The Current - Canadian video game maker wins Peabody — as the industry faces massive downturn

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Earlier this month, Remy Siu and his team at Sunset Visitor won a Peabody for their video game 1000xResist. The project was a success, to its own creators' surprise, as they attempted to create a story about mythology for the Asian diaspora. Siu talks about the big win — and a journalist breaks down the context of mass layoffs that are roiling a video game industry that’s facing growing pains.

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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. Imagine this. The year is unknown, far in the future. A disease spread by an alien invasion has killed everyone on earth except for a teenager named Iris. That's you. You have managed to survive not just the virus but for thousands of years afterwards and you live underground in a society made up of your own clones.

There is an abnormally high density of the virus here. But why? A coincidence, maybe. Perhaps. We'll analyze these samples further when we return. You're bringing some back with you? Iris, this was your idea, remember? That's some sound from 1000 Times Resist, a narrative-driven video game created by the

small Vancouver-based studio Sunset Visitor. This debut game has achieved incredible success and recently won a prestigious Peabody Award for Best Interactive and Immersive Media. We yearned for stories of the Asian diaspora to be allowed imagination, for diversity to include diversity of form, and for our stories to contain risk and experimentation. At Sunset Visitors, founder and creative director Remy Siu accepting a Peabody award earlier this month, 1000 Times Resist is the fourth video game to win and one of the few Canadian Peabody winners

Remy Siu is succeeding and winning this major prize at a time when the rest of the Canadian video game industry is struggling. We'll hear more about that in a few minutes but first Remy is succeeding in winning this major prize at a time when the rest of the Canadian video game industry is struggling. We'll hear more about that in a few minutes, but first Remy joins us from Vancouver. Remy, good morning. Good morning. Congratulations. How are you? Oh, thank you so much.

How did it feel? I mean, Peabody's a big deal. How did it feel to win this award? It's still kind of settling in, I think, amongst us and the staff, where it feels surreal and, um, it, it's something that I think we're going to keep the half settling in for a little bit of time. I mean, like, yeah. It's, it's, it's, as I said, a big deal for a small company, a big deal for a

Canadian company and for this game. I gave kind of the, the thumbnail sketch of what this game is about. How would you explain in a way that people might understand what 1000 Times Resist is? I mean, that's always been the hard part about the game. When I said in that speech to fund the indescribable, it is really something that I think, with my background in the arts and the experimental performing arts here in Canada, it's always just trying to create something that,

no matter how many different angles in which you can try to explain it, there's like a new angle that you can look at it and explain it. But I think perhaps at its heart for me, it's really about trying to create a kind of myth or science fiction for the Asian diaspora here in Canada and perhaps for our peers in America as well. And to see ourselves in that future and to kind of tackle some of the issues

and feelings that we're having in this current moment, but in that detached, more distant science fiction lens. You spoke about that in your acceptance speech. You talked about allowing the Asian diaspora to be allowed imagination. What did that mean? I think, you know, when it comes to sometimes talking about our stories and I know that in Canada we do have a lot of opportunity to do that, but sometimes, you know, something for me, I wish to have the space in which we can tell a beautiful lie, if that makes sense, to kind of twist it or turn it upside down for us to kind of make space for us

to look at it with a degree of both fantastic and extremely real elements mixed together all at once. real elements mixed together all at once. This just to kind of give a space for kind of emotional feeling that comes with this kind of fiction. So I think that, yeah, when I said that for the speech, it was to be able to kind of give people of color or people from the diaspora, not even just the Asian diaspora here in Canada for sure, the opportunity to tell their stories, to tell their lived experiences, but to not kind of put them in a box in that way

to allow them to kind of also experiment in form and also to experiment as artists altogether so that there's a holisticness in that so they don't feel trapped. There's a real connection in this game, and you mentioned real things that it incorporates as well as fantastical elements. There's a connection to the protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

Tell me a little bit about that and why that factors so strongly. I think that it factors in the sense that the game was made, it started in the sense that the game was made in the... it started in the year 2020 for us, production-wise, or at least for me. And in a lot of my practice and a lot of my training, as a kind of devised music performer and dev theater practitioner. It's usually it's about being porous in so many ways to your environment, into your world, and the people around you. And in 2020 that was, you know, for everybody the pandemic and then also specifically I guess for me and my peers things that were happening in Hong Kong at that time. So, part of the game is exploring diasporic feeling

and our relationship say to what home may be. And in the case of the root cause of either a wound or a kind of an emotional rift, the protests kind of take a center stage of that for the game and kind of create a ripple effect that affects everything that comes afterwards in this kind of science fiction world. And a thousand years later, you know, what does that look like? When you create something like that, that's so personal and it goes out into the world,

what is it like when it connects with people? Not outside of the award, what is it like when it connects with people who play the game? So it's wild because I'm still kind of getting used to it. Because yeah, in my performing arts practice before this, you usually are there with the audience when you perform it. And so you can kind of get a very real sense of what's happening. And then also, to a degree, it can be short-lived because after the run, it just kind of, you

can't, it's hard to keep track of. But with this, it's like, I know, I guess there's ways that people are experiencing it, you know, as we're speaking and kind of continue to experience it. And when they really connect, it's a pretty wild thing for me because the game is a kind of an experimental piece of work, I think, anyways. And we were always worried about what type of reception it may have in that regard or whether it would get across or the things that we were trying to do would get across, but I think over time it's becoming clear that it is. So I guess that feels good. What is it like? And that must feel good, what is it like to see that success at a time

when, as I mentioned in the introduction, there are many people in your industry, many of your peers that are really struggling. This is, and we're going to talk more about this in a moment, but it's an industry that is shedding jobs, thousands and thousands of jobs every year. What is that like? It's rough for sure, contextually, especially when I was at the Game Developers Conference this year and that was definitely like kind of a dark cloud hanging over everything and people are definitely thinking about it in the industry. We always are talking about

how it's a little bit on fire. I should say there's a differentiation, right, between say the independent, a smaller scoped video games, like ourselves and our peers, and say some of the more massive AAA studios that you see, say for example, like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, on a very different level than where we're operating. I would say that it still affects everybody.

Often, indie groups like ours are kind of composed of the ashes that are kind of, or of these pieces that are shed by those large companies. It is an ongoing challenge and it is can, you know, for my peers, I think it's actually quite harrowing. You're a Canadian success story. So, I mean, one of the things you've said is, is

that games like what you have created and this industry, this is, this is one of our cultural exports, we talk about cultural exports and film and music and television and comedians, but this is part of that as well. Just before I let you go, what do we need to do, we as a nation need to do to protect that cultural export? I think we're already doing lots of really great things, like on a federal level, like the Canada Media Fund

does support indie games. It's kind of seeing that continue and increase in funding for that can always help. I think at the provincial level, depending on which province, every province does... Well, I shouldn't say every province, but say BC and Ontario definitely have programs, for example, but I think all provinces should look at programs. There are local Canadian indie devs, even look at a game like Bellatro, that's a Canadian game, and also a game from Toronto last year, Venba, that's an extremely Canadian game. Like we, as indies, I think in Canada, we definitely have an outsized influence on

the indie industry. Like Slay the Princess, for example, is another Toronto team. I think that that's something we should totally invest in in Canada. You know, we talk about how we can make a difference to a certain extent on an international level when it comes to cultural exports. It seems to me that Indie Games is definitely a way in which we could do that. And we have already been doing that for the last couple of years, if not more. And so more support at the provincial level, I think, would be really great because we just have talent kind of bubbling up and Canadian stories and opportunities to tell them.

And I think indie games just has a kind of direct path, somewhat relatively uncomplicated path compared to say, linear, that being film and television for Canadians and Canadian creators. And so it's a real opportunity. It's a way that I think we can continue to define ourselves into the 21st century. I'm really glad to talk to you.

Congratulations again. Oh, thank you so much. Rami Sue is the creative director of 1000 Times Resist, one of the founders of the video game studio, Sunset Visitor, just won a Peabody Award. He was in Vancouver. At Desjardins Insurance, we know that when you own a nail salon,

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slash business coverage. Mom, Mom, did you see my race? Of course I did, darling! Look, you did your best. You tried. The thing is, it's not about winning, it's about taking part. Next year you might do better. But I did win, Mom!

You did? When it's sunny, make sure you can still see. At Specsavers, get two pairs of glasses from $149, and one can be prescription sunglasses. Hey, the sun won't wait. Visit Specsavers.ca for details. Conditions apply. The success of, as we mentioned,

1000 Times Resist comes at a time when the video game industry is really struggling. After a gaming boom that ran through the pandemic, most major developers have faced years of layoffs, tens of thousands of people are out of work. And we are not immune to that in this country, hosting two of the largest video game companies. And Remy mentioned them there, Ubisoft and EA.

Brendan Sinclair is an editor with The Logic, long time video game industry reporter. He's with me in our studio in Toronto. Good morning. Good morning. This is a Canadian success story, but as I say, it comes at a time of carnage in the industry. How dramatic is that carnage?

It depends on whether you're looking at the real numbers for how the industry is doing or the layoff numbers and how it feels to be part of the industry right now, I think. Like you mentioned, we had the pandemic boom. It was a perfect storm for games. There were a lot of trends, a lot of people chasing money. And the industry overnight in like a single year,

it was already mature and it posted like 25% year over year growth, which was incredible and drew a lot more investment. But then as soon as people could go outside again, do other things, they did. And so you had a lot of big bets placed in the games industry and they weren't paying off the way people needed them to. A lot of overpriced acquisitions that are now, companies that bought them are looking at them and saying, well, do we want to put more good money

after bad here? And they're, because the industry hasn't grown after the pandemic, it retracted just a little bit, they've been looking to be more efficient. They've been improving their margins by dropping their costs and that means shedding lots of people. But we're talking tens of thousands of people who've lost their jobs. But the actual people are still buying games and playing them and spending money on it. Heading into this year, Nuzu, their global forecast for the games industry was 186 billion, which was going to be an all-time high.

So I don't think, especially since Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed till next year, I don't think it's going to hit that number now, but it's still, the business of games has been healthy. Can we talk about how significant this is in this country, particularly in Quebec? I mean, we're just speaking with Remy who's in Vancouver, but Quebec is a hub, right? There's something like 15,000 game developers in that province, is that right?

Yeah, 15,000 in Quebec. There's 34,000 across Canada. And this contributes, I mean, again, people say it's video games. This contributes $1.4 billion annually to this country's GDP, this industry. That's a lot of money. It's huge, and a lot of it, I think,

is because Quebec was an early mover on video game tax credits to support it as a cultural development. And they've been doing that for over 20 years now. Ontario followed suit. BC, they have a tax credit, hasn't been as generous, but by virtue of the weather in Vancouver, being close to Seattle, Silicon Valley, tech hubs like that, it was a popular secondary place for countries to expand to,

or for game developers to expand to. And the entire industry has benefited from that over the years. The one asterisk is that a lot of it has been foreign companies. So, Vancouver, in Electronic Arts Vancouver, they make the FIFA EA FC most popular soccer game, sports game in the world.

But they're making it for an American company. Ubisoft is huge. They employ one out of three video game developers in Quebec. They're a French company. So the criticism, I guess, of the game credits has been like, well, you've got all these Canadians getting jobs, making cultural products, but ultimately it's foreign companies that are benefiting from it. One of the great things about this, though, that we've seen in recent years is that even as we have these layoffs and the cultural creators are spread to the winds,

they often will form their own independent game development studios. It sounds like the tech meltdown, I mean people talked about Blackberry and what have you, that those companies got into trouble and the people who used to work there just went and started their own companies. Yeah, yeah. So it's sort of a knock-on effect, sort of a silver lining, I guess, for the troubles that the industry has seen of late. But there are positive effects and we are, in recent years, I believe, starting to see more homegrown success stories.

Do you worry about a company like Ubisoft? I mean, again, a French company, but has a huge presence in Quebec, in Toronto as well, and elsewhere. And I mean, they make big, big games. Assassin's Creed is a game that people know. But are they facing rough waters? That company is facing rough waters because of the larger turmoil in the industry? They are for a number of reasons. I think the AAA blockbuster high budget game development, the costs of that have exploded over the years and that's the playground that Ubisoft works in. And so it's the bets are getting so large and so difficult to get an acceptable return on your investment for that if you have something that doesn't hit it it's it doesn't take too many of them now to sink even a large operation now

Ubisoft had a couple rough years with some disappointments they had a big Star Wars game that didn't live up to the sales expectations but they recently received a jolt of investment from Tencent. They have a- It's a Chinese company. Yes. Yeah. The Assassin's Creed Shadows was Quebec City led game development and that released earlier this year and it was their, the first really big game of theirs that seemed to deliver at least on a critical front and the early commercial results have been good for that

too. So Ubisoft is in a better position than they were last year at this time, but they still have a problem because the way they make games is very labor intensive. They have a head count, employee head count that's about equivalent of anyone else in the industry that has the same head count is making three or four times as much money in revenue each year. Let me ask you just two things before I let you go. One is about that. I mean, they're knockoff. You were writing about this.

There are knockoff effects because there are schools that are helping to train video game developers. If the industry is shrinking, what happens to those students who are coming through those education facilities? They have fewer places to land jobs. And that's in particular right now, it's very difficult for those students to find jobs because the companies can often have more senior talent show up at the same, you know, relative pay level.

And we've also got, Quebec has changed the tax credit a little bit to be less generous, particularly to hiring the junior talent. They're emphasizing more senior, more experienced people. So we'll see what happens with that pipeline and how it gets impacted by these schools pumping out hundreds and thousands of developers with no jobs for them to get to. The other thing, just in the last couple of minutes that we have, there's been a lot of excitement

about the Nintendo Switch 2, the video game console, that people were waiting and waiting and waiting for. Is this the kind of thing, you said earlier, I mean, during the pandemic, people were stuck inside and they couldn't see people, so people played more video games, people can go out now. But is this the kind of thing, is that the kind of thing that could juice the industry

and get people maybe to ignore the sunshine of summer and stay inside? It helps. It creates interest in the industry, I believe, and if there is interest and buzz around the industry, I think that's what attracts investment, both on the VC level for startup studios and from the large publishers. And that's something that we've been lacking for the last few years because the pandemic also had the blockchain gaming push and the metaverse and and trends like that that were just

drawing in huge amounts of money and Right now we haven't really had that there's some generative AI buzz, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of Excitement in the gaming industry for that and there's no proof of concept as to like, hey, here's a great hit using this that makes it fun. So something like the Nintendo Switch 2 coming out can jolt it and keep it front of mind for people and I think hopefully attract some of the investment that will help bring the rest of the industry

sort of in line with the actual money that the industry is bringing in. I guess if we're talking about an elbows up moment in this country and there's interesting people who are doing things here, this is an opportunity to wrap our arms around the cultural creations that are happening here as well in that world. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Brendan, thank you very much for that. Thank you. It's good to have you here. Brendan Sinclair is an editor with The Logic and a long-time

video game industry reporter. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.