective, so the students can really take in all of the games industry combined as an art."

"It's just like our engagement theory -- technology, audio, ludology, art and story -- all together in one degree. We're really, really excited about this, it's just gone into it's first full major this year, and by working with the university on that we really think that we can start getting these programs together where people can really get accredited with something that will begin their career as a professional."

Dyack's interest in the collaboration between Silicon Knights and universities doesn't stop there, however, as he went on to describe his work with the local government on clusters. "A cluster is, basically, the government getting together with universities and industry, situated together and able to interrelate and associate easily."

He explains: "So you'd get the government in the same building with the university and the industry, all together, with shared resources, such as huge theaters, sponsored by the government to help grow the industry and help subsidies it, while the industry works closely with the university on education to help students graduate to hopefully be employed."

"So that's a cluster, and these clusters they've found to be very beneficial to stimulating industry, and we'd like to start several of these in Ontario. I'd like to see a cluster in the Niagara area, the Waterloo area, and the Toronto area."

"These would be on a provincial level, and none of them would necessarily be assosciated with us. This isn't a self serving move," Dyack concluded. "It's for other companies too and is about growing the industry in Ontario, not just us."