Dyack Envisions Canadian Game Commune

Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack hopes to someday create a synergistic videogame community in Ontario, Canada that would combine educational, governmental and game industry elements.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Dyack outlined his ambitious plans for such a videogame co-operative:

Well, we want to create an institute here that's a combination of companies like Silicon Knights , Niagara College, Brock University all in a co-op program where we're all in the same complex or campus so that people live and breathe making videogames and other forms of non-linear creations. So imagine a place where not only will you be instructed about how to make videogames, but you would have people in the industry teaching you.

Dyack indicated that such a movement is currently in the proposal stage:

It's at the proposal stage. We're speaking to various members of the government now, we just put some meetings together over the past three or four weeks and hopefully it will happen over the next few years. Everyone seems very excited about it. If you look at all the recent ideas and subsidies in Ontario it's all built around the three pillars of government, industry and academia. This builds upon that whole plan. I would love to see it become a world centre of excellence for videogames.

Silcon Knights and Dyack practice what they preach, as he indicated that people from the game development company already contribute their time to local universities, where they interact with students and help in starting programs that help ensure that students interested in game development are headed in the right direction.