Visitors to TIFF: The Market’s inaugural Innovation Hub can experience how extended reality (XR) is helping artists Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and James Monkman share Indigenous culture in a way that goes beyond traditional film and art.

Multidisciplinary artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory thinks back to 2018, the first time she saw a virtual reality (VR) film. Biidaaban: First Light, from Indigenous filmmaker Lisa Jackson, depicted a downtown Toronto reclaimed by nature. “It really blew me away how she immersed you into the poetry of the world,” she says.

Williamson Bathory, who has Greenlandic, Canadian and Inuit roots, already had an extensive background in theatre, poetry and short art films when she decided to wade into VR, one component of extended reality (XR), which also includes augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).

A political satire performance piece she’d written based on her own fictional story, We Are a Nation of Lovers, inspired the plot, which centres on the flamboyant woman president of a fictionalized version of Tartupaluk, the real 1.2-square-kilometre island that lies between Greenland and Nunavut and is also known as Hans Island after the Greenlandic Inuk explorer Hans Hendrik. In Williamson Bathory’s tale, the president invites lovers from various nations that have laid claim to Tartupaluk to join together and create a utopian republic.

"My co-producers and I cooked up the idea of making it into a VR film,” explains Williamson Bathory. “So, it is really a cross-section of theatre and film and an immersive environment.”

The production began as an eight-minute prototype titled Tartupaluk which, in 2023, exhibited at the Venice Film Festival, Arctic Arts Summit, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Berlinale. “It got a lot of foot traffic at the Berlinale,” Williamson Bathory recalls. “They’d never had so many people come to the exhibition space ever, so we knew we were on to something.”

From there, Williamson Bathory and her team of co-creators went to work. Montreal-based film and XR studio Scintilla, Greenlandic-Danish production company Ánorâk Film, Montreal animation studio E.D.FILMS, and Khora, a VR and AR studio in Copenhagen, combined their talents to create the 360-degree environment of Tartupaluk. The eight-minute prototype became the first of six chapters in the 31-minute piece, which audience members experience by wearing a VR headset with headphones.

Learning to think a different way

Williamson Bathory admits there was a learning curve to grasping a new, technology-forward medium. “When we first started having meetings, I felt like I had to open up my cranium when they were asking me creative questions,” she says. “But I got the hang of it.”

The bulk of live-action filming took place in the summer of 2025 in Iqaluit, where Williamson Bathory is based. Filming in Northern Canada came with challenges — less infrastructure and higher costs, to name a few — but it was a must for Williamson Bathory. “The city and the land and the community give us such a creative edge that what we create here isn’t possible anywhere else,” she explains.

One potential hurdle came with their plan to film on an island accessible only by an hour-long boat ride from Iqaluit. “The sea ice stayed in place until the day before we were due to go filming,” Williamson Bathory recounts. “My co-producers said we needed to have a Plan B and C but, sure enough, the ice broke and we were the first boat to get out onto the water. We had an absolutely gorgeous day filming on the island.”

After live-action filming was complete, the production team went to work layering animation, music and other technologies onto the film to create an immersive, interactive experience. In one chapter, the Northern Lights surround the island. “You’re given the choice of making the Northern Lights come closer to the ground or getting them to lift up back into the sky,” says Williamson Bathory. They also transformed footage of Iqaluit-based actors into figures animated within the Northern Lights.

Ceremony as art

Designer/storyteller James Monkman is also discovering how immersive art can be used to share his Cree roots. While his background is in art direction, in film, TV, animation and visual FX, Monkman discovered immersive art when working with Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal on the installation UNCEDED: Voices of the Land for the 2018 Venice Biennale. “I really got excited about how we could share Indigenous stories and ways of knowing in an immersive context,” Monkman says.

During the pandemic, Monkman worked as the artistic director on filmmaker Ahnahktsipiitaa’s VR piece This is Not a Ceremony. Monkman and his partner in both work and life, Renée Kwan Monkman, who studied Cree cosmology, theology and philosophy, thought about how they could turn a VR headset experience into something shared with others. “We could create this immersive environment that you could have in virtual reality, but in a communal way,” Monkman says.

Making interactive installations mobile and modular

Mekwâc: “Now Is Good” is a VR installation directed by Monkman and written and produced by Kwan Monkman, inspired by traditional Indigenous ceremony and deliberately designed to be mobile and modular. “We started thinking about form and Indigenous ways of knowing and how the circle is so important,” Monkman explains. That resulted in the creation of a 24-foot-wide circular theatre for a 360-degree experience that could be set up almost anywhere. “All we really need is a plug, a 30-foot-by-30-foot room and 12-foot ceilings,” he explains.

The installation, based on Kwan Monkman’s PhD thesis, takes visitors through four stages of life. They begin in the womb, are born into an underwater world teeming with sea creatures, move to adolescence in a forest with bears, wolves and eagles, adulthood is a prairie with buffalo, then they drop back into the earth in a web of mycelium and enter the spirit world to return to the womb. The whole cycle lasts 23 minutes, but it’s designed to be looped so audience members can enter and exit at any point.

Mekwâc’s interactivity is important. Alongside 11 projectors, there are four LiDAR (light detecting and ranging) sensors that respond to participants. For example, stepping on various rocks in the forest world makes different animals appear. And in the spirit world, mycelial fibres react and move toward participants. “You get to experience the piece more when you’re with someone else,” notes Kwan Monkman. “You see how they’re acting and how the space reacts to them.”

The installation debuted in the summer of 2025 at Collision Gallery in Toronto’s Financial District.

Growing awareness of XR art

Monkman says it was a challenge, at first, to explain his immersive projects. “When you start saying it’s an Indigenous experience that uses multi-projection, people can kind of glaze over until you show them something,” he says. But awareness is growing. This year, both Mekwâc and Tartupaluk will be part of TIFF: The Market’s inaugural Innovation Hub, which is being presented in partnership with the Canada Media Fund.

Monkman says more distinct funding and distribution pathways for immersive art can help the medium succeed. “Most of the funding strategies are still geared towards film and TV,” he says. “So anything that’s deemed immersive is put in this giant pool of other things that are very different from each other, and that can be a diluting factor.”

Ultimately, for both Monkman and Williamson Bathory, XR is a unique way to share Indigenous stories with the world beyond traditional film, TV and art. And if the success of their work is any indication, the demand is out there. “I think there's a real appetite for immersive stories,” Monkman says. “I think people are really hungry for authenticity right now, and people want rich, dynamic, authentic experiences.”

The post Immersive storytelling: How two Indigenous creators are exploring the XR landscape appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

To stay relevant to teens, Télé-Québec is evolving its MAMMOUTH brand — previously known for broadcasting specials to young audiences — for a new era. With MAMMOUTH: le studio, Quebec’s public broadcaster is abandoning televised galas in favour of social media content. We look at how and why they made the shift.

On YouTube and TikTok, MAMMOUTH: le studio’s shorts are gradually becoming a regular part of Quebec teens’ digital habits. In one, young Noura takes a trip to a clothing store and comments on outfits as she tries them on between aisles. In another, Ryad shares five tips for taking part in sports while on a five-kilometre run.

Previously, the MAMMOUTH brand was best known for the year-end gala La Soirée MAMMOUTH, an annual show for young people that ran on Télé-Québec, Quebec’s public educational broadcaster, from 2017 to 2024 and celebrated the events and issues of that year with sketches, parodies and musical performances.

Since March, the new Télé-Québec project MAMMOUTH: le studio has instead provided an incubator for 10 young people, including Noura and Ryad, to take their first digital steps while learning from industry professionals. Together, they form the first cohort of MAMMOUTH: le studio.

Selected through a competition launched in collaboration with Quebec-based media group URBANIA, these budding content creators share their perspectives on YouTube and TikTok, platforms they’re already using daily. Over the course of a year, they will explore diverse themes — from humour to history to cooking — using language and references specific to their generation.

The goal is to reach 13- to 17-year-olds with content that emphasizes interaction and an exchange of ideas.

“The MAMMOUTH brand has existed since 2017,” explains Marysol Charbonneau, director of youth and family programming for Télé-Québec. “It’s known different iterations over the years, including La Soirée MAMMOUTH and the Bal MAMMOUTH [a virtual prom broadcast for high school grads during COVID]. Although we’ve had success with these televised gatherings, they were mostly reaching families and young adults. To reach teens, we had to reinvent the brand without abandoning MAMMOUTH’s core values, which are about developing civic awareness.”

Teens are abandoning traditional media

MAMMOUTH’s repositioning is part of a larger transformation in the industry — teenagers are mostly abandoning traditional media in favour of digital platforms. According to a 2024 study from the University of Laval, 80 percent of Quebecers aged 13 to 17 watch videos online, and 81 percent have at least one social media account.

“Young people love social media because it gives them a feeling of control and independence; they can choose when, where, with whom and how they consume content,” says Nina Duque, a lecturer in the Department of Social and Public Communication at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and a researcher of adolescents’ digital practices.

“That’s where they test out their choices and construct their identity at a stage in their lives where they want to detach themselves from the family unit,” she says.

Another reason young people rarely watch linear television is that they no longer recognize themselves in it, says Duque. “Why would young people want to suddenly swap their cellphone for a TV that doesn’t move,” she asks. “The content is now integrated [into their digital universe], and that’s never going away.”

What teens want to hear

What are young people looking for on social media that they don’t find elsewhere? Spontaneous content that doesn’t seem staged or overly dramatic, says Duque.

“Teenagers don’t want to feel there’s an adult behind the words, and even less an adult trying to grab their attention with a line like, ‘Hey, you, kid!’” she says. “Instead, they want to hear something more confessional like, ‘Have you heard what happened to me today? It was completely crazy…’”

In response to these generational differences, MAMMOUTH: le studio focuses on accessible, spontaneous videos that relate to teenagers’ daily lives. “These are young people talking to other young people, so we don’t want to sterilize their messages or correct their mistakes in French,” says Charbonneau. “Anglicisms are part of their identity because the French language evolves according to immigration and the influences of globalization.”

The recruits also have a lot of freedom in the editorial process and their subject matter, though they are advised by a producer, called “nounou” (“nanny”), and a content manager from Télé-Québec.

“We don’t want to decide for them what interests them, concerns them, and makes them laugh,” says David Ostigny, director of editorial and social content at Télé-Québec. “If we impose our vision of what young people should like we risk making a mistake.”

And, contrary to popular belief, teenagers do like to learn and understand. Duque insists they are perfectly capable of watching long videos on YouTube, especially in the evenings, in their rooms, when they find a video that fits their needs. During the day, they tend toward a more fragmented, rapid consumption of content on social media, especially TikTok, a platform where 40 percent of Quebecers between the ages of six and 17 have an account, according to a joint investigation conducted by federal and provincial commissions for the protection of private life that was launched in 2023.

A new network logic

Traditionally, public broadcasters provided content on a fixed schedule hoping to attract viewers to their channels. Today, they have to be where their audiences are, on diverse platforms, at the right moment, and with relevant content.

In this diffuse model where everyone consumes and shares information, Duque says a broadcaster’s goal isn’t to reach all teenagers, it’s more about reaching influential teenagers who are capable of circulating content widely amongst their community.

Ostigny says that, since its launch, MAMMOUTH: le studio has reached its target audience.

The proof is in the comments from young consumers and the number of views, which surpass 100,000 for some TikTok videos. The next steps are aimed at increasing the project’s visibility and developing a loyal audience by using recurring personalities.

“There will be a second cohort of content creators next year, with the possible return of some previous ones. But it’s not our only conversation with 13- to 17-year-olds; other new initiatives will follow,” says Ostigny, without being able to elaborate at this time.

The post Télé-Québec brand MAMMOUTH evolves to keep young people watching  appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

Adam Paradis writes, directs, produces and stars in short films and vertical videos destined for YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, and — at just 20 years old — makes a living doing it. Now with financial support from the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program, he’s getting some help with his next project.

Adam Paradis was just 10 when he used his father’s camera to film his first video. Like all his friends, the young Quebecer dreamed of becoming a YouTube star.

“I was born in the 2000s. I grew up with YouTube much more than other media like TV,” says the content creator who, to be precise, was born in 2005.

Unlike his friends, Adam created his own channel and made consistency his trademark. To this day, he maintains a strict production schedule, creating a short film of about 10 to 20 minutes every two months and regularly posting short clips of about two minutes each on TikTok and YouTube. He does all of this under the slightly modified moniker Adam Paradisio, rather than Paradis.

A true one-man band, Paradis writes the films, shoots them, plays the main characters, and often does the editing.

Raising awareness and sharing his message

Paradis’ films frequently draw on dramatic techniques while tackling social issues like bullying, homelessness, war and the environment in a way that’s both serious and imaginative. At this year’s Gala Influence Création, which celebrates Quebec’s digital content creators, he won Video of the Year (Long Format) for Le Soldat (The Soldier), a 37-minute film that reflects on the cruelty and absurdity of war. He also took home the Francophone International Influence award at the show.

Paradis has nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube, and more than 680,000 on Instagram. On TikTok, 3.7 million people follow him. His business is going so well he launched a second YouTube channel in June, simply called “Paradisio,” where he shares his more daring short films.

“I don’t use the social-network format to make inferior films,” says the young director. “I use the format to tell stories in a different way.”

Paradis received financial support from the Canada Media Fund (CMF)’s Digital Creators Pilot Program (DCPP) at the beginning of this year. These funds will allow him, for the first time, to hire a filming/editing team and rent professional equipment.

The film he plans to make with the funds is inspired by one of his previous vertical videos on TikTok, in which three soldiers from different time periods (all played by Paradis, a device he often employs) have a conversation. Shooting is scheduled to start this summer.

Vertical versus horizontal

Vertical videos, also called microseries or microdramas, are increasingly popular with viewers who watch on their phones. In spring 2026, Télé-Québec jumped on the bandwagon by releasing La mascotte du chaos, an 18-episode vertical microseries for teens on TikTok.

“It’s a way of looking at the phone that comes so naturally, it’s not going to change unless we invent a triangular telephone,” jokes Paradis.

Rarely exceeding two minutes, vertical videos are filmed specifically for cellphones in a 9:16 format. Paradis frequently shoots them for his TikTok channel and says the format lets him compose tight, static shots that emphasize the dialogue.

• Read more: Verticals on the rise

“I find there’s a style to static shots,” he says. “The eye isn’t drawn elsewhere as much. It’s already so stimulating to be in vertical with subtitles and constantly changing shots, so you really focus more on the character, on what’s being said.”

Paradis hasn’t completely abandoned the wide shots associated with television. He uses them for his longer short films and says vertical and horizontal modes can work nicely together.

“We have to stop thinking that one is going to take the other’s place,” he says. “I think people will always appreciate watching a long story shot horizontally for 30 minutes, an hour, or even two hours, but the fact remains that while they’re on the go, people will continue to appreciate a shorter format.”

Making a living from social media

After having spent more than half his life as a YouTuber, Paradis considers it to be “like any other job.” His revenue comes from YouTube views and ads for products on his channel. Last year, he says, he made $70,000. Not bad for a self-taught creator with a high school diploma.

Paradis reinvests almost all the money he makes into his video production. For his next short film, he’ll continue to invest his own money combined with the financing from the CMF. The difference is this time he’ll be able to concentrate on writing, directing and his performances, and leave the rest of the production side to his team.

“I want to be able to produce something more ambitious than usual as I’m also going to finance part of it,” says the content creator. He estimates it costs close to $20,000 to make a short film.

Paradis is proof that social networks are no longer just a springboard to traditional media. Some content creators are happy right where they are.

The post Why social media is the perfect fit for Adam Paradis’ short films appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

As podcast consumption increases, online platforms like Netflix and Crave are getting in on the action by streaming video podcasts. The increased production needs of so-called vodcasts puts more financial pressure on indie podcasters who previously relied on low-budget, audio-first sets. But resources like the Canada Media Fund’s Digital Creators Pilot Program are helping to support podcast creators venturing into video.

It was in the early 2010s that Kattie Laur first got into podcasts.

After growing up with public radio and “being obsessed with the CBC,” Laur studied TV and radio production at Ryerson University, since renamed Toronto Metropolitan University, graduating in 2014. Following stints in radio and TV production, she became a freelance podcast producer in 2018, working on podcasts for publications like BetaKit, which covers Canada’s digital economy.

In 2022, during the pandemic, Laur started the newsletter Pod the North as a community resource for Canadian podcasts. It now has 2,000 subscribers. In 2024, she launched a podcast called Canardian, which invites guests to gossip about their hometowns. A year later, in April 2025, she started posting Canardian video podcasts on YouTube.

Audio Meets Video

Laur says the pandemic acted as a catalyst for the podcast industry and its crossover to a rapidly growing format — video. “All of a sudden remote recording was way easier,” she says. “We had access to these Zoom-style recordings of people. That gave us all this extra footage to use and produce and put out into the world.”

According to Laur, the growth of these “vodcasts” is helping to fuel the increased popularity of podcasts.

A 2025 survey from Signal Hill Insights titled Canadian Podcast Listener shows that podcast consumption in Canada has grown steadily since 2017. In 2025, 46 percent of Canadians listened to podcasts at least once a month, up from 39 percent in 2024 and 24 percent in 2017. In addition, 14 percent of Canadians listened to a podcast every day, up from nine percent in 2024 and four percent in 2017. Of podcast consumers, 51 percent say they both listen to and watch podcasts, compared to 25 percent who only listen to podcasts and 24 percent who only watch podcasts. The survey also showed that 40 percent of podcast consumers chose YouTube as their platform of choice, while 26 percent opted for Spotify.

“Podcasts have become more than just an audio listening experience,” Laur says. “They are something that you're consuming in short-form video on Instagram, on TikTok and on YouTube Shorts. They've become full-on talk shows.”

Broadcasters and Streamers Launch Vodcasting

Major streamers are also getting on board. In January 2026, Netflix began streaming video podcasts. By the end of March, 13 percent of Netflix-viewing households had watched a podcast on the platform. And Canadian streamer Crave just launched podcast video streaming at the end of May.

Laur is also seeing traditional broadcasters embrace the new medium. “I was at the gym the other day and there was a Sportsnet podcast on the TV,” she says. “Even these massive corporations are starting to use podcast content as both television content and as a podcast. That’s where this is going. You make something that can be consumed in any format that people choose.”

Finding Financing for Video

Laur cautions that adding video production puts increased financial pressure on podcasters. “The new standard is for these set designs and talk shows that take place in studios,” Laur explains. “We're talking a three-camera setup, three-point lighting, it's going to be tough for Canadians to compete because we don't have resources.”

While many successful international podcasts have sponsors and advertisers, especially in the U.S., Laur says Canadian advertisers are “super risk-averse.”

“With all the indie podcasters that I talked to, very few of them are getting sponsorship, especially from Canadian brands,” she says. As a result, talented indie podcasters are decamping for the more lucrative U.S. market (“a lot of Canadian producers are behind one of the most popular podcasts out there, called 99% Invisible,” says Laur), working on branded productions funded by companies with bigger budgets, like financial institutions, or vying for limited positions at broadcasters like the CBC.

But there are reasons to be hopeful about financial support.

The Canada Media Fund’s (CMF) Digital Creators Pilot Program (DCPP), now in its fourth year, announced that its 2026/2027 funding year will be open to video podcast creators for the first time. “In recent years, with the increased attention and focus on video podcasting, we really saw it as an opportunity for continued growth that fits within CMF’s mandate, which is audio-visual content,” explains Janine Steele, the director of interactive, digital and emerging media for the CMF. “We really saw an increased desire for consistent government support to be directed towards the industry.”

The DCPP is open to mid-career podcasters who have been in operation for at least a year, have produced and released at least three episodes of a podcast in the past year and previously produced and released at least one season of a podcast series for which they are the primary owner. English podcasters will also need an average of 1,000 downloads per episode, while French podcasters will need an average of 500 downloads per episode. Creators also need to have podcasts available on at least one of the major platforms: Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or, in the case of French podcasters, Radio-Canada’s OHdio. The program opens for applications on September 15 and closes on October 1, 2026.

“We're really looking to support podcasters that have either already been working a bit in the video podcast space and want to expand and solidify what they're doing,” explains Steele, “or it can be for podcasters who have just been working in audio and want to make the transition to video.”

Steele says the DCPP is less concerned about content creation as it is with how a podcaster’s business can be developed. “We want to support them in activities like hiring staff, whether that’s accountants, lawyers or social media managers, to purchase equipment or to travel,” she explains. “If they need to attend conferences in order to gather more business contacts or to sign deals, those are some of the activities they can cover with us.”

Fostering Homegrown Podcasters for the Future

By supporting mid-level Canadian podcasters through the DCPP, Steele hopes indie podcasters can grow their platforms and audiences. “We have the opportunity to build made-in-Canada stories and share experiences that contribute to the fabric of our cultural society, how we see ourselves and how we understand each other,” she explains. “This is in light of an industry that is largely global and dealing with content that's coming from all over the world, but especially south of the border.”

For Laur, supporting indie podcasters, especially underrepresented perspectives from women, women of colour and Indigenous people, is imperative to the growth and success of the industry as a whole. “It's really important that we see ourselves in the media that we consume,” she says.

The post Podcasts are the new talk shows appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

The horror video game Dead by Daylight celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. Since its creation, the title has amassed more than 70 million players, and Behaviour Interactive, the Montreal studio that developed it, has seen its team grow from 300 to 1,260 employees.

A little more than 10 years ago, the Canada Media Fund financed a video game called Dead by Daylight. At the time, Montreal developer Behaviour Interactive, creator of the asymmetrical horror game that pits one player, the killer, against four other participants, had no idea it would become a global success.

To explore the game’s history and achievements, Now & Next interviewed Behaviour Interactive’s CEO, Rémi Racine, and two of Dead by Daylight’s original developers, Dave Richard, creative director, and Mathieu Côté, director of partnerships.

Let’s go back in time. Tell us about the beginning of Dead by Daylight.

Mathieu Côté: Dead by Daylight started as a love letter to horror films from the ’70s and ’80s. We were a really small team, just about 35 people [working on this specific title]. To give you an idea, we now have nearly 400 people working on the game.

Rémi Racine: We presented the game at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March 2015, a little more than a year before its launch, after about six months of production. We were looking for a publisher, and we got more than a dozen offers. We chose Starbreeze, which was the smallest of the group, because, at the time, I wanted to develop our publishing services internally, and they were the only ones who would allow us to do it. When we released the game in June 2016 we didn’t have a big machine behind it.

How did the public respond back then?

Dave Richard: It was incredible. We were surprised. We knew we had something interesting on our hands, but not to that extent.

MC: There were indications it could really take off, though. Right before the release, at the PAX video game conference, our booth was next to Twitch’s, the streaming service. Content creators who walked by tried our game and we saw it was a perfect genre for them — an infinite source of thrills and jump scares. It quickly got a lot of buzz.

RR: We made good on our investment very fast. In two weeks we’d sold 400,000 copies, which allowed us to earn a small profit.

You didn’t expect Dead by Daylight to stick around for such a long time. How did the game become what it is today?

MC: It’s true. At the time, our goal was to release the game, maybe offer downloadable content the following fall, then move on to the next project. But when we saw the response we changed our plans. We kept the team, grew it, and started to build around the existing game.

RR: One part of the team was working to correct bugs, because the game had some, and another was already working on new content. Very quickly we understood we had to provide continuing support for the game.

DR: And now, Dead by Daylight is a franchise. Our universe is extremely interesting, and we want it to reach as many people as possible, beyond the game itself. For example, we released The Casting of Frank Stone, a game in a completely different genre, but within Dead by Daylight’s universe. There are graphic novels; we’re in the process of shooting a film. For the next 10 years and beyond, Dead by Daylight will keep growing and expanding beyond the original game.

Dead by Daylight is known for crossovers with other horror franchises, like Halloween, Alien and Evil Dead. Why did you choose these partnerships?

MC: It was pretty natural to want to include famous horror characters in a genre game, I would say. We were lucky; the first character we were able to get was Michael Myers, the villain in Halloween. It’s difficult to imagine someone more iconic. After that, conversations with other rights-holders were easier.

DR: Plus, we were used to working with partners because the DNA of the studio was to produce games for other brands. We simply applied that expertise to Dead by Daylight.

RR: Starbreeze, our partner at the time, was also familiar with this model, and so that helped structure our approach.

How did the success of Dead by Daylight change Behaviour Interactive?

RR: In the beginning, we were just developers who thought about making games. The success of Dead by Daylight allowed us to go further. Today, there are whole teams supporting our projects — analytic, player engagement, product management. All these teams bring information to the creators, who can then make more informed decisions. The creative side is still there, but when we have an idea, we have the means and the time to consider it more deeply.

DR: To the players’ benefit!

RR: Financially, it also gives us a certain independence. For the last seven or eight years, Dead by Daylight has allowed us to be more selective in the projects we do for others.

MC: What’s funny is that, in the beginning, it was more the work-for-hire piece of Behaviour that allowed us to have time to develop the Dead by Daylight game. Today, the game’s popularity offers us other possibilities, like helping other studios.

Obviously, the company has also grown a lot. When Dead by Daylight was released, the Behaviour Interactive team had around 300 to 350 employees. Today, we have 1,260.

What advice would you give to studios that are just getting started in the field?

MC: We gave a presentation at the Game Developers Conference recently, and a lot of the audience’s questions were about how to make a game as a service [a model of monetizing games via subscriptions, microtransactions, etc.]. But that’s not what we did. We made a game, then we continued to maintain it, adding content and developing a service around it. Elements like the store were added later, once the players were invested.

RR: You have to make a game that people will like. Then you can see if it can become a service. But the game, first and foremost, has to have a clientele that plays it regularly. That creates some retention.

MC: What’s also important is to listen to the players and learn along the way. It’s an exercise in humility, but the players can be a part of the team, in some ways.

Behaviour Interactive will host a celebration for fans at the Grand Quay of the Port of Montreal on June 14. Several announcements about the future of the franchise will be shared at the event.

The post 10 years of “Dead by Daylight”: a success story that refuses to die appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

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.

The post The golden age of puzzle games appeared first on Canada Media Fund.

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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