On Montreal

As we sat down in the meeting room to discuss the studio and its plans in more detail, D'Astous took the time to introduce why he took the reins of the studio.

"I worked at Ubisoft Montreal for over three years. It was across the very exciting time where they went from 500 people to 1,500. It was quite a challenge to staff up 1000 people in three years! We did put in place a lot of project management tools and processes. After the changes, there was a change in management -- it's just natural in a company's life -- so I moved on to work with Babel Media."

"When I heard that Eidos were coming to Montreal, that was music to my ears. I mean, I love to build, and starting something from scratch was an opportunity I just couldn't miss. It doesn't come very often for a major company. I embraced the challenge and with the people we've hired I think we could face anything. Nine months ago, I was working in my basement alone calling people! To be here now with a finished office, a recruited QA team, a very senior dev team and a finished proof of concept? Amazing. You need to be efficient, though, you can have talent but if you're not efficient things aren't going to work out. I got great support from head office in the UK. They gave me carte blanche and I just ran with it. I'm so proud of the team and of the product you're going to see."

Although we'd broached the topic of "Why Montreal?" with D'Astous previously,we chose to try and go more in-depth with him in the face of recent criticisms of the tax break system from developers such as Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack.

"People think that the equation is simply that people come to Montreal for the tax breaks. That mostly comes from other cities where they don't have such things. It's not just because of that. The Canadian dollar has gained more than 20% this year on the U.S. dollar! No one is talking about the fact that companies are still coming in and investing in Montreal. People don't come here only for the tax credits," he argued. "The testing we're performed used to be based in London. Can you imagine the cost, per square foot, for the amount of testers we have? The cost is five times what it would be here."

D'Astous did, however, acquiesce that the tax credits were a "significant reason" for developers to move to Montreal, saying, "I don't want to minimize it, but I do want to show that the equation in choosing a city in which you want to develop is quite long... Money is important, yes, but talent is too. It's dangerous to simplify it down to just dollars and cents," D'Astous said, pointing out that 80 percent of his staff was from Quebec.

With so many of his staff from Quebec and more still to hire, did he feel the possibilities for growth in Quebec were endless? "It depends on the business model. If someone like, god forbid, Vivendi wants to come here and instantly grow a thousands-strong studio, I would wish them good luck, as I don't think it would work. If I was asked to start a studio working on commercial titles with a twelve month cycle here I would slit my wrists. I wouldn't be able to attract people."