Aman and Kamal bring their backgrounds in business, consulting, history, and economics to the explainer videos they upload to their YouTube channel, 2 and 20, which has racked up millions of views. As one of 21 creators selected for the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, they plan to use the money to increase their output and build their media brand.

At the end of 2023, Aman, a Vancouver-based investment professional and former consultant and investor, started making videos about finance, economics and global affairs and posting them on YouTube. “It was just me talking in front of a low-res camera,” he explains. “It was very low fidelity.” 

The videos were a hobby that complemented his nine-to-five job. “My work is a lot more numbers-oriented, and I’ve always loved being more creative,” he says.  

His first two videos were about the signals pointing to a housing crash and recession in the U.S. — topics he was interested in and knowledgeable about.

He showed the videos to his brother Kamal, who studied history and economics at the University of British Columbia and now works as a business strategist and investor. “Kamal was like, ‘We can make this a lot cooler and more entertaining,’” recalls Aman.

Kamal started helping Aman edit the videos, adding elements like music, graphs, animation and video footage. “I learned how to edit and animate myself, just from YouTube tutorials,” explains Kamal, who was also interested in starting a YouTube channel. “I was trying to figure out how Johnny Harris, who is a big YouTuber and has about 6 million subscribers, animated his videos to look so pretty. That upped our production level quite a bit.”  

Meanwhile, Aman adapted his writing style to be more approachable. He admits his prior work in consulting led him to write scripts that were dense and heavy at first. “I started to change it to be more narrative-driven,” Aman says.

A Channel is Born

They named their channel 2 and 20 after the structure of investment funds that charge a two percent management fee and a 20 percent performance fee on profits above a minimum threshold.

With their new formula and identity, the duo started to see more success. In September 2023, they released a video about the Canadian economy that got about 37,000 views. That was followed by a video in February 2024 called “Why Brexit Failed the UK,” that got nearly 140,000 views. Then came a string of viral hits — a video about the housing and affordability crisis in Canada, followed by a similar video focusing on housing and affordability in Australia, each of which now has around 3 million views.  

“Our subscriber count went from 5,000 to 40,000 in weeks,” Kamal recalls. “We started getting sponsors reaching out and famous YouTubers reacting to our videos. It was an insane amount of exposure.”

The brothers started to take their channel more seriously, seeing the potential for it to become something more. Kamal hired editors, animators and thumbnail artists to take over some of his duties, in part because the workload at his day job was increasing. He moved into more of a production role. “I will write up production guidance for the editors and animators, line by line, for the entire video,” he explains.

Aman, too, got help with researching and writing the scripts, which usually take one to two weeks to complete. At the end of 2024, Andrew Hayley, a former Reuters journalist who now works in finance, reached out to the duo to offer his help. “That's been really cool, too, because he brings something to the table with his perspectives,” says Aman.  

Sponsors and CMF Support

The brothers now have a strong following of 230,000 subscribers. Since they still work their day jobs, they can be picky about their sponsors, ensuring they’re a fit with their brand and audience. Finding a balance between sponsorship opportunities and maintaining their audience is something Kamal says is a challenge. “We want to keep a close-knit community but not inundate them with sponsorships.”  

Another challenge is how to grow the channel while meeting the demands of their day jobs. Kamal and Aman hope hiring more outside assistance can help them find the balance they need. Their goal is to increase their output from about one long-form video per month to one every two weeks.  

They also want to release more short-form videos on platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram — something they’ll be able to accomplish with the funds they’re receiving from the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program. The program, now in its third year, distributes a total of $394,000 among 21 creators who make short-form video content on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

“We've always put off shorts just because of money and people resources,” Kamal says. “[The fund] will help us tremendously. Scaling our shorts strategy is important for bringing a new set of viewers to our long-form content, which we think is more valuable.” 

Hopes for the Future

Aman and Kamal see 2 and 20 as more than just a video platform. “We want to build a media group focused on economics and geopolitics,” Aman says. “We want to not only do long-form videos but also go to different countries and speak with people, adding on a podcast as well.”

Their future goals represent a vision for how news-driven content creators, like 2 and 20, could gain more popularity and importance than traditional media outlets with the right funding and support. “Our generation, millennials and Gen Z, aren't watching mainstream media,” Kamal says. “It's important that you're on the platforms [that] people are headed towards.”

The post Meet the Vancouver brothers behind the finance and economics channel 2 and 20 appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

His videos have millions of views and have been shared by actors Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Now social media star Frank Moyo is one of 21 creatives selected for the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program. The singing teacher explains why he makes videos that teach kids Italian, and how the money may help take his content to the next level

Frank Moyo’s Italian roots run deep. His parents and grandparents immigrated from Calabria, in Southern Italy, to Canada in the early 1970s. Moyo was born in 1993 and grew up immersed in Italian culture and language. He was close to his grandparents, especially his maternal grandmother, whom he calls Nonna. “I was speaking Italian when I was a kid and grew up eating Italian,” he says. 

When he was 11, young Moyo developed an interest in music. “I saw a guitar in the window and asked my dad for it for Christmas,” he says. “It’s a cliché story, but it's true, I promise.” He started writing music and developed his skills as a singer-songwriter while studying Italian and archeology at the University of Toronto, followed by a stint at teachers’ college. 

Moyo has been a music teacher since 2018, working at two primary schools in Toronto. But it wasn’t until six years into his teaching career, around 2024, that he started merging three of his passions: music, teaching and Italian. He soon added a fourth passion to that list, content creation, posting as @frankmoyomusic to a million Instagram followers and as @FrankMoyo on YouTube.      

The Birth of a Digital Content Creator

While he’d sung in Italian before, mostly covers, Moyo was inspired by how some language teachers use beats to help with pronunciation. “I kind of did it based on rhythm,” he says, using the word “parmigiano” as an example. He breaks the word down by its syllables, then works it into a beat. “Then we put it to a song,” he explains.  

He treated learning Italian as an icebreaker for music students to do something new together. “They were less shy and less worried about judgment as they were all learning together,” Moyo says.

Moyo wrote what he calls “The Cheese Song” and sang it for a Grade 2 class, propping his phone up on a projector stand. He wanted to capture video of his performance and post it online so that more people could learn from it. It was one of the first Italian instruction songs he posted on his Instagram account, and it became a viral success.

“It got 15 million views within the first week or two,” he recalls. “It was reposted by Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Love Hewitt and all these huge A-list people. I think it was just something really brand new and no one else was doing anything like it.” 

Moyo’s Popularity Grows

Moyo continued to write Italian educational songs, singing them for his classes then uploading them online. First came “The Pasta Song,” then a song about how to express your love in Italian, along with songs about fruits, vegetables and colours. The songs were a hit in and outside of school. “The Buongiorno Song,” which introduced different Italian greetings, hit 12 million views. “Parents would come to school and say how much they loved the songs and how their kids were singing them all day and night,” Moyo says.  

Seeing the potential for his songs to become something more, Moyo made a shift from Instagram to YouTube. He worked with an editor to create videos and thumbnails reminiscent of popular educational channels like Ms. Rachel and Super Simple Songs.  

Then, another big breakthrough for Moyo — a song that he wrote about his nonna went viral, which led to an appearance on Canada’s Got Talent in April 2025. An illustrated children’s book called Nonna, written by Moyo, followed that May. “She’s an online celebrity in her own right,” Moyo says of his nonna. “She loves it.”  

Is There a Children’s Show in the Future?

While he’s still focused on creating educational Italian song videos for children, and still teaches full-time, Moyo hopes to develop a full-fledged children’s show one day. He’s starting to experiment with more advanced video features like performing in front of a green screen and has hired illustrators and animators to enhance the production value of his content.  

As one of 21 digital creators selected for the third edition of the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, Moyo gets to share in the total $394,000 handed out this year. The program’s goal is to support the growth of mid-career Canadian digital content creators making short-form video content exclusively on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook. The funding will help Moyo amp up the quality of his videos and grow his channel. “Eventually, down the road, I want to be doing full-on kids’ concerts,” Moyo says. “I really take a lot of inspiration from Robert Munsch and Raffi and what they've been able to accomplish with their careers.” 
 
As Moyo goes all-in with his educational children’s content, he admits he’s had to set aside his “adult” singer-songwriter interests. “I’ve kind of pinned myself as a kids’ musician now,” he says. “It’s difficult to get back to my original music, but I enjoy it. I love seeing the kids' faces.”  

A highlight of his career was a book signing at an Indigo store in the summer of 2025. “I saw so many families there with their kids and moms and dads and grandparents and granddaughters, all together, singing together,” Moyo recalls. “It was such an incredible experience, and it made me feel like I had a purpose.” 

While online educational content for kids is already overwhelmingly popular, Moyo sees this landscape growing even more in the future. “Every kid is basically holding an iPad now,” he says. “I think more resources and more funding is going to be put into what we’re doing.”  
 
He sees a future where school boards could invest in social media programs and use them as an educational resource. “Schools can have their own YouTube,” he says. “I think it's going to grow and, at the same time, bring us together even more.” 

The post Italian + Music + Teaching = Winning Content for Frank Moyo appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

“I’m going to promote our culture, and that’s a promise!” Comedian Ariane Brunet, one of 21 creatives selected as part of the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, talks about wearing many hats, and reaching her generation.

Comedian Ariane Brunet is one of 21 content creators who will share a total of $394,000 as part of the third edition of the Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Digital Creators Pilot Program. 

Like all selected, this 23-year-old, Montreal-based francophone produces videos and shares them on social media — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. In a funny sketch posted in March, for example, we see her buying an old, stained, and apparently smelly mattress from comedian Pier-Luc Funk. 

Brunet, who describes herself on Instagram as a “femme de blagues,” or “jokes lady,” has more than 120,000 followers on social media, an audience she expects will grow. The financial assistance from the CMF will help with that growth and support a new project — videos “that make people feel good” by addressing social themes in the form of funny sketches.

But that’s not all. 

“I’m working on a long YouTube video with my brother where we’re going to play music,” says Brunet. “These are videos that make people feel good. It’s really just that. I think the world needs to be entertained, and creators need support to be able to do it, even though we’ve been doing it for free for years.” 

A Team Effort

Brunet’s brother, Charles Brunet — who Ariane considers her best friend since childhood — is also a comedian. She began her career by working with him, both in front of and behind the camera, and they still collaborate, like in videos inspired by their Christmas together or a family vacation. “It’s really important for me to create spaces where I can work with people I like,” she says.  

Liking her collaborators is especially important since digital work is often solitary, and she considers herself a team player.  

Fortunately, for six months — from April to September 2027 — the CMF grant will enable her to add several creators to her team of one, including camera operators, directors of photography, film editors, sound engineers, writers and actors.  

Generalizing Generation Z

Brunet earns the bulk of her living as a TV content strategist. She isn’t planning to put her career on the back burner to become a full-time comedian. Instead, she prefers to wear several hats, including as a TV writer and an actor. Brunet also participated in the reality-TV series Big Brother: Le Piège (The Trap) in 2025. 

“Digital content creator” is one of the many hats she wears, but she doesn’t love the title. She thinks “content creation” is a catch-all term.

“It doesn’t really fit me,” she says. “I’m a comedian, and it just so happens my format is digital. I don’t really like that way of categorizing it, even if I understand that we sometimes need to explain things by putting them in boxes.” 

There are many ways to categorize her work. Brunet is part of the young Quebecois culture that avoids traditional media, and part of Generation Z, since she was born between 1995 and 2012. She laments that other generations think her life boils down to smartphones and the pandemic. She thinks generalizing a whole generation, her whole generation, is a form of snobbery.

“I can just be an artist,” Brunet says. 

“We wouldn’t say France Castel is a boomer, you know what I mean,” she adds, referring to the 81-year-old French-Canadian actor. 

Quebec Culture and Young People

Brunet has a lot to say about the traditional media available for her generation. 

In an October 2025 Instagram post she denounced the meagre offerings for young people in traditional media, especially on TV. She insists we need works by and for young people, and to make them accessible, having herself grown up watching a wide variety of comedy, including the sketch show Les Appendices, the satirical soap opera Le cœur a ses raisons (Sins of Love), and the educational comedy series Les pieds dans la marge. 

Brunet says people her age consume and produce Quebecois culture, but traditional media offerings are simply not sufficient or even interesting. 

“There’s only one show for young people, and if young people don’t watch it, they say, ‘Well, that’s it, we tried.’ The rest of the TV programs are geared towards an age group that’s not ours. And then they accuse us of going online. Yes, because there’s something there for us,” she says. 

With her CMF funding, Brunet wants to produce funny, accessible cultural commentary for all generations, as long as they know how to navigate a smartphone. Videos that make people feel good, “so the days don’t feel so long.” 

“I’m going to promote our culture, and that’s a promise,” she insists. 

The post Ariane Brunet wants to do good, and make you laugh appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

How an Edmonton production studio that creates Muslim-oriented entertainment for kids turned a story about the Silk Road from an e-book to a game, web series and full-length feature film.

In 2017, producer, writer and director Flordeliza Dayrit started writing Time Hoppers, a children’s e-book about the history of the Silk Road and the Islamic Golden Age. She was fascinated by the era, which spanned from the 8th to the 13th centuries, and knew she had something special on her hands. “It’s just never-ending history that’s sort of unknown,” Dayrit explains over the phone from Calgary, where she’s visiting her daughter.  

Dayrit was curious about the scientists of the Islamic Golden Age, in particular. There was Al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician born in 780 who is credited with popularizing algebra while travelling along the Silk Road. Astronomer Maryam al-Asturlabi also piqued Dayrit’s interest. Al-Asturlabi was born in 10th-century Syria and invented an instrument used to measure the altitude of celestial bodies above the horizon. Then there was Ibn Al-Haytham, who is known as a pioneer of optic science.  

“I would ask my friends, both Muslims and non-Muslims, ‘Do you know about the Silk Road and these people?’” Dayrit recalls. “Ninety-five percent of the time they had no idea what I was talking about.”  

The Expansion of Time Hoppers

It didn’t take long for Dayrit and Michael Milo, her husband and co-founder at both the Edmonton-based production company Milo Productions and Muslim Kids TV (muslimkids.tv) — a children’s entertainment platform for Muslim audiences — to envision a series and brand around Time Hoppers that would showcase the adventures of four time-travelling children, with their first stop being a trip back to the Islamic Golden Age.

“We saw the potential for something more,” Dayrit says. “History is so vast, so they could go anywhere, anytime.” 

The show’s lead characters are four students from a gifted school — Abdullah, Aysha, Khalid and Layla. They represent the diversity of Muslim cultures, including multiple hijab-wearing characters, Aysha among them.  

For Dayrit, working on Time Hoppers wasn’t just about creating a fun show for kids, it was about seeing herself represented on screen. “As an immigrant, I watched CBC before and after school and I thought it’d be nice to see someone like myself on that TV one day,” she says. “My goal has been to showcase stories that are relatable to my community.”  

They received funding from the CMF and Shaw Rocket Fund to create the Time Hoppers web series, which they began to develop while producing other programs for Muslim Kids TV.

Then, in 2021, Dayrit and Milo came across Canada Media Fund’s Innovation & Experimentation Program, which funds the development of interactive digital media, such as video games, and thought developing a game alongside the TV series would be a great way to build the brand. “We were able to really create the world,” Dayrit says. “We had the possibility of expanding it more.”  
 
They developed a game prototype and demoed it at schools and conferences like the Kidscreen Summit. “We saw incredible interest,” says Dayrit. “People would line up and wait for the whole day to play the game.”  

The game was released in 2024 and downloaded more than 100,000 times in three months.  

Pivoting From Series to Movie

Meanwhile, Dayrit, Milo and their team of animators and producers were busy working on their 13-episode series which, unfortunately, received a lukewarm reception from distributors. “The past years have been really tough,” Milo says. “Sales and interest of the different platforms and broadcasters has really dwindled. The only thing that they’re interested in is ancient IPs that are really risk-free. They weren’t interested in new ideas.” 

But based on the game’s positive reception, by the end of 2024 Milo and Dayrit had pivoted to creating a feature-length animated film, which would become Time Hoppers: The Silk Road. “The movie space is less crowded,” Milo explains. “We thought perhaps there’s a bigger appetite for an indie kids’ movie.”  

It took the animation team a year and a half to complete the film. “We had all the assets already, so we could repurpose them into a movie without an incredible amount of cost,” Milo explains.

The historical figures that fascinated Dayrit became characters in the film as the four students travelled back in time to prevent a villain from sabotaging the scientists’ discoveries. Milo Productions contributed their own money, and sought funds from private investors.  

Getting the Film to Theatres

Milo says they took a risk in pivoting to a movie, but it paid off. First, they received interest from Italia Film International, which distributes movies from Disney, Pixar and Marvel in the Middle East. On October 30, 2025, Time Hoppers had its Middle East premiere, including an Arabic-language version that screened in Saudi Arabia.  

That premiere was followed by a limited North American release on February 7 and 8, 2026. In the U.S., Fathom Entertainment screened the film in 660 theatres, while in Canada Landmark Cinemas showed it in 26 theatres, making Time Hoppers the first widely released children’s film by Muslim producers and creatives with a cast of predominantly Muslim characters. 

Cineplex is planning a small re-release in Canada to coincide with Eid celebrations after Ramadan later this month. There will also be a U.K. release in April, and plans are in the works for releases in Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Asia. Vision Films will do post-theatrical distribution on TVOD and pay-per-view.  

Dayrit and Milo would love to get a major streamer interested, too. “We're hoping that in the digital space, that's where we'll be able to have a much broader general audience appreciate the movie,” Milo says. 

Meanwhile, Milo Productions is finishing the last two episodes of the Time Hoppers series this spring and summer, with a goal of releasing it in September 2026. Once that’s complete, it’ll be on to the next movie. Dayrit says there’s already demand for a Time Hoppers sequel, thanks in part to the film’s cliffhanger ending. “Everyone’s asking me, ‘When is the next movie coming out?’”  

She’s excited about the franchise’s potential. “This is an untapped market that we need to reach, and we know that we can do it right,” she says. “We’re confident that we can open up more markets and continue to do this work.”

The post Time Hoppers:  from e-Book to franchise appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

For several years, extended reality (XR) documentaries have been offering immersive experiences by dropping audiences directly into stories via virtual or augmented reality. How is the genre faring today?

Traces: The Grief Processor, presented at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, last March and the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM, based on its French acronym) in November, is an interactive documentary experience that uses location-based virtual reality (LBVR) to explore grief.

Before donning the virtual-reality headset, visitors are asked to contribute a written, visual or auditory memory connected to the loss of someone important to them. They then enter a virtual dreamlike forest in a small group, guided by director Vali Fugulin and actor Stéphane Crête, who also specializes in funeral rites. During the experience they can interact with the subject of their grief, then share a statement that is archived in the Traces universe.

“The frustration I’ve often felt [with immersive experiences] is that I’m dropped into something that’s happening right then and there, but it was conceived by someone else,” Fugulin explained at RIDM, where XR documentary filmmakers discussed the virtues and dangers of their field during a talk titled Memory in the Age of Digital Storytelling.

“As a documentary filmmaker, my personal obsession has become integrating reality into an experience that’s happening in real time. When creating Traces, I wanted people to be able to bring their own stories into my story,” she continued.

French filmmaker Emeline Courcier places her personal story at the heart of her work. In her video installation Burn From Absence, recently on display at Montreal’s Place des Arts and the PHI Studio, Courcier uses artificial intelligence to recreate memories of her deceased family after a relative in Vietnam burned all their family photos back in 1975.

Users hear real audio accounts while seeing AI-generated visual recreations of those memories. “Each person has their own perception of their experience; some memories contradict each other. In the end, it’s up to the viewer to decide if they are watching a work that is true or false,” Courcier said during the RIDM talk.

Accessing the Inaccessible

Ugo Arsac, a documentarian from Marseille, France, uses digital storytelling in a different way. He sees the medium as a way to let people access experiences that would generally be inaccessible to them.

One of his projects, IN-URBE, explores Paris’s labyrinth of underground sewers, crypts, tunnels and subways. Another, Girlfriend Experience, takes its audience into the brothels of Marseille. His project ENERGEIA, which was presented at RIDM, takes place in a virtual post-apocalyptic setting comprised of real French nuclear power plants.

“It’s a sort of experimental video game,” Arsac explained. “You walk around the interior of this 3D documentary. There’s no beginning, there’s no end. You enter when you want, you leave when you want.”

ENERGEIA participants meet experts who contradict each other on energy issues. “In all of my projects, I try not to give my view of things,” Arsac said. “I prefer to present people who offer varying positions. That gives the audience the opportunity to form their own opinion.”

The Risks of XR Documentary

Although he has decided to embrace the medium, Arsac recognizes that digital storytelling comes with risks. “Virtual reality has a different power than [traditional] documentary,” he explained. “A documentary remains in a cerebral place; we remember it in our minds. Virtual reality also creates a physical memory in the inner ear. The memory is located in a different place.”

Extended reality experiences can also provoke strong, sometimes unexpected, emotional reactions. “There’s a risk that the experience itself creates trauma,” Arsac said.

That’s why Courcier chose to abandon an immersive project on incest. “An immersive experience allows you to include the viewer by putting them in a position to confront a difficult experience. That said, who would want to be dropped into such a nightmarish experience?”

She wonders if that pursuit is even worthwhile. “What is a work of art if there’s no one to witness it, if there’s no one to share it with and create a dialogue? I find this type of physical and mental engagement a little risky [in the context of a story about incest].”

With Traces, Fugulin has seen the emotional power of the medium firsthand. “Even if we try to prepare people beforehand, we can’t completely control the emotional charge. There are people who have very strong reactions, even if we’ve done everything we can to mitigate them. It’s true that it can get away from us.”

The post The risks and rewards of XR documentary appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

The most popular video games in Canada aren’t shooters like Fortnite, open-world games like Grand Theft Auto, or sports simulations like NHL 26. They’re puzzle games like Wordle, Jeopardy! and Tetris. The trend comes as no surprise to developers.

A study published by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC) in October 2025 shows that the most popular video games with Canadian players aged 16 and up are puzzle games like Tetris, Sudoku and Wordle.

According to the report, Power of Play, 59 percent of respondents reported that puzzle games was the genre they’d “played most regularly in the last year,” compared to 39 percent who said the same for action games and 30 percent for games of skill and chance. (Respondents were presented with a list of game categories and asked to select all genres they play regularly, which is why the total adds up to more than 100 percent.)

Puzzle games comprise a large range of sub-genres, including matching games (Candy Crush, Tetris), brainteasers and word games (Sudoku, Wordle), physics-based games (Angry Birds), educational games (ABCmouse), and trivia games (Jeopardy!).

A Needed Break

The trend doesn’t surprise Lukas Steinman, co-creator of the puzzle game A Little to the Left and co-founder of the Nova Scotia game studio Max Inferno Games. Steinman says this type of game serves as a counterpoint to players’ frenetic media landscapes and busy schedules.

“Puzzles allow us to slow down, focus on a single task at hand, and feel that pang of pride and success when a solution is found,” he says.

Mark Rogers, co-creator of the online word game Canuckle, which offers a free, daily, typically Canadian word for players to guess (similar to The New York Times’ Wordle), agrees. “Players crave something they can finish quickly — a single, intentional task instead of an endless scroll,” he says.

More than 230 million games of Canuckle have been played since it launched in February 2022, with approximately 50,000 players — mostly Canadian — playing it every day. For Rogers, daily word games like Canuckle have largely become “part of modern, digital self-care.”

Mobile Devices Behind Puzzle Games’ Popularity

Puzzle games also owe their popularity to mobile devices, according to Jason Kapalka, founder of the B.C.-based studio Blue Wizard Digital.

“Mobile devices are more suited to puzzle games than they are to, for example, first-person shooter games,” he says. Kapalka also co-founded the PopCap Games studio back in 2000 and has experienced this transition firsthand over the years as PopCap released games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies across various platforms.

The market also follows demographic changes, and gamers are getting older.

“Now we see players who are entering retirement, who are looking for games to play. People who enter retirement at this stage don't want Twitch-based games, shooting games, competitive games. They want stimulating games, social games, games they can play with their family,” says Carina Kom, co-founder of the independent studio Simply Sweet Games, whose first release, the word-puzzle game Criss Cross Castle, launched recently.

The genre’s popularity with women is also significant. “More than half of all gamers are women, and 75 percent of the players playing puzzle games are women,” says Tina Merry, CEO of Simply Sweet Games.

The Appeal for Small Studios

Puzzle games often represent an attractive option for independent studios. “They're relatively easy to make…and often don't have the same sort of art/audio requirements. They also have very low technical requirements most of the time, which means that they are able to be played by even low-spec devices, and would reach a wider audience than traditional video games can,” said Steinman.

Steinman’s game, A Little to the Left, has sold 2.5 million copies, and its downloadable content has been purchased 1.5 million times. According to Steinman, the game has made “a good return on investment.”

“Puzzle games punch way above their weight,” says Rogers. “A small creative idea, executed well, can connect people around the world.”

What’s more, puzzle games have room for innovation. New games are emerging like Slayaway Camp 2, which blends puzzles with horror, and markets itself on Steam as the “most violentest” puzzle game of all time.

Even if they are easier to design, developing a game is still a challenge.

“We went into this genre because we thought it would be easy, and we were wrong,” says Merry. “We were so wrong. Anytime you make a new game or any new IP with a new team and new technology, that is going to be hard.”

That doesn’t mean puzzle games aren’t a good opportunity; the market is evaluated at $30 billion (U.S.) worldwide, according to data compiled by Simply Sweet Games.

“All you need is to find a small portion of the market that is looking for what you have to offer,” says Merry.

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Like it or not, the artificial intelligence revolution has begun. Rather than watching it pass them by, Canadian creators are joining in.

Nick Versteeg, the director/producer behind British Columbia-based DVProductions, hired a fresh crew of young creators to work on illustrations and special effects for Northern Star, a two-part documentary he developed for the CHEK+ streaming service with support from the Canada Media Fund (CMF).

Popular science journalist Bob McDonald narrates the doc, which tells the story of astronomer John Stanley Plaskett, the man behind what was the world’s largest telescope when it was unveiled in Western Canada in 1918. With a subject as vast as space, AI could have been used in a multitude of ways for this project. But that didn’t happen. A true believer in human creativity, Versteeg wanted to use it only when absolutely necessary.

Like many in the audiovisual industry, the 76-year-old baker-turned-filmmaker (he has a smorgasbord of Food Network successes under his belt) has major concerns about AI, including job losses, deepfakes and intellectual-property theft. But, also like a growing number of industry players, his interest has been piqued.

Northern Star’s story takes place between 1870 and 1920, and Versteeg says it was challenging to find usable images from that period.

“We tried to find everything we could online,” he explains. “We paid for archive photos whenever the price was reasonable, but some sources charge up to $2,500 per photograph. Expenses in that range were out of the question in light of our very limited budget.”

AI Provides More Bang for Your Buck

Beyond the financial considerations, Northern Star’s team had to recreate 19th-century settings like darkrooms and period kitchens. That’s when they turned to AI, but very carefully. They didn’t want to, for example, end up with a modern chrome sink in a 1800s home, as AI initially proposed.

While AI isn’t perfect, one thing is undeniable — it saves a great deal of time and money.

“When we launched our company in 1982, we had a wall full of equipment, including a $45,000 camera. And we had to reinvest at huge cost every four years or so,” recalls Versteeg. “Most of our equipment today is rented. Two computers are all we need. I just ordered a phone that does the job 100 times better than my old $45,000 camera. Technology keeps advancing.”

Space Pirates Unearths AI Treasure

Toronto-based production company Space Pirates has taken AI even further. Founders Renée de Sousa and Will Cyr have been AI devotees for years. Naturally curious, Cyr quickly realized his job as an editor would be one of the first threatened by the technology. Rather than accepting his fate, he decided to learn as much as he could about what the new AI tools can do, and then use them.

“When we saw AI coming, we thought, ‘Wow, this is going to change everything,’” recalls de Sousa. “Being artists ourselves, we had serious concerns about AI’s impact. On the other hand, it’s a Pandora’s box and once it’s opened there’s no going back. So, if we don’t understand what it can do and how to use it, we’ll be left behind.”

Cyr and de Sousa found the ideal project to start integrating AI into their creative process — Rebelles, a French-language animated series for youth that’s funded by the CMF and broadcast on TFO. Fast-paced and lighthearted, the series presents portraits of courageous women who shaped their eras.

“So, we thought it would be okay to be rebellious if we used AI on the Rebelles series,” de Sousa says. “Since the series is about pioneers, and AI is new technology, we thought, why not give it a try?”

The show’s animation consists of photographic collages that require numerous hard-to-find images. For Episode One, about the Desloges sisters, for instance, there were only three known photos of the two Franco-Ontarian teachers who took a courageous stand against forced English assimilation. In other cases, photos of the women featured in the series simply didn’t exist.

The studio used AI to create the subjects’ faces and bodies at different ages, from different angles, and in various contexts. But contrary to popular belief, creating AI images is not like magic. “There’s a great deal of trial and error involved,” de Sousa says. “It takes a huge amount of patience and experimenting.”

The small team working on Rebelles could try 30 to 50 different versions for each image, combining different software and generative AI tools, including the Adobe suite, OpenAI, Gemini, Midjourney, Kling AI and Runway. As the technology evolves, their toolbox expands.

Despite the amount of work, Space Pirates comes out way ahead by using AI. At this stage, about 95 percent of the images in Rebelles are AI-generated. Cyr then animates the images to infuse them with the series’ style and originality.

More Producers and Educators Exploring AI

Like with Rebelles, Casadel Films used AI to animate archival footage for Crimes du Nord, their new documentary series for Historia (the History Channel’s French-language counterpart), about the history of organized crime in Montreal from the early 20th century to today.

Other producers are using AI to correct technical glitches, manage shooting schedules or write episode summaries.

Whether the stakes are economic or artistic, AI is pushing educational institutions and broadcasters to get on board.

Montreal’s Institut national de l’image et du son (INIS) now offers courses that introduce students to the technology. Télé-Québec is creating the first episode of the animated series Lotus et Cali entirely with AI. The episode will not be broadcast on television but instead will be used as a teaching tool in Quebec schools. And, while the Canadian Film Centre does not yet offer a course in AI, it is exploring the technology’s potential via conversations and workshops about how AI can enhance storytelling, production and audience engagement.

A Line That Shouldn’t Be Crossed

For Versteeg, there’s still a line that shouldn’t be crossed. “You should never, ever replace human characters with AI,” he says. “Please, let’s never go there. It’s frightening when you see the possibilities already. I can understand AI being used for special effects, like in a scene of someone jumping off a building, but never to completely replace human actors.”

“We’re still talking to humans, after all,” says de Sousa. “It takes real creative vision to develop characters that speak to people and have soul, and to tell a story that holds up and touches us emotionally.”

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Ever wonder what space exploration will be like centuries from now? After working with NASA on virtual-reality documentaries, Montreal’s Felix & Paul Studios pivots to fiction for Interstellar Arc, a permanent VR experience in Las Vegas that lets Earthlings travel the universe.

Interstellar Arc is a fully immersive one-hour experience that turns visitors into long-distance space travellers on a 262-year journey to an Earth-like planet beyond our solar system.

With your VR headset on, you start the adventure by waking from a deep cryogenic sleep, and then you explore a 20,000-square-foot virtual spaceship.

“The Arc is kind of a culmination of everything we’ve done so far,” says Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder and creative director of the Montreal-based immersive entertainment company Felix & Paul Studios.

Best known for its documentaries, Felix & Paul has also made award-winning fiction, including Miyubi, a 2017 VR film that starred Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, Jurassic Park, Independence Day) and won a Peabody in the Futures of Media category.

To ensure that Interstellar Arc was grounded in reality, Felix & Paul worked with the family of the late American astronomer Carl Sagan, drawing inspiration from the work Sagan had done with NASA. They also drew on science-fiction classics from throughout literary history.

“I grew up reading comics by Mœbius and Philippe Druillet,” says Lajeunesse. “In the 1970s, there was incredible creative freedom in European comic strips. There was this idea of limitless imagination, and that’s the feeling we wanted to capture with Interstellar Arc. I feel we’ve managed to strike the right balance between scientific accuracy and imagination.”

Settling Down in One Place

The team learned a lot from Felix & Paul’s previous projects, including Space Explorers: The Infinite, an immersive experience inspired by NASA missions that has been touring major cities since 2021.

“Setting up and dismantling a show of this magnitude in each city is a colossal task,” says Lajeunesse. “For our next project we wanted to design an event for a single location.”

That location is Las Vegas. More specifically, AREA15, a vast immersive complex outside the Strip that brings together more than 20 activities and experiences.

Permanent residency not only simplified the job but improved the finished product, according to Lajeunesse. “Staying in a single location allows us to take staging to the next level, with a pre- and post-event experience that is truly memorable,” he says.

It wasn’t hard to convince AREA15.

“We choose our partners based on their capabilities,” said Michael Casper, AREA15’s vice president of business development, while at the HUB Montreal conference this past October. “Some have creative vision, others have the operational capability to implement big concepts, and others are able to secure funding. Few, like Felix & Paul Studios, have all three.”

Overcoming Creative and Technological Challenges

It took three years to develop Interstellar Arc, which finally opened last month.

“We didn’t follow a strict script because we were in completely new territory. We learned as we went along,” said Stéphane Rituit, Felix & Paul co-founder and CEO, also at HUB Montreal.

The experience can accommodate 170 space travellers per hour, including 40 minutes in which they roam free through the spaceship guided by their Meta Quest 3S VR headsets. “An immersive experience like this gives you the impression of having total freedom so you can move about naturally,” Lajeunesse says. “The big challenge was providing participants an exciting narrative journey without them feeling like they’re being led.”

The show also faced its share of technological challenges, including how to have participants move through a physical space that’s one-third the size of what they experience virtually. The solution was to engineer algorithms that give players the impression they’re walking in a straight line when they’re actually moving in a loop.

Just the Beginning?

Interstellar Arc is expected to evolve in the months ahead. “Having a little more time to fulfill our vision, the experience will be enhanced. But it won’t be too radically different,” says Lajeunesse.

While shows that are permanently grounded in one location often have to reinvent themselves to keep audiences coming back, that’s not the case in America’s gambling capital because, as Casper noted, the audience in Las Vegas changes every three days.

Of course, the show could have a sequel, since the expedition ends when the planet is discovered.

“The ending is rewarding but it also feels a lot like just the first chapter in an ongoing story,” says Lajeunesse. “We don’t have a fixed plan yet, but we would definitely like to tell the rest of the story.”

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Also known as microdramas and ultrashorts, vertical shows, which are shot to be viewed on smartphones, are growing at a remarkable pace in Canada.

In September 2023, Italian-Canadian filmmaker Dom Cutrupi saw his first vertical show.  

“A producer I was working with shared with me a piece of content — an episode,” Cutrupi recalls. “I looked at it, and I was like, ‘There's no way I'm going to do this.’”  

Cutrupi had just finished shooting his second feature film and thought the concept of vertical shows — shooting in 9:16 for viewing on a smartphone, and fast cuts for ultrashort episodes of 60 to 90 seconds, looked, quite bluntly, “like crap.” 

But the more he learned about the format and the potential employment opportunities that it brought to the Vancouver film industry, where Cutrupi worked, the more he warmed to it. “I often say, I’d rather be on the plane that’s taking off than on the one that’s going down,” Cutrupi says.

This came at a time when the industry was still recovering from COVID and the Writers Guild of America strike. By June 2024, Cutrupi was hired to direct a vertical series, My Poor Ex-Wife Is a Heiress, working with the same producer who showed him that first episode.

He’s been working on verticals with titles like Crashing Into My Magnate Ex and The Billionaire’s Second Wife ever since, and recently booked his 19th vertical show.  

“It’s been fun since day one,” Cutrupi says. “I’ve been enjoying it. I’m loving this industry.”  

Dramatic Plotlines Drive Viewership

The content of vertical shows is comparable to soap operas — dramatic plotlines with frequent cliffhangers that revolve around tropes, like a young girl falling in love with an older billionaire, or someone becoming estranged from their family. “I’m loving the challenges,” says Cutrupi. “Like, how do I make this ridiculous moment or stunt into something that is watchable and entertaining?”  
 
Since his first exposure to verticals, Cutrupi has seen the industry evolve. “Last year, some scripts were very challenging to read. Like, it doesn't make sense why this character is showing up here,” Cutrupi explains. “But now, I understand the characters. It flows. I see the difference in cinematography and acting, too. Things are going better and we are all working to make it better.” 

Filming vertical shows, also known as microdramas or ultrashorts, started in Canada about two years ago. But the format first emerged in China in 2018, where it exploded in popularity during COVID. 

While the American short-form streaming platform Quibi, launched in April 2020, struggled to find an audience and shuttered just six months later, Chinese vertical-only streaming platforms like ShortMax, ReelShort and DramaBox flourished.  

These platforms function as smartphone apps, tapping into the environment where most people find and watch vertical shows, and can be downloaded from various app stores or directly from the platforms’ websites. You can also watch some verticals on Instagram, YouTube and websites like Daily Motion.

• Read more: Is YouTube the new TV?

The Numbers are Impressive

Vertical platforms started commissioning productions at a dizzying pace.

By 2023, they reported more than 28 million downloads, representing 268 percent year-over-year growth. In 2025, microdrama revenues are projected to reach $9.4 billion (U.S.). There are more than 830 million viewers of microdramas in China alone.

Around 2023, Chinese production companies shifted their sights to North America, targeting English-speaking audiences. Chinese companies took their most successful microdramas, translated scripts from Chinese to English, and recreated them with North American actors.

According to Vancouver-based producer Jimmy Wu, verticals are poised to experience "exponential growth,” which is why he pivoted to this emerging format full-time, launching his production company, Vertical Film Vancouver, in May 2024.  

“To date, I have produced over 21 verticals,” Wu says. He describes the productions as lower-budget — one-tenth of a “low-grade TV movie.” Verticals also film at a zippier pace. Shoots last just seven to 10 days compared to a typical two-week TV movie shoot. Wu says they cover about 12 pages of script per day, instead of the four-to-eight-page average for traditional TV movies. 

In July 2025, the Vancouver Sun estimated that 20 vertical TV productions were being shot in Vancouver every month, representing hundreds of new job opportunities for actors and crew.  

“It's creating a new industry,” says Wu. “It's creating jobs for people. It's creating different career paths for people. I used to be in the [traditional] TV industry, but there wasn't enough work in traditional TV for a sustained period of time. So I completely dropped that to focus on verticals. I can only imagine how many others are also following suit.”

Microdrama platforms work on a slightly different revenue model than big streamers. They typically allow viewers to watch a few episodes for free, then pay to “unlock” the rest of the series. Viewers can also earn credits by watching advertisements, and brand sponsorships add to revenues.

Advocating for Non-Unionized Sets

So far, most of these productions are non-unionized. The rapid growth of verticals, combined with their lower budgets and quicker pace, can result in less favourable work environments. That situation prompted casting director Monika Dalman to create the Vertical Film & Short Series Alliance (VFSSA) in June 2025 to ensure fair and ethical environments on vertical sets.

“I started more publicly educating actors on what their rights are as non-union actors and giving resources to them if they're ever in a situation that violates employment codes or human-rights code,” Dalman explains. “We knew we needed something that was going to serve as an advocacy group and resource for actors, regardless of union status.”  

The VFSSA is in the process of creating a “V Seal” that, according to their website, verifies productions are “running above-board, safely and professionally, meeting clear standards for crew, talent, compliance and transparency.”  

In July 2025, Dalman helped the union that represents B.C. actors sign its first deal with a vertical series. It’s a sign that more productions could become unionized, but Dalman says she’d be “shocked” if even 50 percent of productions became unionized, making the role of advocacy groups like the VFSSA all the more important.

Vertical TV Production is Spreading

While Vancouver is the format’s Canadian hub, productions are also happening in Toronto, and even Prince Edward Island, where Dalman says she has a client who has already made several verticals.  

Dalman predicts major networks will enter the microdrama game soon. She points to the Disney Accelerator — an incubator program where Disney partners with emerging companies to develop new shows and products. In 2025, DramaBox was one of four companies chosen. There, filmmakers are being mentored on how to create verticals. This relationship could lead to Disney producing those stories and investing in DramaBox.  

Wu says the streaming giants are “already in the [vertical] game, testing the waters.” He thinks the future of vertical shows is directly related to the decline of traditional TV. “Nobody that's on the younger side is really watching cable TV,” he says. “There are way too many restrictions when you can just go on YouTube and watch your own program on your own time.”  

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The launch of ROG Xbox Ally, expected October 16, may give handheld gaming PCs a boost, but experts don’t expect demand for the minicomputer to explode anytime soon. 

The ROG Xbox Ally is the closest thing yet to a portable Xbox console.  

The device is the latest handheld gaming PC since the first of its type, Valve’s Steam Deck, was launched in 2022. It’s actually a tiny Windows 11 computer you can carry around to play PC games. 

Improved processor, more user-friendly

The ROG Xbox Ally and the more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X are updated versions of the Asus ROG Ally and ROG Ally X, launched in 2023 and 2024, respectively. 

Many features, including processors, have been improved, and the devices are more user-friendly. The new controller feels like a real Xbox and, because the weight has been distributed more evenly, it feels lighter in your hands. 

The device’s Windows 11 interface has been modified to be reminiscent of the Xbox Series consoles. Not only will users get direct access to PC games from the Xbox store, they can also install software from other app stores, including Steam and Epic Games, easily navigating their way using the familiar Windows 11 interface.  

One thing to note, despite having “Xbox” in the name, the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are not compatible with games exclusive to the Xbox One or Xbox Series consoles. However, you can control any Xbox remotely with the device or play Xbox games in the cloud. 

Popular, but only with a small crowd

While those who love handheld gaming PCs are devoted, their numbers are small. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated in February that less than six million handheld units had been sold between 2022 and 2024, for all brands, worldwide. 

For perspective, last year IDC estimated that 65 million gaming PCs would be sold worldwide in 2025. The percentage of players using handheld gaming PCs compared to the total number of conventional gaming PC players is minuscule. 

According to information from Montreal-based Behaviour Interactive, less than one percent of gamers playing Dead by Daylight on Steam are doing so on a portable Steam Deck. The vast majority play on a computer or laptop. 

Other games are faring slightly better. 

“About 4.5 percent of the hours played on our games on Steam this year were played on Steam Deck, a percentage that’s stable since last year,” says Rodrigue Duperron, director of marketing and publishing at Montreal’s Thunder Lotus, the studio behind Spiritfarer, which is available on Steam, and 33 Immortals, which is not. 

Spiritfarer is especially well-suited to handheld gaming PCs since the game doesn’t need a ton of power, and its slower pace is easily handled by the console’s built-in controls. 

Thunder Lotus is the exception that proves the rule, according to Lewis Ward, author of the IDC report on handheld gaming PCs. “I suppose some studios could see a higher penetration, but it’s less than one percent,” he says. 

Ward doesn’t anticipate the upgraded ROG Xbox Ally will do anything to shake up the marketplace, certainly not in the short term. The latest forecast predicts that no more than three million handheld gaming PCs will be sold globally in 2026, all brands included. 

“I don’t do a ’27, ’28, ’29 forecast for this, for the very good reason that the numbers are fluctuating all over the place in terms of shipment numbers that we can see,” he says.  

If new handhelds with more powerful processors are introduced, the situation could change. 

Games are easily adapted

While gamers who opt for handheld PCs may not be large in numbers, they still want games they can play. 

“I think there’s a player persona of gamers who are in transit or who travel, and want to bring their gaming library with them. I also hear about people who get them as a curiosity and it ends up becoming their primary gaming platform,” says Scott Christian, director of Toronto-based Hilltop Studios, the creator of Lil’ Guardsman. “I sort of fall into this camp. I bought a Deck to playtest as we developed the new game. Since I bought it, I haven’t touched my Xbox.”  

For Christian, it’s essential that Lil’ Guardsman is compatible with the Steam Deck. 

Both Steam and Xbox are carefully analyzing games in their stores to see how they perform on handheld gaming PCs. 

Valve, Steam’s developer, classifies a game as verified when it’s compatible with the Steam Deck controller, display and operating system. The experience should also be seamless, meaning no compatibility warnings, you must be able to launch it using the controller, and all text should be legible.  

In many cases, developers don’t have to do anything to become verified.  

“Our games didn’t require any major adaptations to better support handhelds, aside from some extra attention to readability on portable screens,” Duperron confirms in an email. “We had taken this into account for our releases on Nintendo Switch and, in particular, for smartphones long before Steam Deck came along.” 

Xbox recently launched the Xbox Handheld Compatibility Program to analyze how games will perform on handheld gaming PCs. Games are evaluated automatically, without developers needing to submit them. 

In August, Microsoft published five key guidelines for developers to ensure their games are compatible, with tips on how to comply: games must work by default without gamers having to change settings, iconography must be appropriate for handheld gaming PCs, inputting text must be straightforward on the devices, the interface must be legible from a distance of 12 inches, and the game must be compatible with the device’s resolution. 

“The excitement from our developer community has far exceeded our expectations,” says Xbox senior technical program manager Casey Bates. “The work that developers do for this will work for every handheld. It’s going to benefit the entire ecosystem.”  

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Looking for a way to connect with kids who may not have phones or consume conventional media? For more and more youth content creators, the Roblox video-game platform is the place to be. 

My Carrots Simulator is a game so simple that even very young kids can play. Sitting on small tractors, players collect giant carrots then sell them in the village to upgrade their vehicles, unlock new gardens, or change their appearance. For 200 carrots they can control Mittens or Pants, the main characters from Mittens & Pants, the CBC show aimed at preschoolers, for which the game was built. 

“How do you let kids know your show exists? It’s not easy,” says Windy Isle Entertainment president and executive producer Phil McCordic. “But we saw an opportunity to make a game for Mittens & Pants on Roblox.”  

• Read more: Rethinking TV for teens
• Read more: Mittens & Pants makes live-action TV magic with real animals

McCordic had a hunch that after playing My Carrots Simulator, kids would want to watch the series on YouTube, CBC, CBC Gem or Tou.tv. 

My Carrots Simulator is one of millions of virtual worlds on Roblox. The U.S. platform gets over 110 million visits per day, mainly from children on computers, consoles and smartphones. Players who are at least 13 years old can create their own games or experiences, play those created by others, and switch between worlds by chatting with their friends. 

“Roblox is like YouTube for video games,” McCordic says.  

With the help of external partners, Windy Isle Entertainment created the game from scratch. Development took eight months and cost $40,000, not including updates. In its first year and a half, the game was played more than 120,000 times. 

A short-run Roblox campaign 

This past spring, CBC Gem’s tween series Macy Murdoch took a different approach to Roblox. When it launched its second season, Shaftesbury, the show’s production company, partnered with an existing Roblox game, Teamwork Puzzles 2. 

For a five-week period, all of the game’s visuals were based on images from Macy Murdoch — puzzles to complete a mission and video content shot exclusively for the campaign.  

During those five weeks, the Macy Murdoch version of the game was played for 49,000 hours, and millions of players came into contact with the brand. 

For Shaftesbury senior strategic consultant Jay Bennett, results like that wouldn’t have been possible with an experience built from the ground up. Certainly not in the short term.  

“I still think it was the best way to do it,” he says. “It’s like a collaboration on YouTube. You could start a YouTube channel from zero, but it will take 12, 18 or 24 months of putting out regular content to get the same result.” 

While Shaftesbury won’t disclose the campaign’s exact budget, it was significant.  

“It wasn’t a small undertaking. It took a six-month development cycle,” Bennett says. However, the studio gets to keep what was developed for the game, which could simplify producing similar experiences for upcoming seasons. 

Participating in a universe near you 

Studios with smaller budgets, or without the expertise to develop a Roblox experience on their own, can partner with existing developers. For example, youth content promoter Epic Storyworlds designed the Roblox experience Fracterra as an online destination for games and activities where different youth content brands can coexist.  

“We created Fracterra to make it easier for TV and film producers to reach younger audiences,” says Steve Couture, Epic Storyworlds’ co-founder. 

Fracterra is a place where players can help the ostrich father from the Cracké series (from Canadian animation studio Squeeze) find his children, lost somewhere in the Fracterra world, while enjoying other brands along the way, including Epic Storyworlds’ own Bubble’s Hotel.  

Epic Storyworlds offers producers looking to establish a presence on Fracterra packages starting at $20,000. The company can also develop standalone games. 

Roblox is a platform in its own right  

In some cases, Roblox can be more than just a gateway. 

The game Total Roblox Drama, inspired by Fresh TV’s teen series Total Drama Island, has been played more than 670 million times. Fresh TV sees Roblox as a platform in its own right, not just a way to attract young eyeballs to YouTube or television productions. 

“The series itself is showcasing a TV game show, so gaming is in the DNA of Total Drama Island, which helps,” says Tom McGillis, Fresh TV president and the game’s co-creator. 

To be successful, update often  

No matter which model you choose, launching a Roblox experience is just the beginning for developers.  

“YouTube is a great analogy,” says Shaftesbury’s Bennett. “If you just left a channel static, it dies.”  

Many developers add content to their games on a regular basis, and some temporarily change their appearance to reflect holidays like Halloween or Christmas. “If you don’t update your game, it won’t get suggested nearly as often,” says Windy Isle’s McCordic. 

McCordic says 18 months of My Carrot Simulator updates cost about $30,000. Couture estimates the cost of developing a larger experience at $200,000, with annual maintenance clocking in at around $70,000.  

Regardless of the cost, the creators we spoke with are convinced of Roblox's appeal. 

“For anyone trying to have a conversation with a younger demo right now, it’s almost like talking about social media or YouTube 10 years ago,” Bennett says. “You should be in Roblox. It’s a fascinating and a powerful storytelling platform.” 

The post Roblox: Where Canadian creators come to play  appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

From long-form series to shorts and podcasts, Canadian creators are taking advantage of YouTube’s global reach to own their IP, grow loyal audiences and contribute to a format that’s rivalling traditional television.

Canadian creators are redefining television on YouTube, leveraging the platform’s global reach to build independent scripted series.  

Right now, according to the platform, more than 45,000 Canadian creators are monetizing their content through the YouTube Partner Program, which shares ad revenue with channels that meet its eligibility thresholds. 

• Read more: Verticals on the rise

B.C.-based filmmaker Robert Randall knows what it takes to turn a YouTube channel into a sustainable scripted brand. His channel, YAP TV (it stands for the Young Actors Project), has nearly 2-million subscribers and has grown without traditional marketing.  

Early projects like Thirteen, Wonderland High and Cheerleaders in the Chess Club built an evergreen library that drew consistent views. But the real inflection point came in 2017 with The Girl Without a Phone - A Cinderella Story. The short film hit 10-million views in its first week and now sits at more than 121-million views, making it one of the most popular English-language scripted shorts on YouTube. 

That success spawned a full Girl Without a Phone series, creating a feedback loop Randall calls his “flywheel” — loyal viewers return for new installments, while YouTube’s recommendation engine introduces the series to new audiences. He also gets valuable analytics from the platform. 

“Whenever I have a kiss in one of my movies, there’s a bump in the watch timeline,” he says. “People rewind to watch it again. That tells me what they love, and I can build that into future scripts.” 

Ownership and Independence 

For Canadian producers, sharing content on social media comes with two common worries: cannibalizing existing audiences — for example, a network losing audience members to YouTube by posting content in both places; and "building on rented land," meaning you don’t own the platform as you would with your own website.  

Andrew Peterson, head of Canada at YouTube, responds that creators retain full ownership of their intellectual property. This non-exclusive model allows creators to own their IP, maximize its value across multiple distribution channels, and keep both the revenue and valuable audience data it generates. 

In an interview on The Media Odyssey podcast this past April, Paul McGrath, CBC’s Senior Director, Entertainment Strategy and Audience Development, supported Peterson’s position when he said that increasing the content they offered on YouTube boosted, rather than cannibalized, viewership on CBC Gem. YouTube also became a gateway to younger audiences and provided a “triple threat” of benefits. “It allows you to reach new audiences that are often younger, it allows you to publish content on the platform that also correlates to viewership on your streaming service, and it allows you new revenue,” explained McGrath.       

Regarding cannibalisation, Peterson cites Nielsen data about YouTube’s role in discoverability. "Forty-nine percent of Canadian viewers discover new TV shows via YouTube,” he says. “Interestingly, 31 percent subscribe to streaming platforms after engaging with content on YouTube.”  

Multi-Format Content Experiences  

YouTube’s audience has a robust appetite for multi-format content, from short films to traditional video on demand (VOD), podcasts and live streaming. 

According to Peterson, the short films in YouTube’s “Shorts” section primarily function as "lightweight discovery drivers," enticing viewers who subsequently engage deeper with long-form VOD.  

YouTube is also Canada’s most popular place to consume podcasts. Viewers can watch video versions of pods they’d otherwise consume as audio-only on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, adding another layer to viewer engagement.  

And while some Canadian podcasts, like Someone Knows Something, have been optioned for TV but have yet to make it there, U.S. hits like Wondery’s Dirty John and Gimlet Media’s Homecoming — both available on YouTube and both turned into TV series — prove the model can work. For Canadian producers, YouTube could be the bridge that turns podcast IP into screen-ready projects.  

“Canadians increasingly expect multi-format experiences,” Peterson explains. “They might watch shorts commuting, stream podcasts heading home and then settle into their living room for long-form content.”  

The living room screen, notably, has become YouTube's fastest-growing segment in Canada, according to Peterson. 

Building a Sustainable Revenue Stream  

Creators entering YouTube’s Partner Program — which is earned based on subscribers (you need 1,000) and watch hours (4,000 in the last 12 months) — enjoy a 55 percent share of revenue from ads and have access to a growing suite of monetization tools. Over the three-year period from 2021 to 2023, YouTube paid more than $70 billion (US) to creators globally. Canada-specific numbers were not made available. 

That’s in contrast to TikTok or Instagram, which currently offer limited or no direct monetization programs for Canadian creators. This difference in earning potential is one reason many Canadian creators prioritize YouTube as their main platform. 

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