Rules for the new $350 million Canada Media Fund will be unveiled April 1 and interactive hubs like Huminah Huminah Animation are hoping they can apply.

‘As far as I know, there are no set rules yet,’ says Huminah co-founder and president Adam Mimnagh, envisioning fruitful co-ventures in the near future.

‘Let’s say Nintendo called us to do a game,’ he continues. ‘I’d say, ‘Let’s coproduce it. If you put up $500,000, I can get $500,000 in Canada.’ That’s essentially a coproduction, but it wasn’t called that. I would call it a co-venture.’

The Halifax-based company began working in TV series five years ago, and has since expanded to create games and art assets, most notably for the popular music-based Guitar Hero (Nintendo Wii). Mimnagh says the definitions of interactive copros are still hazy at best, but that will hopefully change soon (see story, p. 14).

The other big sell for international companies is, of course, the tax incentives, and he says the 25% digital media tax credit implemented by Nova Scotia Business Inc. has been a major boon for his company.

‘We probably wouldn’t be as well-known for the games we do if it wasn’t for them,’ he admits.

Mimnagh feels strongly that gaming companies should not be left behind when it comes to coproductions.

‘Everyone already looks at Canada as a film and TV series and animation production country,’ he says. ‘Now they’re going to start looking at us more, not just for TV series and film, but also for games. The film industry brings in billions of dollars in Canada. It could bring in billions for the game industry, also.’

The total volume of production in Canada was $5 billion in fiscal ’08/09 (down 4.3%, from $5.3 billion the previous fiscal), according to the CFPTA.

Having worked with both U.S. and U.K. partners on interactive co-ventures, Mimnagh feels that other territories don’t know about the financial advantages of working with a Canadian company.

‘It’d be awesome if they really figure out the funding from the federal government, that could be some big dollars,’ he says, referring to fine-tuning the CMF. ‘It’d be like a shot of steroids for the interactive industry in the country – then we could really truly do real coproductions. We can go to some of the big game companies outside of Canada and North America, and say, ‘Look, we can genuinely fund 20 percent to 60 percent of the budget for the next, say, Guitar Hero.”

Making inroads with these companies is no easy task, but help in this area is emerging. Telefilm has given financial support to some 28 Canadian companies to head down to San Francisco this month for the annual Game Developers Conference to forge alliances with potential international partners. HHA and NSBI are among those involved, and Mimnagh says that last year’s outreach helped start talks with majors such as Disney.

In Toronto there’s a thriving indie interactive community where outfits like Untold Entertainment run into obstacles with landing non-Canadian partners.

Untold president Ryan Henson Creighton is currently down to a one-man shop and finds that doesn’t give him as much advantage as when he had other employees. But he’s no stranger to the field, having spent time at Corus Entertainment as senior games developer.

With those years of experience comes valuable advice for prodcos looking to form gaming co-ventures. He’s had his share of national partnerships over the years (from Toronto’s Sinking Ship Entertainment to Teletoon), and has found it’s best when interested parties approach him at the application stage.

For example, Creighton teamed up with Toronto’s marblemedia to create games for Taste Buds. The prodco had already secured funding through the Bell New Media Fund for the kids cooking series, but had come to him with their own game concepts.

As Creighton notes, prodcos may not realize that this scenario isn’t cost-effective. Integrating gaming into the entire creation process instead of as an afterthought saves valuable time and money.

‘What companies should really start planning for, especially if they’re working with live action, is building in time in their shoot to photograph the actors. Take the voice acting, for example, the earlier you plan it, the less expensive it’s going to be in the long run,’ he says. ‘The closer and earlier they can work with their vendor or internal company, the better off they’ll be and the better product they’ll get.’

Creighton notes that marblemedia learned from the experience and now approaches gaming companies in the planning stages.

‘If you’re going to go with a vendor, let them do it top to bottom,’ advises Creighton. ‘Same with concepting. I’ve almost never been able to come up with a game concept by myself as a game developer. [Production companies] always come up with the game concepts themselves, and tell vendors what to build. My suggestion is humbly that they defer to the expertise of the vendors they work with.’

Much remains to be seen when it comes to how these partnerships should and will pan out. It seems that one of two scenarios will emerge: prodcos will continue partnering with service companies like Creighton’s, or decide to build an in-house team.

Vancouver’s Nerd Corps Entertainment has been on both sides. When it was looking to develop an online presence for its animated series Storm Hawks, it teamed up with Toronto-based interactive hub Bitcasters for a 3D MMO (massively multiplayer online) game.

And although it wasn’t an official treaty copro, Nerd Corps president Ken Faier says, ‘We called it a coproduction – the non-treaty kind, where we brought certain production assets to the table, and Bitcasters brought their thoughts and strategy. They actually did all the development work, based on the art and design.’

And a word of advice to all prodcos looking to explore interactive projects: interactive endeavors are not like TV shows.

‘There’s no ongoing maintenance of the TV show,’ explains Faier. ‘The TV show is in the can. Online – there’s an ongoing, ever-breathing community that you need to service. So beyond the initial funding of production, there’s the whole aspect of maintenance and feeding the community.’

When it came time to work on League of Super Evil, Faier wanted to up the ante. ‘We wanted to invest internally to get into the interactive space to have a direct relationship with our consumer and felt it was an important aspect in the growth of the company.’ And with that, Nerd Corps built a 10-person internal team specifically for its interactive efforts.

There’s still a learning curve to overcome, but Huminah’s Mimnagh believes Canada is well on its way. ‘The government is realizing this is an avenue where there’s an economy to be built,’ he says. ‘So they’re racing to try and catch up, and that’s why there aren’t as many co-ventures going on – or not as many as should be happening.’